Summer Vacation 2010

After a wonderful 10 days with our US cousins, we finally arrived back on Canadian soil on Sunday night.  The trip home was a nightmare - an accident on I90W held us up for about an hour and then an overly busy border crossing took a few hours.

Nothing could dampen our enthusiasm over our trip though.  We had such a great time!! In fact, we discussed making it an annual family vacation in Ocean City, NJ, each year, with a visit to see family in PA for a few days as well.

We traveled up to Erin to pick up Aili, who had been spending the week with her grandparents.  Originally, we were going to meet in London to pick her up, but we decided to just change our route to cross the border at Buffalo, instead of Detroit and save a few hours of driving.

With grand plans to leave for 8:00 am, we finally hit the road around 9:30am! We arrived late the night before and still had to sort out a few things, since Connor would be coming back and heading straight to a competitive swim day camp for a week.

We were off to an auspicious start, only to hit a huge thunderstorm as soon as we hit Hwy 403:


Since we were facing a 9.5 hr drive, I took the time to dig out the manual for the Nikon D300s and start playing with my new camera (well, mine for the next two weeks anyways!)


What can I say?  I'm in love.

A few people have asked me why I prefer it over the D90 and I will write more on that another day, but I wanted to share the photos of our first day of vacation.

We crossed into New York and Connor excitedly started looking out the window for the Empire State Building!  He was more than a little disappointed when we told him that we wouldn't be passing by.  So much so, that it prompted a little discussion on maybe traveling to NYC for a day, since we were already traveling so far.  That boosted his spirit! :)

We hit the Pennsylvania border around 4pm and pulled into the tourism centre. 

By now, the sun had started to shine and the kids were anxious to finally see/meet their cousins!

If you've never been to Pennsylvania, it is truly God's country.  At least the parts I have seen.  It is filled with forests, covering the sides of mountains and roadsides alike.  The roads are very curvy and hilly, and some are literally carved out of the sides of the mountain:

We finally arrived at my cousins' home around 9:30pm.  Not bad, considering we had several bathroom breaks and a sit down dinner in a quaint little diner called the Gap Diner, found in Wind Gap, PA.

We spent the next few days, swimming in their pool and recuperating from the drive.  On Sunday, we took the kids to Dave & Buster's in Plymouth Meeting, PA.  If you have never been, you need to put this on your Bucket List!  Think of it as Chuckie Cheese, but for adults!

And the food is WAYYY better.

From D&B's, we continued on our way to my cousins' beach house in Ocean City, NJ.  More photos of our beach days to follow...