Ontario: Yours to Discover

It's been so long since we went to Ontario, that instead of thoroughly breaking it down by day, you will get a lot of pictures, and brief captions to sum up the 10 days by event.

Ben and I at the Edmonton Airport. A seriously early hour (Our flight was out at 6:00am.) 

On the other side! Jared and Ariana were on the same flight as us.

I don't know why I didn't take any photos of the rest of our day, because we after this we went to Niagara on the Lake. Which was so pretty. It reminded me of Tofino in a sense that it felt totally removed from the rest of the world. Except there were no hippies. 

The next day…

 Ben and I hopped on the bikes and rode to the Falls. It was only a 10 minute bike ride. I'm so glad we went in the morning, because it was like 8:00am and it was already so hot.

I'm such a tourist, and I don't care. 

(That puff behind me is mist from the falls. At this point I could already feel the mist)

This boat is seriously close to the Falls. You can tell from the white rapids how strong the current is, and it's amazing that it didn't go over. For the full story of survival, click HERE. 

The whole time I was at the bottom I was thinking that the boat would 

finally dislodge, and come crashing over and kill us all. It didn't…

This is the American side of the Falls 

(with the bridge in the background that separates Ontario from New York)

This is the Canadian side (the most famous side, because it's bigger and clearly better). The tugboat down at the bottom doesn't seem all that close to the base of the Falls, but when you're down there (or maybe it was just me…) It feels a little too close for comfort. You can feel the boat's engine revving in reverse to fight the pull into the Falls. It was slightly frightening to feel that kind of power. 

Okay, this is not sweat, it was like it was raining because it was so misty from the Falls!

Maid Marion… of the mist… 

We had another tourist take our picture. She sucked at taking pictures. 

This is looking back towards the NY side of Niagara Falls. I had to put my camera away at this point because it was already really wet and about to get worse as we got closer to the big Falls. 

After our Maid of the Mist adventure, we rode our bikes to a close by park to meet up with the rest of Ben's family for a Townsend family reunion. 

On our way there, Ben popped a tire on his bike and we had to walk our bikes the whole way there. 

Sarah wearing my glasses and hat

Me, Ariana, and Jared at the picnic spot

The picnic was so delicious. It's a Townsend family reunion tradition to get a big bucket of KFC chicken, along with tons of other dishes and have a picnic. It was fun to have the opportunity to meet his extended family, considering they're all so spread out and far away.

The next day...

We drove down to Palmyra, NY to see the Hill Cumorah Pageant, and some other historical sites.

We got there pretty early, so we claimed some chairs and went off to explore.

The set up

The Palmyra temple has 108 windows, and all of them are stained glass, reminiscent of the sacred grove. I'm normally not a stained glass fan, but these windows were so gorgeous I had to take a picture. 

And then blog about it… 

View of the Temple from the Sacred Grove

This is the Townsend Family crest! It was in the replica of the Smith family log house. 

We didn't have time to go anywhere else. We missed out on seeing the printing press, because they had closed by the time we had gotten there. Still pretty neat to see where it was!

The next day...

This wasn't the next day, but I don't know when these pictures were from. 

It was Niagara on the lake though! So probably belongs back in day 1.

See the hotel in the background? So Charming (and haunted. I don't want to talk about it anymore).

The next day...

Canada's Wonderland!

Chase was super excited to go on all of the rides.

Ben and Jeremy went on "The Bat". 

I wasn't feeling brave enough yet to go on. I feel like I have to build up my tolerance starting with the small rides, and working my way up to the big ones. This one was too big.

So instead, I went on the "Jumpin' Jet"!

It was a really long day, but it was lots of fun. 

I still don't think it compares to Disneyland, but I would still like to go back.

The next day...

We crossed the bridge over to Niagara Falls, NY to do some shopping at the outlet malls. It was awesome, but this was the only picture I took of the day… crossing the bridge. 

The next day…

Camping has begun! We went to the Pinary Provincial Park for 3 days. 

Sorry for the wide eyes… The flash was so bright.

We were about 5 seconds away from Lake Huron. 

We had to climb over a massive sand dune to make it here, 

but it was only a few minutes from out campsite. 

I said to Ben "Hey, you might want to stay out of the sun today… You're looking really red."

He didn't, and later that night I was woken up from the 

sound of him being violently ill from heat exhaustion. 

There was a drive in about 30 minutes out from the park, 

and this is where I witnessed the final Harry Potter. 

This was the gang, and our set up! We had front row seats.

This was the final picture I took of our trip. Somehow I missed the last few days. I always feel like I never take enough pictures. Or take way too many pictures of the same thing. 

Next post: The Cockapoo and the cupcake.

SPOILER ALERT

Here's a little sneak peak of good things to come

Maid of the Mist! This is where Ben and I secretly eloped while our family and friends 

anxiously waited for us at a nearby chapel. Oh. Wait… That was Jim and Pam.

Got My Hair Did

So, this is for you Lize. Should I have waited until I looked more presentable? Probably. This is fresh from the salon, and I normally prefer to do my hair myself after it's been cut (unless its by Kristen, then it's perfect.) but I just couldn't be bothered yesterday. It was my day off (I prefer to not wear make up on my days off unless I need to impress someone) so I took it easy. My appointment was at 11:30, so I woke up at 10 and took my time getting out the door at 11 to get downtown on time. When I got there she was running behind with a client who had the most (Besides you Kimme) gorgeous long, natural blonde hair. Anyways… In traditional Aveda style they gave my a complimentary hand massage while I waited. I will wait an extra 30 minutes any day if it means a 30 minute hand massage! It was so nice. Im not thrilled with the cut yet, but I didn't go to my regular girl so… that's probably why. I think I just have to let it grow out a little bit, and style it myself. 

Very Jennifer Aniston in Friends circa 1996 at this point

I interrupt this consecutive series of events to bring you an important update: H-DAYS

My trip to the east will have to wait. I must tell about heritage days!

August 1st was the Heritage Day holiday in Alberta, and that whole weekend featured the 36th annual heritage festival at Hawrelak Park

Klausen, Ben, Myself, Dave

I'll rewind a little bit and start from the beginning. The four of us had been trying to get together for weeks and the stars aligned for this to happen. I actually didn't have to work the holiday like normal people! So we had the whole day planned. We were going to start the morning early and head to the park, and then stop home to take the dogs for a quick walk (Dave and Kassie let us leave Aphids at their house for the day so we wouldn't have to go all he way home), and then head to the Art Gallery of Alberta to catch the Andy Warhol exhibit which is ending soon. Things didn't go as planned (as usual) because of this…

Dave wouldn't be impressed that there's legit evidence of him playing this unnamed game

Meanwhile… Kassie and I watched like 2 hours of Drop Dead Diva (have you seen it? SO good. In a cheesy way of course, but it's the sole reason I got the free trial of Netflix)

So yeah. 2 hours later… we get going (at this point we decide to axe the gallery because there just wouldn't be enough time, and also because we walked/took the train there when we were planning on driving there)

Have you noted Ben's man purse? Good. He's really proud of it. 

He keeps his baseball cards and bubble gum in there.

Dave and Kass live approx. 20 minute walk to the nearest train station. 

We had to walk up the biggest hill ever, and through the ledge where Ben got the most AMAZING hot dog from a fat franks vendor (even though we were on our way to gorge ourselves with food from dozens of other countries). So after the LRT it was probably another 20 minute walk, and then we were there. It's hard to know what to do first because there's so much to do and see, you don't want to leave anything out, and you don't want to use all of your tickets, and fill up before you know what else is out there. Like most food festivals it was a ticket system. You buy your tickets and then go to the various "countries" and use them for food items. Most main dish items were 4-12 tickets. 

Dave was really concerned about his posture

We pretty much spent the whole day there, consuming some of the most delicious food known to man. Lets just say that I have an overwhelming desire to go to Israel for mostly the food. If i ate falafel with hummus and pita for the rest of my life, I would die a happy gal.

Israel you are delicious

Besides the amazing food, there were pavilions with people selling little trinkets, 

and teaching about their culture, and stages with dancers!

Dad would have LOVED Scandinavia. There were SO many Charlie Brown Christmas trees 

(which I now know that they are actually traditional for Scandinavian Christmas') 

All in all it was such a fun day. It was the first festival I'd experienced this summer. The Fringe started last night so we'll definitely go there, but i'm super bummed that I missed the street performers. 

Please disregard my unflattering position

Ben was SO excited about his empanada from Ecuador

Ethiopia

Vikings

I felt so sorry for this man in the ship… It was so hot out and it looked like he was getting a sun burn

This picture was taken right before Kassie literally walked into Mike and Alaina!

This next series of photos is quite possibly my favourite… 

Kassie gets a hug from the "Free Hugs!" guy

The group starts to close in on her. Notice her face? She looks scared

Now it's a group hug

FREE HUGS

Cuba you are SO DELICIOUS! This was my biggest investment. It was 11 tickets and so much food I couldn't finish it all. I wish there was a dipping sauce for the fried plantains

This work of art was done at India. The girl was awesome and I wish I got her business card. It was $20 and it went down my arm too! Below is the end result the next morning. I had to sleep with it on.

Dave making crepes. As if we hadn't eaten enough food already.

The night ended with a long journey back to Dave and Kassie's where we hung out a little more, and Dave made crepes! We were going to get crepes at France, but after seeing them made, we decided we could make better (which he did) and for free!