Across the state of New York

The next part of our road trip was the drive from Niagara Falls to NYC. On the way we wanted to stop and see the church sites in upstate New York. We made our home base Rochester, New York. We stopped at the first Wegmans for dinner one night, walked along the canal, had ice cream at a local dairy, found a park, and saw a double rainbow.

Over the course of two days we saw some amazing Church History sites. We were able to spend time at the Sacred Grove, Hill Cumorah, Joseph Smith's childhood home, and the site of the Church being organized. I'm so glad we had the chance to take the kids.

Our last stop of our road trip was New York City. We went to the Top of the Rock, American History Museum, and the Statue of Liberty. We had fun exploring the city, shopping, and eating. We were hoping to see the fireworks on the Fourth of July, but the rain sent us back to the hotel to watch them on the TV.

(POST-NOTE: I am really behind on the blog. I am actually posting this over a year after this happened. I am SO, SO, SO sad... I somehow lost all the pictures from this trip. All we have are these pictures I grabbed from Instagram. Thank goodness I posted there.)

Niagara Falls, CANADA - day two

In the morning we had tickets on the Hornblower Cruise down into the falls. On the walk to the boat dock the kids kept stopping and asking to take their pictures. We are really lucky to have such great kids.

My observation/some information of Niagara Falls:
 -We all got a red poncho as part of the boat ride into the falls.
 -We didn't get too wet, because it wasn't very windy.
 -I didn't expect the falls to be so loud.
 -Levi didn't like it very much and held onto Michael pretty tightly.
 -We asked some strangers to take our pictures on the boat. I'm glad we have some pictures of all of us.

After the boat ride we decided to take our time walking back to the hotel. The weather was so beautiful. The kids had fun running around on some grass at the park near the falls. We thought we would spend most of the day in Niagara, but between the morning and the evening before we saw everything we wanted to see. We went back to the hotel to pack up and get the van. We made one quick stop at the Hershey store on our way out of town.

Time to head to Rochester New York for the next part of our road trip.

Niagara Falls, CANADA - day one

We had a lot of fun on our vacation. Here is a bit of a travel log of our vacation to Canada and upstate New York. Our first day we got up early and drove to Niagara Falls, Canada. Not too many exciting pictures from the drive, but our view from the hotel was AMAZING!

After getting settled in the hotel, we headed out to walk around the town and find some dinner. We ended up at an Italian restaurant for some yummy pizza and pasta. Then we walked down the main street and decided to take a ride on the huge Ferris wheel. It was amazing to see the falls from up high. On our way back to the hotel we walked by and took some pictures of the American Falls. (For those who don't know Niagara Falls is made up of two main falls. The American Falls are just as they sound... they fall from the American side. The Horseshoe Falls are the iconic semi-circle shaped falls that fall between the border from the Niagara River between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. There is a geography lesson for you.)

Once we got back to our hotel we got ready for bed and watched the fireworks from the comfort of our room. The kids were obsessed with looking out the window. They loved seeing the falls.

WDW - Coming Home

After our last day at Disney we drove to the north side of Orlando for the night. We decided it would be best after a long week to take 2 days to drive home. Saturday morning we woke up without an alarm clock and got ready for our day on the road. We stopped in Daytona Beach, because what is a trip to Florida without seeing the ocean? After a quick stop at the beach we took a slight detour to drive by the Daytona International Speedway.

Levi did not want to put his feet down in the sand.

Saturday night we stopped in Lumberton, NC. With only about 7 hours of driving it was a pretty easy day. We made it to Lumberton around dinner time. It is becoming a tradition for us to eat at IHOP on our road trips. It is something the kids look forward to and it makes them happy. At the end of the day happy kids on vacation = happy parents. After dinner we took the kids to get some ice cream (technically frozen yogurt) at Sweet Frog.

After a good nights rest we were ready to head home. We only had a 5 1/2 hour drive on Sunday. We stopped for lunch at Steak n' Shake in Richmond where we made our kids put on their hats and pose for a picture. As you can see Levi loved it. The rest of the drive home I made it my job to annoy Michael as much as possible, you know to keep him awake. A couple of days on the road can do that to you.

I think we made a good decision to take two days driving home. It was nice to get home early enough to have time to unpack. We were able to get things ready for Miriam to go back to school and Michael to go back to work (although we were very grateful it was a short week because of Thanksgiving). We had an amazing time at Walt Disney World. It was worth every penny spent. I'm already looking forward to planning our next trip!