Sunday, July 3, 2011

Day 1 Summer 2011 Road Trip

We are off on another 2 month, fun filled, adventure packed road trip. We are going to start off by crossing off another thing on our bucket list of things to see and do. To watch a space shuttle launch. Not just any space shuttle launch though, but the “last” space shuttle launch. The shuttle fleet is being retired after this final launch.

We started the day early, packing the last few things into the car and closing up the house. We were on the road by 7am and pointed the car towards Florida.

Here is our route for today.

Day 1

We crossed over the Burlington Bay Bridge and the Garden Skyway Bridge on our way to the Peace Bridge border crossing.

7566 The Burlington Bay James N. Allan Skyway QEW Burlington, Ontario 7567 Garden Skyway QEW St. Catharines, Ontario

Since I got my apple iPhone 4 I have been downloading travel apps among other things… I decided to check out the Border Wait Times app that I had downloaded, to see if we would be delayed at the Peace Bridge crossing. The app said there was Zero wait time… well we will see.

Up and over the Peace Bridge.

7569 Peace Bridge QEW, Fort Erie, Ontario 7570 Peace Bridge Buffalo, New York

Ahead is the customs and border check point…

7572 border crossing Buffalo, New York

Not bad at all, I think we were in the line for 5 minutes and then it was our turn. We were asked our citizenship and our destination and that was it, we were waved through. They didn’t want to know how long we would be gone or if we had any fresh fruit or meat, none of the typical questions. So was the app accurate, well not precisely, but I won’t complain about a 5 minute wait in line anytime we cross the border. It can sometimes take up to an hour.

We drove through New York and entered Pennsylvania.

7576 I-90 Welcome to Pennsylvania

Stopped for a break at the Pennsylvania Welcome Center on I-90

7580 I-90 Pennsylvania Welcome Center 7579  I-90 Pennsylvania Welcome Center

Soon we were headed South again when we turned onto I-79 and crossed over the Pittsburgh Naval and Shipbuilders Memorial Bridge.

7584 I-79 South, Pennsylvania 7585 Pittsburg Naval and Shipbuilders Memorial Bridge I-79 South,  Pittsburg, PA

The skies were getting dark and threatening as we got closer to the West Virginia border. By the time we reached the border we were in a downpour. Barely got this photo of the Welcome to West Virginia sign.

7590 I-79 South, Welcome to West Virginia

We can now add West Virginia to our map of States Visited… we will return later this summer and do more in West Virginia but for now we will just check into our hotel for the evening.

VisitedStatesMap

We got checked into our hotel around 5pm and 5 minutes after getting into our room the hydro went out. There was no point in going out to a restaurant or trying to negotiate a strange town with traffic lights not working, so we ate some sandwiches that we had packed and waited 2 hours for the hydro to be restored.

If you would like to see all of the photos that we took today, you can visit this link to our FLICKR site.

Tomorrow we will be up early and drive as far as South Carolina.

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