Day 37 Summer Vacation 2008

Today is Day 37 Tuesday August 12 2008

We are heading for home.

It is going to be a long day, but it is doable and the end result will be that we will be home after being on the road for 37 days.

We left Lafayette Indiana early enough, but the GPS is really acting weird and has us going in a direction that I just instinctively know is wrong. Then it dies and leaves us not knowing where we are or which direction to go. Time to get out the laptop and fire up Microsoft Streets and Trips. Within a few minutes we are back on track and heading for home.

The border crossing at Port Huron / Sarnia was uneventful. The customs officer looked at our passports, but did not ask us any questions, just waved us through.

We arrived home to find all was as we had left it.

For those of you who are curious… Here is the raw data from our trip.

The Canadian Dollar was at or about par with the US Dollar for this vacation.

We travelled a total of 10802 KM

We spent $810.99 for Fuel

Food cost us an average of $40.84 per day

The average cost for a hotel room was $65.57

Our average daily cost was $241.56

We usually try to keep the daily cost average around the $200.00 mark, but when you add in Hot Air Balloon Rides, Helicopter Rides, Train Excursions etc it brings the average daily cost up a bit.

And that concludes our Summer 2008 Vacation. We hope that you enjoyed following along.

Look for our Christmas 2008 Vacation coming soon to this blog.

Day 36 Summer Vacation 2008

Today is Day 36 Monday August 11 2008

We slept in a bit and had a nice breakfast at the hotel. Then we loaded up the camera and some bottled water and headed off to find Grant’s Farm. Again the GPS is working in fits and spurts, but after several battery pulls, we finally pulled into the farm yard where Grant greeted us. He showed us around through the drive shed and then we loaded into his pickup truck so that he could take us on a tour of his domain. I think he said he has close to 10,000 acres, all of it corn or soybean. We went over to one of the large grain storage bins and watched and waited while Grant assisted some of his farm hands, get the bin emptied out. They were also in the process of loading last years corn into the grain truck and taking it to the market. Here are some photos.

Here are some of the storage silos, grain truck and Farmer Grant driving one of his tractors

It was a fun day at Grant’s farm, I learnt a lot about farming and realize what a hard job Grant has managing and operating this large farm.

We left Grant to his chores and headed to The Cracker Barrel for an early dinner, then it was early to bed for the long drive home tomorrow.

We are about 15 hours from home and I am tempted to just make the mad dash and get ourselves home. I may change my mind part way through the day, but for now I want to get a good nights sleep in anticipation of a 15 hour drive tomorrow.

To see all of our photos from today you can check them out on my FLICKR site.

Day 35 Summer Vacation 2008

Today is Day 35 Sunday August 10 2008

The plan for today is to visit The Joliet Historical Museum and then we will depart Route 66 and head South to Lafayette Indiana.

Joliet has many lift bridges to cross over the Des Plains River. We had to wait at one as a barge passed through. While we were waiting for the museum to open we went for a walk to check out the other lift and draw bridges in the area.

The Museum was a good way to end our road trip on Route 66. We enjoyed the displays and re-living our trip through the photographs, maps and memorabilia on display.

We took a few photos inside the museum.

Sadly, our Route 66 trip is over, but we sure had fun. I would say that we got our kicks on Route 66. We will return to the Mother Road and drive it again. There are some alignments that we did not drive, there were some businesses that were closed on the days we were there, but that just gives us a very good reason to come back and re-visit Route 66.

We are now going to head south to Lafayette Indiana. I have a friend that I have known for 15 years who has a large farm, and he has invited us to come and visit for a couple of days.

We drove south towards Lafayette. The GPS is acting rather strange and taking us off of the interstate only to put us back onto the interstate, then it will compeletely shut down. Very discouraging, but we press on pretending that we know where we are going. The only way to get the GPS to work is to do a battery pull and re-boot it. Well we got to our hotel and checked in. Called Grant and he invited us to come right over to his place. The GPS died a few times along the way, but eventually we pulled into his driveway. We chatted and visited and generally got caught up and then it was time for dinner, I was getting hungry so suggested that we should go out. Grant knew of a good restaurant close by called O'Charlies so we headed there. Enjoyed a delicious steak dinner with a couple of drinks, but we were tired so we parted ways and Karen and I headed back to our hotel. We made arrangements to meet Grant first thing in the morning out on his Farm where he would be working

If you wish to view the photos that I took today, you can see them on my FLICKR site.