Wildlife

I think these were all in British Columbia, they may have been in the Yukon, though.

A bear...apparently we were lucky to see one this late in the year.

A caribou. We thought it was a reindeer and technically, it is. Reindeer are just domesticated caribou. (You learn something new everyday!)

And buffalo...

I still have not seen a moose. I'm not happy about this. My boss at the coffee shop said she lived up here for six months before she saw one. Kyle saw one when we were first coming on base, he didn't tell me about it until after we were past it, though. We talked and I informed him that next time he sees a moose, he better do whatever he has to do to make sure that I see it or we're gonna have a problem.

Somewhere in Canada

I don't quite remember where these were taken at...I think British Colmbia. After a while, all of these pictures start to look the same.

Some ugly mountains (I have some very pretty mountains coming up in a few days.)

These pictures are for Kelly because if she had been on this bridge, she would have freaked. out.

When I was going through these pictures and came across this one, I said, "Kyle, why did I take this picture?" He didn't know. Then I remembers that I took this picture because of how far you can see. You can see for miles. (You can click any of these pictures to make them bigger.)

The West Edmonton Mall

The West Edmonton Mall is supposed to be the biggest mall in the world. I don't know if that's true but it IS a big mall.

There's an ice rink inside. When we left, there were little kids taking lessons.

There's also an indoor water park.

And a thing where they do sea lion shows.

This photo has not been doctored in any way

That's an A&W in a field in Canada. I'm serious. There was a gas station across the street and then this A&W. That's all that's there: a gas station and an A&W. They like their A&W in Canada. They're as frequent as McDonald's down here. (They do have Mickey Dee's up there, just not as many as we do.)

The Metric System and other Canadian-ness

About six days of our trip was spent in Canada. It took us about 3.4 seconds to realize that things were a bit different north of the border.

Gas is very expensive. This means that it's $1.23 per LITRE. More than once, it cost us $100 to fill up.

Kyle thought this was cool. The speed limit here is 100...kilometers per hour. That translates to about 60MPH. Kyle and I got very good at the metric system. One kilometer = 0.6 miles.

Another difference? The drinking age is 19.

One day we ate at Brewster's Brewery. The food was excellent and Kyle liked the freshly brewed beer.

I had a few different cocktails, my favorite of which was the Butterfinger. It's Bailey's, butterscotch schnapps, and milk. It looks and tastes like chocolate milk...YUM! I also had a Bailey's and hot chocolate...I can tell that when I'm 21, Bailey's and I are going to be BFF.

So do Canadians say "eh?" a lot? Yes. they. do. All the time, in fact. We really liked Canada, the people up there are super friendly. The only drawback? Everything is much more expensive up there. When you convert it back to our money, it's about the same but it sounds crazy expensive.

O Canada

I was so excited to get to Canada! I've never been to another country and while Canada wouldn't be my first choice for a foreign land, I couldn't wait to get there.

They're a little more relaxed on their customs than we are. It took literally 5 minutes. (It didn't take much longer going back to the states, though.) He just wanted to make sure Kyle didn't have any weapons being in the military and all. He seemed a little disbelieving that Kyle wasn't issued a gun or anything. He's aircraft maintenance, what does he need with a gun?

Since we have the internets on our phone, I spent a little time looking for attractions and things to do in Canada. Since we were to stay in Estevan our first night, I found this thing called Roche Percee right outside of town. It's a rock formation from centuries ago. You're supposed to be able to see etchings on them and at night you're supposed to be able to hear spirits of the dead and whatnot. I know, it sounds lame.

That's because it is lame. Kyle told me I'm not allowed to pick sights to see anymore.

Here's a story. Is it a funny story? No. Not really.

After the rock seeing, we noticed that the trailer was bobbing more than it should. When we stopped at a stop light, we heard a screeching sound. We pulled into a Wal-Mart parking lot and discovered that the trailer was broken.

We called the U-Haul 24hr. hotline and learned that we were completley screwed since it was 5:00 here which meant that it was about 8:00 on the east coast. After being on the phone on and off for about 3 hours, we decided to drive two doors down to a hotel for the night. We had driven about a hour further since there was nothing in Estevan. The hotel we drove to was full. In fact, every single hotel in the city was full. I still don't know why they were all full, we were in Weyburn. It's the Polk City of Canada. Thankfully, the woman at the hotel let us leave the trailer there and she gave us the number of a room and board place. We stayed there that night and got a new trailer in the morning. They gave us a 6ft. x 12ft. trailer...which is way bigger than we needed. We originally had a 5ft. x 8ft. Our stuff only halfway filled up the new trailer. It was counted as an accident so we didn't have to pay anything for the new trailer.

I have made it known that I never want to use anything from U-Haul again. I had countless people tell me, "Let me check something and I'll call you right back." They lie. The only person to call me back, or help us at all, was the dispatch manager.

North Dakota

North Dakota has got to be the. most. boring. state.

That's it. That's what it is. Crops and hay.

Oh, except for this. This was pretty cool. In the hills, the senior classes write out their year in rocks. Holy crap that sounds lame. It's actually really neat to see all of the different years. Some of them were simple (like these) and some were more intricate. The one from 1968 was the coolest, it had the initials of the high school written around the '68.' The oldest one we saw was 1953 and the newest was 2006, I think.

Mall of America + the Mississippi River

On our way from Madison, WI to Fergus Falls, MN we stopped at the Mall of America in Minneapolis...

This was actually taken from across the street. Hooray for zoom!

All of this was inside the mall. We were going to ride a few of the rides but it was really expensive. You could get an all-day wristband for something like $30 or just buy ride credits individually. For one person for ride the Spongebob rollercoaster with individual credits, it would have been $6.

"I'm Forrest, Forrest Gump. People call me Forrest Gump."

That's the Mississippi River. It's not that interesting.

So is the Mall of America worth it? In my opinion, no. If you're going to be around it, it's cool to stop in but I wouldn't plan a vacation around it. It's a really big mall with a little (and expensive) theme park inside. Nothing too special there.

Leaves

By the time we hit TN, the leaves were already turning gorgeous shades of red, orange, and yellow. (Please don't ask me what state these were taken in, I'm sure they were all different states and I can't remember what is what!)

And here I am doing the Jack Black crossword.

GA, TN, KY, IL, and WI

We left Friday morning and made our first stop in Marietta, GA. That's so interesting. And now for some pictures...

Because you have never seen either of these signs.

I have to pause here to tell you why there are pictures of these state signs and not many more. Basically, I was looking at the atlas and Kyle didn't tell me they were coming up. I didn't need to be looking at the atlas, we knew where we were and where we were going, but I wanted to look at it.

Carry on...

Did you know that tobacco is Kentucky's number one crop? No? We didn't either...but we found it out thanks to Google.

Illinois is really boring. This is about all there is to the state: crops. We still can't figure out if this is wheat or corn. I think it's wheat, though.

I had to buy a crossword book in Illionis. I got the People Puzzler book because I knew I would be really good at celebrity crosswords. And you know what? I am.

There were a ton of these new wind energy things in Illinois.

Welcome to Wisconsin! Sadly, we didn't eat any cheese while we were there. Well, I think there was some on Kyle's egg McMuffin but really, is that cheese?

The Wisconsin State Capital

This is an old theatre on State Street in downtown Madison. State Street is a street of shop and restaurants that lead up to the state capital.