Canada Trip - Day 7...Dragon Fruit

Our last full day in Canada was a day for packing up and staying close to home.

Early in the morning my dad and I got in a tennis game. My dad has played tennis for probably close to 30 yrs - but I had never had a chance as an adult, to play a game with him (b/c I had no interest in it up until very recently).

My youngest sister and niece came over in the morning to visit and the afternoon consisted of a nap.

I stopped by the local grocery store to pick up a few things and was pleasantly surprised to see some dragon fruit in the produce department. We tried some dried dragon fruit 5 months ago and found it to be pretty tasteless...

This single fruit was rather pricey at $4.99 but worth it to finally see what it tasted like.

The brilliant colored outer skin hides the black and white interior. The inside reminded me of a kiwi with many, many little black seeds - kind of like poppy seeds. Unfortunately the fruit was pretty tasteless just like the dried variety. While we (including my parents) had a little taste of it - the girl wanted to eat the remainder. It was very easy to scoop out - like a soft melon.

I have never come across a fresh dragon fruit in the USA and lo and behold I find one in a small town in Canada. The fruit was a product of Vietnam.

Canada Trip - Day 3

Sunday morning we all took an early walk. Church didn't start until 11:00 AM and as we are all early risers, even when on vacation, we had time for a big walk around the neighborhood.

We first went to the high school to check out the tennis courts, ran around the track and then just wandered up and down the streets. It's always surprising to me how close everything in town seems now...in my memories the 7-11 store is waaaaay south of my parents house - but now I can walk to it very easily.

The canker worms were out in full force so I was glad to be wearing a hat :0

We attended my parents' church (the church I grew up in and got married in many moons ago) and then went back home for lunch and my first "live" viewing of my 4.5 month old niece. She is adorable.

In the afternoon some more family came over - my oldest sister, her husband and daughter who is the same age as my girl.

Keeping with our 2 yr tradition, the kids and my sister and I walked to the Mac's Store to buy slurpees and candies and then the kids played on the playground at our old elementary school. While back in Missouri the folks were enjoying some beastly hot days - we were actually COLD out on the playground. The sky was overcast and it was very windy - but it felt great!

Canada Trip - Day 2

Since the mama was awake and couldn't fall back asleep - we all got an early start Saturday morning.

The motel served a continental breakfast and so we were looking forward to some waffles...until we realized that we got our motels mixed up and this was not the motel that served waffles :(

We had a long stretch of driving and it seemed to go slowly - but changing drivers, and listening to The Wizard of Oz on CD made the boredom bearable. A little nap helped too.

We had no problem at the border - though it's still always a little scary to anticipate it...just don't know if they'll decide to deny us entry or make us take everything out of the car and search it.

I knew the stretch of driving from the border to my hometown was relatively easy (and slow - the speed limit is dreadfully slow even though you are in the middle of nowhere) so I offered to drive. Well wouldn't you know the rain started soon thereafter. I don't like to drive during the best of conditions...and it seemed like it rained almost the whole way. When we were about 15 min from my parents' house we witnessed a car accident - first "on scene" accident I have ever witnessed.

The rain started letting up once we pulled into the driveway - we were thankful to have made it safely and for our long journey to be over.

Canada Trip - Day 1

Found these paper plates at Target and just had to buy them.

The first leg of our trip was a drive of about 7 hours - we left home around 2:45 PM.

The time consisted mostly of eating, reading, and listening to a book on tape, "The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells. I wondered if it might be a bit frightening for the children but took heart in the fact that we'd all be sharing a room that night so the Morlocks would probably stay away from the kids :)

The hub pointed out that falling asleep in the car was a bit like "time travel"...(it would definitely be time travel if you were the driver that fell asleep)...

Nowadays the hub or I are more likely to nap in the car than the kids are. They both took only one nap throughout the many, many hours of riding in the car.


We ate supper in the car and I found a new good travel food - summer sausage. Everyone likes it (if we forget about how unhealthy it is), and it doesn't need to be refrigerated until opened (if you buy a small package it can easily be consumed in one sitting). We try to avoid bringing a large cooler with us b/c we don't have the space in our car - usually one of those small soft-sided coolers is all we bring.