Three States in Two Hours

The Waterpark

The kids were excited for the day to begin as we were heading into Lake Geneva with Chad, Jenny and the boys.  We starting the morning packing up our van again after having a wonderful visit in Franklin - it was great for us to have a chance to socialize with adults and for the kids to have other children to play with.  

David decided he wanted to travel to Lake Geneva with Chad, Jenny and Brandon so Mathieu joined the rest of us in the van.  He enjoyed playing Travel Bingo with Natalie and Andrea along the way.  Andrea explained how to play the game and Mathieu was excited to tell us when he got a line or two.

David tries to spray Brandon

We arrived at the water park shortly after 11:00 and the kids were ready to go.  This park had two huge indoor slides:   one was a flume ride and the other was a body slide.  The kids enjoyed having races to see which slide was the faster one.  There were also smaller slides and a rope monkey bar, which the girls really liked. 

Mathieu and Andrea enjoy the lazy river

We also enjoyed the outdoor pools at the water park, the water was nice and refreshing in the summer heat.  The temperature gauge showed 32 degrees, it was certainly a hot day!

Down the flume ride

Chad, Jenny, Tanya and Francois

We had a later lunch of yummy pizza and stayed at the water park until 3:00pm.  The kids would have stayed a lot longer, but we needed to make our way toward our next destination.  We said our goodbyes to Chad, Jenny and the boys.  We had a great visit and thanks so much to them for making us feel so welcomed during our staying in Franklin.   Special thanks goes out to Uncle Gerald in Miramichi who provided lots of suggestions of things we should do while visiting Wisconsin.

Saying goodbye to the boys

We made our way through the next three states in record time.  Lake Geneva is close to the Illinois border, and in no time we were driving by the city of Chicago.  The drive was going great, but then we saw lots of brake lights come on in front of us and then one police car and three fire trucks zoom by on the outside lane with their sirens blaring.  The kids were all excited with the activity, but Francois and I knew this could mean a delay in our travelling if the accident was too serious.  We were delayed about 30 minutes, which isn't too bad.  We also saw the two vehicles involved in the accident, not sure if there were any serious injuries or not.

Natalie just hanging out

The next state we crossed into was Indiana - we were only in the state for a short amount of time before we crossed into Michigan.  We stopped at the Visitor Information Centre, but it closed at 5:30pm.   We had supper and the kids had a chance to use up their energy as there was a playground nearby.   We also realized we lost an hour as we switched to Eastern Time Zone.   There were not too many campgrounds where we were travelling so we decided to drive a little extra and stay in a hotel for the night.   We haven't driven too many times at night and I was a little nervous as we had seen a deer and a wild turkey on the road just before dusk.  Mathieu had told us there was wild turkeys, but I thought that was only in Wisconsin.  I guess they are wild in Michigan too. 


Tomorrow we head towards Detroit to visit a good friend from university, Karen and her family.  We are all looking forward to this visit.


Our time in the USA is dwindling down, it is hard to believe we have a few more nights before we cross back over into Canada.  


Take Care
Tanya