Hello New England....

After leaving Canada behind we crossed the border into Vermont.  Probably sounds like a little bit of a cliche, but it was unbelievable how things started to change and resemble home.  The roads became narrower, the countryside greener and we drove through lots of small villages - very unlike the America we've experienced everywhere else.

We have apparently now become "leaf peepers" that's what they call people who are in New England for the fall colours - sounds a bit nerdy if you ask me,  I'd prefer "tourist"!

The fall colours are definitely on their way, a fair few trees in Vermont were changing, beautiful reds and oranges it was definitely like you see in the photos.

The leaves are starting to change a bit...

We didn't stay in Vermont for long as we were heading for northern Maine, that's where the colours reach their peak first and we wanted to visit Baxter State Park in search of moose!

After a longish drive, we arrived in Baxter State Park for a bit of primitive living - sleeping in the car, no rubbish bins and no flushing toilets or showers (in fact no running water at all in the park - well, unless you're a ranger and then you seem to get special treatment - talk about one rule for one, one for another...).  We spent two days taking short hikes in the forest to see waterfalls, ponds (lakes in our book) and generally have a bit of a chill and some early nights.  We were hoping to see some moose as they are apparently rife in the park - not these two days though.  The rangers reckon they're not in their usual haunts as the bull moose are out chasing the ladies as it's rutting season and the ladies are running away!  Good on ya female moose, make them run!

Feeling a bit grubby and in need of a scrub we headed off to some creature comforts and Acadia National Park for more exploring...

It's all gone a bit French!

After leaving Niagara we drove to Montreal.  On the way we passed through a few places that sounded familiar (Grimsby, Whitby, Lincoln, Peterborough, Newcastle) and ended up staying in Perth - all a bit weird.  Can't they think of their own names?!?

We stopped for an afternoon in Ottawa (Canada's capital).  Ottawa was a nice city to wander around for a few hours - it has a few "historic" buildings (the 1920's you understand!), a nice canal (sounds a bit anoracky, but it was quite good) and a statue of our monarch Queen Elizabeth II!

Parliament Hill building

Rideau Canal

Our monarch

Next stop was Quebec. We obviously knew it would be more French than the other parts of Canada, but honestly it was like driving through France.  All the road signs were in French, with not even the slightest acknowledgement that the English language existed.  There were also people on bicycles wearing berets and striped tops munching on garlic and onions saying "he haaaw, he haaaw" - all true, not one word of a lie ;-)

Fortunately Lisa remembered some French from school, otherwise we would have been in real trouble - not knowing how to say my name is Lisa Adams and my eyes are blue would have left us horribly exposed!

As for Montreal - well this wasn't as good as we were expecting which left us feeling a bit disappointed.  Old Montreal was nice enough and we visited a number of old buildings, with the best being the Basilica Notre Dame which was pretty amazing inside.

Basilica Notre Dame

Canadian bank notes

We didn't think there was much to the downtown area or the 'underground city'.  To be frank, it isn't that at all, it's a load of shops that have filled the old tunnel system - no real character or charm about it to be honest, so thumbs down!  One highlight though - we spotted a new outfit for Rob to get at the first available opportunity (being modelled by this fine Asian chap)!

Not sure which outfit would be better on Rob?

We also decided to pay a visit to the Mont Royal Park which from reading the blurb looked OK.  First impressions count for quite a bit and when we got there to spot some 'youths' (yes, we are old!) clearly dealing drugs at the park's entrance it sort of set the downward tone!

Prepared to give it a chance we left the druggies behind and climbed a high hill to get an elevated view of Montreal but to be honest it wasn't really worth the effort as the view was a bit cack.

View from Mont Royal Park

In short, don't think we'd rush back to Montreal unless it was for something specific (hmm, like F1 maybe...)

Which leads us nicely onto what we did on our last morning in Montreal.  On Saturday it was the one thing Rob was looking forward to the most - driving our Chrysler Town & Country hire car around the Gilles Villeneuve race track - the same track they use for the F1 races.  Sadly the speed limit is only 30mph though!

He did stop on P1 and just had to wheelspin off the start line - he drove the track sticking to the racing line and he loved it!  It was a really good day and even though it was chucking it down with rain it was actually really good fun to drive the track.  There aren't too many places in the world that you can drive around a Grand Prix track gratis.  Good work Montreal.

Wishing the car was a Ferrari!

Rob on the Wall of Champions

That's about it really for Canada... Heading back into USA and to Baxter State Park in Maine where a couple of nights primitive camping is to be done......Fab!

Loads of water...

From Chicago we scooted through 2 more US states without really stopping to do anything and crossed the border again back into Canada.  This time we were heading to Niagara Falls for a couple of nights - we had been there before in 2004 but on a coach trip so we didn't explore too much.

To be honest, there isn't really a massive amount to do there that doesn't involve waterfalls or gambling.  With that in mind, some of the things we did were...

• Horseshoe falls (Canada's side of Niagara) - we saw this in daylight as well as at night (sounds odd, but they light the falls up at night which is pretty neat).

Horseshoe at night

• America's side of the falls - we crossed the border from Canada to see this for a couple of hours at night time.

Pretty cool at night

• Both falls viewed from the Skylon tower.
  

• Drove to Niagara on the lake and admired the massive houses they all have - we reckon they might cost a bit.

(Note the lack of gambling - that's saved for Vegas!)

Apart from that, there isn't much else to look at - unless you like Blackpool (and lets be fair, no one does!).  The tourist town side of Niagara is dreadfully tacky and cheap looking - to illustrate just how bad it is, Rob didn't even take photo!  Astonishing that they have got away with building it all near such a beautiful natural wonder.

All in all, the falls are great.  Rob surprised himself as he always thought the Canadian falls were far superior however, he appears to have changed his mind and now prefers the American side - apparently more photogenic or something.  I just know that I spent hours waiting around for him to take photo's - really how many do you need?

The Windy City...

All lies - it wasn't windy at all.

We spent a couple of days sightseeing in Chicago but before we got there we stopped at Lake Geneva for a game of mini golf in the pouring rain!  Rob won of course, I had to let him or there would have been tears ;-))

I think he was confused, see why I had to let him win!

She'd gone a bit mad!

Chicago was actually much better than we had expected!  Based on some of the news reports (364 murders this year so far!) and things we had seen, we were expecting it to be a bit shady, but it wasn't - well not the places we went to anyway.

We did a load of the touristy things....

• Rode the double decker train into downtown
• Visited the Willis Tower, previously known as the Sears Tower - Mrs Stephenson you would have loved it!  Stood on the glass floor and looked down 103 floors - scary (for Lisa, not Rob!)

Us on the glass balcony 103 floors up

The Willis Tower!

• Had a tour of Millennium Park by Maureen the English guide.  She talked/verbally gushed about the architecture, gardens, how everything was 'unique' and how fantastic Chicago is.  She needed a bit of a slap really.  The park was good though - we especially liked the Cloudgate sculpture which was designed by an Indian guy based in London!

We're in the reflection!

The "cloud"

• Walked the magnificent mile.  Magnificent? Ish I guess.  As Americans have no history I understand why they rave about it as it has a load of buildings that were built before 1980!  It was a pleasant wander though with the highlight being the old water tower.

• Buckingham fountain was visited and that just had to be done. Very grand it was too just like Rob ;-)
• Navy pier was just dreadful.  It had the most comprehensive collection of tacky shops and cheesy "attractions" this side of Great Yarmouth!  A dream holiday destination for a chav.

Hell!

So how would we sum up Chicago.  Well as cities go it was nice enough, has a surprisingly safe feel about it, but it doesn't have a "must see"tourist attraction.  Even so, we really enjoyed our time here and it was also nice not to drive a long distance for a couple of days.

The next update will cover our adventures back in Canada - Niagara Falls, Ottawa and Montreal.

South Dakota - done!

Having left behind Wyoming we continued our road trip heading east towards Mount Rushmore and the Badlands (oooh, scary) .  To be honest, there wasn't very much to see on the way across - its a pretty flat and dull expanse.  Didn't even know we'd crossed into South Dakota - no signs or anything - rubbish!

On the way to Mount Rushmore we had seen some ads talking about the 'Crazy Horse Monument' that was apparently "in the process of being completed".  As this is the largest mountain carving in progress in the world, we thought it would be worth a look - wrong!

Now call me (Rob) tight (and I have been many times), but I think paying $20 to see this:

when it should actually look like this:

is a rip off.

Apparently they are trying to get it completed by private funding only and not taking anything from the government.  Stupid idea bearing in mind this was actually started in 1948! Here's a tip - take the money you numpties and make a proper thing that people wouldn't mind paying to visit.

Moving on from this geological disappointment, we got to Mount Rushmore.  Couldn't believe it - someone had finished the job.  Good work.  To be honest, before we got there we were pretty sceptical about the place, but it turned out be better than we thought and we really enjoyed it.

You could see the carvings from a main viewpoint, but we also took a small boardwalk trail which was good and allowed some different views of it.  It was also amazing to see the amount of "exhausted" Americans taking this easy stroll.

If you look close, check out the glasses on Theodore (3rd from left) & the eyes - really clever!

They also have a "lighting ceremony" each night which is basically 45 minutes of spouting how wonderful the Americans are and how they are the greatest country in the history of the world - EVER! Oh yeh, and then they turn on the lights so you can see the mountain ;-)

How we stopped ourselves from throwing up we're not quite sure.

The following day we decided to do some spelunking.  Well not quite - we went on a tour of Fart, I mean, Wind Cave :-). We'd never done anything like this before and it was quite a neat experience - plus it was a nice place to cool off from the 100 degree heat outside!.  The cave system contained things like boxwork, popcorn and frostwork - nope, that didn't mean anything to us either!

Frostwork!

Boxwork!

Trolls!!!

On the way to Custer State Park we stopped by the local prairie dog town to watch the locals going about their daily business, these little rodents are really entertaining and really do bark like a very small dog!

Next were the Burros - a donkey to you and me.  These are wild in the park but have obviously got used to people in cars over the years, they wander beside the cars and poke their heads in through the window to see if you have any food for them. One of them got a bit frisky with Rob, greeted him with his massive tongue out, Rob puckered up as he thought his luck was in!

Whilst heading east we checked out Badlands National Park.  The landscape here was strange and at times it seemed like you were on a different planet (Lisa often is!).  Colourful rock formations appeared out of nowhere but after about 20 miles of it though it did get a bit samey!  This is where we've experienced the highest temperature yet, 103 degrees Fahrenheit - nice and toasty!

The last few days have been spent driving for the most part.  We've now left South Dakota and crossed through Minnesota.  We stopped in Wisconsin briefly, looked around the State Capitol building and Rob finally got his haircut after putting it off for a while.  He didn't end up with a weird mullet or anything, so relief all round!

That's genuine concern/fear!

Everything is under control in the Governors Office! 

Just having a rant!

We're still heading towards the east coast in time for the Fall colours in New England and we'll be popping into Chicago over the next couple of days for some big city action - will let you know how that goes...

Still here...

Finally a monster update after well over a week - sorry about that.

So, we made it to Yellowstone and were greeted with some more lovely sunshine, loads of annoying tourists and a lone black wolf having his lunch.  The wolf was fairly close and eating a carcass of some sort (sadly don't think it was an annoying American!) - even though his culinary choice was a bit grim, watching the wolf so close was excellent.

Mmm, yum!

Yellowstone is a pretty cool place and has a good variety of nice things to see (if you like that sort of thing - fortunately we do), such as...

Old Faithful to see the geothermal activity - lots of geysers and springs

Heart Spring and a geyser going off in the background

Lamar Valley to look for wildlife.  We came across some bison jams (as in traffic, not stewed in a jar ;-) ) and some pronghorn (Lisa's favourite)

The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.  We did the Uncle Tom's trail which involves walking down a few steep hills and 350 steps.  Walking down was fine, walking back - knackering.  View was worth it though.

Climbed a mountain to get an elevated view of the impressive Grand Prismatic Spring - you can see it from the ground and that's where most of the tourists go, but the view is a bit cack.  The climb was quite difficult hoisting yourself over some dead trees but was a good experience.  We were filthy by the time we finished but is was a "wow" moment when we got to the top.

Silly boy!

After all of this exercise we decided we deserved a good feed, so we popped to a small burger joint in a town called Gardiner and Rob gorged on a "Hateful Hamburger" - this was a monster!  One pound of beef, 3 cheeses, bacon, mushrooms, onion rings, salad and he polished off the lot with fries and washed down with an ice cream milkshake.  Ok, not exactly "Man vs. Food", but one word springs to mind - piggy!

After Yellowstone we headed down to Grand Teton. This national park is not as big and doesn't have as much variety as Yellowstone - it's mainly about mountains and wildlife. Moose were around and we did see a few bull moose along the riverbank. It's rutting season over here for the bison, moose and elk so we have seen a few of the fellas trying to charm the ladies!

Rob dragged me out of the tent early a couple of mornings for sunrises over the Teton mountains, one was pretty clear the other way too cloudy.

We also exchanged our rental car whilst in the Tetons as we've done over 6000 miles and the Ford Fusion needed a service.  After an argument with Alamo for the second time this trip and spending 2 hours in their office, we finally got a replacement car.  This time a Chrysler Town & Country "minivan" - a people carrier to you and me.  It's great - much more room to throw our stuff around in.  You can actually sleep in this one too, which we did the other night - quite comfy actually and not quite as chilly as the tent.

So... after having camped for 6 nights and having a fab time in the national parks it's time to head east to a whole load of places we've never been before...

Bye for now Canada and hello again USA

It's Labor (stupid spelling) Day weekend (bank holiday to you and me) here in the USA and we managed to cross the border from Canada without the need for any cavity searches (phew!).

We left Canada having experienced a massive thunderstorm whilst sleeping in a tent in the middle of forest.  I must admit I was a tad scared (Lisa that is!). 

Yellowstone National Park is the plan for the next few days.  The internet connection we have at the mo is a bit poor so we'll do a proper update and add some photos when we have a better one.

That's about it for now..... as we're off to have fun!!