Special Mom’s blog

We returned back yesterday night after a week long road trip. A week flew away, it felt like it was just yesterday I wrote my blog about planning for a trip. We traveled altogether 1500 miles from Pittsburgh, PA to Lake Superior Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada and back home. We stayed at campgrounds in Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, Canada and even at a beach view hotel in Mackinaw City, Michigan on the way to complete our quest of seeing all five of the Great Lakes.

I wrote every day about my trip and here are the links. I am just giving you a link to my home page. Feel free to read any of my day’s journey. I am glad I made a daily blog since I would have definitely missed on some if I had made into one big post. My husband appreciated me for doing it all on the phone. I missed my desktop with all the added features but this was fun too.

We left Thursday morning and my younger one said we could take some pictures near the the Mackinac bridge. This is supposed to be the 3rd longest suspension bridge in the world and much longer than the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco and the George Washington bridge in New York. I was not interested in this statistics but I loved that one side of it is Lake Michigan and the other is Lake Huron and is connected by Mackinac strait. It is all one big water source but we humans name it and it becomes different.😊 In Sault Ste Marie too one side was Lake Superior and the other was Lake Huron with a river in between called St. Mary. If you check out the map you will find all these water bodies connected.

Some reflections about our trip.

We stayed in a campground and near a beach a very different experience for our kids. They got to experience nature but both were happy it was just a vacation. We all were bitten by mosquitoes and none of us liked it. 😊 My younger one’s tip for the next time, pack bags with repellents and allergy medicine.

I noticed we have kind people all around us. My special boy locked himself in a men’s bathroom. It was time for us to catch the ferry. My husband and my younger one tried to bring him out but they were loosing. My son can spend a long time in the bathroom sitting (when it is a bit overwhelming for him outside). I was shouting from outside asking him to come out. That time a man exited the bathroom and told me to go ahead into the bathroom and help my family. He said no one else other than your family is in there. He understood our tough situation. Fortunately my husband was able to bring my special one out and I didn’t need to enter. Life is not easy when you travel with special needs people. Even a kind word or a small help goes a long way. There is a lot of discussion about using bathrooms in a political manner. But these are the situations I find it difficult if I am alone with my special adult boy and there aren’t handicapped bathrooms. But people have been good with me, ladies allowing my boy into a ladies bathroom and men letting me know how my boy is doing in the men’s bathroom.

Anyhow more about my trip feedback.

I loved that I didn’t plan anything much for the trip. We did things as we reached the destination. We found what was best for the family at that particular moment and made decisions.

Amazon Prime informed me that I was out of the country and I needed to pay for the shows I was watching in the US. But I had plan B. I finished one whole 400 page book during my stay in Canada 😀. Not a digital one but a hardcover book. I think I should scale down my time watching amazon videos and go to the library and get some HARD COPY books.

I have been to Montreal and Toronto in Canada. But this was the first time we traveled to the not so populated region of the country. I learnt a country is not a particular city and each part of the country is unique and I felt about that immensely. I am really glad that I planned to see Lake Superior on this side. Trans Canada Highway was beautiful.

I cooked from one pot all my trip and I am glad that I have a gas stove today. It was a fun trip but East or West home is best.

Thanks Natalie for hosting weekend coffee share.