pyesetz | Disney World 2015, day 1: drive from Ontario to Ohio (Reply)

September 6, 2015. The big day is finally here! This trip has been planned for over two years now, since soon after my mother-in-law died and we started trying to decide what to do with the inheritance. Well, after almost two years the lawyers finally ran out of excuses and let go of the money.
I had wanted to fly on Allegiant Airlines because they land at Sanford FL, which is a much smaller airport than Orlando so the TSA agents are less nasty. But Allegiant decided not to fly out of Niagara Falls NY during September, so we bought tickets for departure from Toledo OH instead. Getting to that airport requires driving through the state of Michigan, which we’ve never visited before.

Wag ’N’ Train (Kitchener ON, 9:30am). Drop off the dog. The kennel we used for previous trips has gone out of business, so we had to select a new one. Earlier this year we went for an orientation day, then a ”test” day to see whether dog and new kennel would get along.

Shell (Wilmot ON, 10:00am). Fill the gas tank ($70.66), plus last-minute stuff at our house.

Tim Horton’s (Strathroy ON, 11:30am). After a pleasant drive through the Ontario countryside, we stop here to use the washrooms. I buy some chicken soup ($3.35), while Kid #2 uses a gift card to buy a giant pretzel.
Our selected route has very few official rest areas, so Kid #1 used the Tim Horton’s website which has a continent-wide map of all their locations. Besides this Tim’s and the duty-free shop at the border, we have pre-decided to stop at the Tim’s in Roseville MI and Dundee MI if the border-crossing is quick, or in Lenox MI and Ypsilanti MI if we have to sit in line at the border.

Blue Water Bridge (Sarnia ON – Port Huron MI, 12:30pm). Toll = $3.50. Use the washrooms at the Duty Free shop. Only a 3-minute wait at the border! The border guard thinks our trip plan is bizarre, but he lets us pass after I tell him that the point is to fly from a small airport to a small airport. He works at a low-volume bridge (the big volume crosses at Windsor–Detroit), so maybe he agrees that smaller is better.

Tim Horton’s (Roseville MI, 2:00pm). Washrooms. Can’t decide what to buy, so don’t buy anything. We have plenty of snacks in the car, so really no need for a purchase except to thank them for their public washrooms.
You would think that a city named “Roseville” would be fairly small (pop. 47,000). You would think that a street named “Gratiot Ave.” and lined with wall-to-wall businesses would not be a 6-lane divided highway, plus additional U-turn and right-turn lanes. You would be wrong. Thankfully, after our experience in Massachusetts, Kid #1 got herself a smartphone and downloaded OpenStreetMaps.org so we could figure out these things. Getting from highway I-94 to Tim Horton’s and back unavoidably involves two occasions of entering Gratiot Ave. on the right and then veering across all lanes of traffic to get to a U-turn lane, then veering across all lanes of traffic to exit on the right.

Tim Horton’s (Dundee MI, 3:00pm). Washrooms again. Hey, it breaks up the tedium of driving! Still can’t find any raspberry-jam doughnuts. What is wrong with these American Timmies???

Staybridge Suites (Maumee OH, 3:30pm). Check-in. The room assigned to us had not been cleaned, so we get a free upgrade to a three-room suite (doored room with separate beds for each kid, a living room/kitchen, and a doored room with king-size bed for the parents).
The name for this city is pronounced /mɔːˈmiː/ (maw-MEE); we had expected either /ˈmɑːmiː/ (“Mommy”) or /ˈmɔːmiː/ (MAW-mee). Originally, it was an Algonquian word with the same meaning as “Miami” and “Illinois”: all these words refer to a group of Native Americans who lived in (what is now) Indiana and were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma.

Carrabba’s (Maumee OH, 7:10pm). Dinner costs $84.77. Because of the movie Shrek 2, I can no longer think of this restaurant chain without being reminded of a certain Dashboard Confessional song.