Best of the USA

Posted by the whole crew

Our route, corner to corner from the Atlantic to the Pacific

Based on extensive media research, we here at moving mountains have come to the conclusion that people like lists.  Top 10 celebrity nose jobs, favourite bar-b-cue ribs recipes, greatest kitten videos.  Lists rule the internet.  So, after travelling corner to corner and back again, in honour of the 4th of July, we sat down and put together a list of random things we liked  (and a few things we didn’t like so much) about our great neighbour to the south.

To start with, for posterity, here is a list of all 27 states we have travelled through on this trip: Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., Maryland, Delaware, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Oregon, Washington State.

Best City

We’ve seen a lot of major cities on our trip.  Some (like New York, New Orleans, and Las Vegas) were pretty much what we expected, without too many big surprises.  They were victims of their prominent public images.  Still, it was fun to see all the famous sites in person.

Christopher, helping out with the refurbishment going on at the Washington Monument

Our favourite city overall was Washington, D.C.  While it gets a lot of bad press for both politics and crime, the downtown area where we stayed was clean and welcoming.  The history displayed in the  monuments and the Smithsonian museums could have kept us busy for a lot more time than we had.  Generally speaking, as a family, we don’t tend to have as much fun in cities as we do in smaller towns and rural places.  But D.C. is a city that would be worth going back to and exploring some more.

Taking a bike tour of the D.C. Monuments was a great way to get an appreciation for the city, and some American history.

Best Museum

This was a tricky one for us.  The museums at the Smithsonian are incredible, and impressive.  And Christopher loved the Kennedy Space center in Florida.

But the overall winner was the World War II museum in New Orleans.  This was an unexpected surprise, and is really well done.  If you ever go, shell out the extra bucks to see the Tom Hanks movie.  The submarine adventure is also pretty good, but if you want to save a few dollars you could do without it.

The World War II museum was really well done.  They even had some exhibits showing the Canadian contribution at D-day.

Best Restaurant

Finding good places to feed a family when you are living out of hotels is a real challenge.  Fast food is   ubiquitous, and cheap, but it is hard to find a place where you can feel that what you are giving your kids is nutritious in any way.  More formal, sit-down restaurants tend to get pretty expensive when you tally up meals for five.  And we found the portions in the U.S. were usually too huge to contemplate (we often tried to beat both these problems by sharing meals, but then we could never know for sure if we would have enough).

Despite the “huge meal syndrome”, the Olive Garden gets an honourable mention in this category.  A few times, when we were really starving, the all you can eat salad and bread helped to quell a real-life hunger games from breaking out.  One of the proudest moments of our trip was navigating from New York’s Central Park directly to the subway station adjacent to the Olive Garden in Times Square, without poking our heads above ground once.  Pretty good for a family from a town of 3,000 people.

The clear winner for best restaurant, though, goes to The Whole Enchilada, in Ft. Lauderdale.  This place perfectly hits the middle ground for food which is relatively inexpensive and prepared quickly, but is still fresh and healthy.  The help-yourself salsa bar has 6 different types of home made salsa which you can add at will to your burrito or chips.  The mango salsa was a particular favourite.

The whole enchilada, winner of our favourite restaurant award.  The cheque and trophy are in the mail.

Having said all that, the family vote for our favourite meal goes to the Hot Pot and Sushi restaurant where we had Sara’s birthday dinner, in Portland.  This was one of those pleasant surprises that are the best part of travelling. 

Our guilty secret is this.  Sometimes, in an effort to get a cheap, but decent meal, we have resorted to eating at the nearest Ikea, where we know we won’t break the bank (heck, some of them feed kids free on Tuesday), but will still get an actual meal involving vegetables and everything.  So, on the night of Sara’s birthday, we found ourselves in Portland, not too far from Ikea.  We were headed there for dinner (I know, big birthday celebration, right?) when we spotted the Hot Pot and Sushi restaurant nearby.

Watching the sushi train, at Hot Pot and Sushi in Portland.

On the west coast, we are used to having cheap, high quality sushi.  In the rest of the States, sushi still seems to be a pretty high end specialty food, so we haven’t eaten much recently.  Since we are all fans, we decided to forego Ikea, and indulge in sushi instead.  It turns out that it was one of those sushi restaurants where you all sit next to this little conveyor belt, and just pick out the plates that interest you.  At the end of the meal, they count the plates, and that is how they charge you.  The kids loved the conveyor belt idea, and it was great fun to watch the dinner options go by, and just grab what looked interesting.  30 plates later, we were as full as could be.  Sara says it was her favourite birthday dinner ever.

Best birthday dinner ever!

Best Hotel

Our favourite hotel chain was the Marriott Residence Inn, since we could generally get an extra bedroom and a kitchenette for a reasonable price.  For a single overnight on a road trip, they provide a pretty comfortable stay for a family.  But they are fairly standard, with nothing too exciting about them, so when we are talking about the best hotel overall, none of the Residence Inns make the list.

The runner up award for the single best hotel we stayed at goes to the Hilton Vacation Club hotel in Orlando, Florida.  Because we hit it in off-season (October), we got a huge, fancy, two bedroom suite with a full kitchen and living room for less than the cost of a lot of the basic hotel rooms we stayed in during the summer.  The massive pool, where they projected a movie in the evening helped to launch this place into our top two.  In a way, it was almost a shame that our hotel in Orlando was so great, since most of our time there was spent at Universal and Disneyworld, so we didn’t really get a chance to enjoy it.

Taking time out from our awesome hotel to enjoy Hogwarts at Universal Studio.

The winner in this category actually suffered a bit from our off season timing.  We arrived at the Glacier Canyon Lodge in the Wisconsin Dells exactly 5 minutes before they shut down most of the fun stuff for the winter.  From the registration desk, we watched out the window as the last go-karts of the year made their way around the track.  As we carried our luggage into our room, we could see them turn off the fountains at the outdoor water park for the last time that summer.

Still lots of fun at the indoor portion of the water park at in the Wisonsin Dells.

Ropes course at the Glacier Canyon Lodge.

Even without those things, though, the indoor water slides, arcades, and rope course made this place a legendary family stop.  The kids are still talking about the Hurricane, and the giant bucket of water that dumped on their heads.  And being there in the fall meant no people, and no line ups.  Add in a good sized room for a reasonable off-season price, and this place gets the award for our best hotel stay of the trip.

Best National Park

The rocks and views at Zion were incredible.

The vote here was split between Zion and Carlsbad Caverns.  In then end, though the Caverns get the nod, due to their unique environment.  And the fact that it wasn’t 40 degrees C out while we were enjoying them.  Where else can you spend the day hiking underground, looking at incredibly huge caves and crazy formations.  Definitely a must see if you are in New Mexico.

Descending into the depths at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.

Best Public Restroom

This is a pretty critical category when you are travelling with kids.  Without a doubt, Ceasar’s Palace, Las Vegas is the winner.

The losers in this category are too numerous to mention.  Suffice it to say, our bladder control has improved significantly along the highways of America.

Ummm, Mom, all this water.... can we go find a bathroom?

Best Pastry

We’d like to sound all classy, and say the Beignets in New Orleans were the winners here.  These light and flaky deep fried pastries covered in powdered sugar were definitely a highlight of our trip to the Big Easy.

However, the real winner here was the Cinnabon Cinnabites that we had at a Taco Bell in Biloxi, Mississippi.  These were like warm, crunchy sugar donut Timbits with a sweet creamy custard filling.  Mmmmmm!

Mmmmm, Cinnabon.

Best Town Name

Bunkie, Louisiana.  Made us think of the McJ’s place at Gambier.

This one is a test to see if Shakey has read this far. 

The Grand Canyon

Posted By Alexander

Hiking Grand Canyon was really hot, but really amazing.

While on the way to Grand Canyon I was reflecting on our experience in the Canyon de Chelly. It was so big that I didn’t expect much more out of Grand Canyon. Boy was I wrong. Grand Canyon had it’s own national park just like Yellowstone and the first thing we did when we arrived was head to the main lookout point. It was so deep that the Colorado river was lost in the cracks and folded rock. It was wide enough that the other end of the canyon was faded blue and a little hard to make out clearly. There was a tower where you could look out the windows but I thought it was better to look at outside. It was also really windy.

The one thing you can say about Grand Canyon without a doubt - it is huuuuge.

At this point, we were still part of the 95% of tourists that never go below the rim of the Canyon.

That was our first taste of Grand Canyon and also or last for that day. We went to our hotel and hung out there for the evening. It took us a while to work out dinner and we finally settled on pizza before Katie ate someone.

You had to be careful not to step off the trail on the hike down.

Turns out heights don't really bother me too much.  Dad and Christopher did not like standing here though.

Some of the switchbacks that drop you into the canyon over a short distance.

The next day we went to see the Imax Movie about the canyon. It was really interesting and it talked a lot about explorers and their encounters with Grand Canyon. It also showed a bit about the Natives who used to live in the canyon. The Anasazi or ancient ones in the language of the Navajo. The Movie kept calling the canyon “Grand Canyon” instead of “The Grand Canyon” as I believed it was called, so that is how I am referring to it now, too.

The easy part (going down) was at the start of this hike.

More trail side life.

The next thing we did that day was hike into Grand Canyon. We had already learned that only five percent of all the visitors go below the rim of the canyon and we feel that we went further down than most of the five percent do. We didn’t go all the way down because that is extremely hard to do in a single day but we went some of the way down and then came back up. It’s a really tricky hike because you start out going down and do the difficult part (coming up) afterwards.

We had two backpacks with us and it was my turn to carry it on the way up. Some of us were a little anxious because there were some pretty steep drops next to the trail. They didn’t freak me out much though. Just because you stand in a high place doesn’t mean you’re obliged to jump does it? Anyway I thought the whole trail was a little bit crappy. That’s a joke because the trail was covered in Mule feces. That’s what us hikers get when everyone else picks the Mule tours.

Sharing the trail with these guys meant we had to watch our step.

A real American cowboy.

The views from the trail were amazing and it was a great way to see the canyon in a way that most people don’t. I’m very happy that we got to hike Grand Canyon.

This spot was where we turned around and went back up.  It is called Cedar Ridge.

The views were amazing.

Heading back up was the hard part.

The trail dropped off to the side pretty steeply in places.

I’m also supposed to talk about Monument valley. I found it underwhelming.There were lot’s of tall rocks sure, but we saw some much cooler ones beside the road on our way to monument valley. After the big ones we saw the others seemed less amazing in comparison. To end things on a high note though, we left the Grand Canyon and now we’re heading to Las Vegas!

Monument Valley has been in a bunch of old Western movies.

Golfing And Rusty Tacos In Dallas

Posted by Alexander

Cruising the Texas highway.

We had a plan to visit an old friend of Dad’s while we were in Dallas. Matt and Dad went way back which actually led to a lot of remembering sessions and it was kind of cool to see them both piece it all together. Matt and Gillian’s kids are Trevor and Olivia and we had a pretty great time hanging out with them. They are 13 and 11 so finally we got to meet some kids that were closer to my age. They have a pool in their back yard so we were able to go swimming when the Texas heat got to us. Trevor has a Ps3 and a Ps4 so we played some video games as well as shot each other with nerf guns.

Dad and Gillian kicking back.

Matt and Gill are really nice too. They took us to this place called Top Golf. It’s a big driving range with lots of little bays big enough for a family and you can tee off from there. Basically we took turns whacking golf balls and sending them as far as we could. There were also big nets that were targets. I actually did better than I thought I would but I have taken a few lessons when I was younger so I guess that helped. We all had lunch at Top golf.  It was really good and everyone had a great time.

It took a bit of doing, but I remembered how to swing a golf club.

Christopher and Gillian doing a little dance while they wait for their turn at Top Golf.

The next day Trevor and Olivia went early because they had sports. We had breakfast and then went to watch them. Trevor was playing a championship baseball game and we went to watch him first. The other team was had way bigger kids than Trevor’s but they still lost in the end and Trevor’s team won the championship and got trophies. Yaaaay! 

Christopher and Trevor getting photo bombed by the waiter.

Then we went to watch Olivia’s volleyball. She was against a team which had very short players. They were still way better at volleyball than I am. It was really cool to see them play. In the end Olivia’s team was victorious. Afterwards we went to a place called the Rusty Taco for lunch. It was authentic TexMex and it was actually pretty good. There was this weird melty cheese stuff called queso and it was better than I expected it to be.

Good lunch with great people.

After the Rusty Taco we had to go but we are hoping to see those guys again soon.

Let’s Go Go Karting

Posted by Alexander

As a special break from all our work this wee k, we got to go Go Karting!

For a couple of days, Mom and Dad had been caught up in the survey of the boat and we had just kind of been left to our own devices at the hotel room. They were gone on the sea trial and the haul out, so they left us some money and a cell phone in case we needed to call them. We went to the mall just across the street from our hotel for lunch every day and even saw a movie there.

When all the surveying was done Mom and Dad came back and they said we should go do something fun. So we went Go Karting. The place we arrived at had two big indoor tracks and a separate section for people to sign up. It was pretty expensive but everybody had been working hard on the boat and I guess we all deserved a treat.

Ready to Go Kart.

We had to make accounts on these computers that, awesomely had little cars as mice. We had to pick account names. Katie picked “The Safe Speedster” which I thought was pretty adorable. After we were all signed up they told us we had to wait for our races. We managed to set it up so that we got to watch Katie (who was in the junior race) and she got to watch us. As we watched Katie race we saw that she had named herself accurately. She wasn’t very fast but she was the most precise racer on the track. Christopher and I were a little worried because the racing didn’t look like very much fun.

The Safe Speedster heading out for a few laps.

Waiting for our turn.

When our race came around we saw that it could be lots of fun. We had to put on head socks under our racing helmets. They told us that if we crashed into each other they would slow our karts down for a bit and if we did it again they would take us out of the race. It was nice to see that it was more about your own speed than competing with others.

When we finally got out on the track it was super fun. Dad was the fastest because he was using his break to skid around the turns and then speed off. Mom got lapped by everybody and she claims that there was something wrong with her kart. Suuuuuuurrrre Mom, suuuuuuuuurrrre. I had a lot of fun hugging the corners as tight as I could. As I raced I figured out that it was much faster to take a turn wide and come out of it tight. Christopher, Dad and I had a ton of fun going as fast as we possibly could. Mom may not have been having quite as much fun.

Dad turned out to be a pretty fast racer.

Afterwards Christopher and I definitely could have gone again but everybody else was hungry. If anybody was thinking about trying go karting but wasn’t sure, I can say that it is loads of fun so go for it. 

Hooray for Hollywood!

Posted by Alexander

Buildings like this line the entire coast of South Florida, for hundreds of miles with hardly a break.

After we left No Name Cay we sailed off to Hollywood. Not the fancy Hollywood with all the famous people but the Floridian version. The difference is that people have heard of one and not the other. Anyway the sail was beautiful because all the way you could see the Miami skyline. It was crazy to think that those skyscrapers are the biggest buildings we’ve seen all year and it really hit home the return to civilization. Not to say that the Caribbean is uncivilized but it is small and has a laid back attitude. The hustle and bustle of a city would be a very interesting change.

Sailing into Port Everglades, where the freighters wait to greet us.

The next and most unique step of the sail was through the Intra Coastal waterway.  A series of canals full of boats and to our annoyance bridges. The worst kind of bridges a sailboat can encounter, low bridges. We had to wait multiple times for the bridges to lift which thankfully they can do. We were able to use the time to make a tasty sandwich lunch so at least there is that.

Our timing wasn't very good on the bridge openings on this trip.  We had to wait quite a while for them.

We came in to the Intra Coastal Waterway at Port Everglades, which is the cruise ship and freighter terminal in Fort Lauderdale.  We passed some huge freighters.  Their decks were taller than the top of our mast! Christopher and I were up on the front talking as we passed them by. There was a lot of graffiti on the side of the concrete dock where the freighters were supposed to go. Christopher and I quickly noticed that the most popular name painted on the dock was Rex. We’re not sure if one guy was called Rex and wrote his name many times or if the majority of people named Rex end up as Graffiti artists. Either way if you know someone called Rex keep an eye on him…

These guys are huge!!

Sailing past them is a bit unnerving.  The top of our mast didn't even come up to the deck.

I had quite a scare while up on the front with Christopher. I had given him a punch (Don’t freak out it was a friendly punch and no one got hurt emotionally or physically, so you can hang up the phone and quit calling child services) when a police boat emerged from a canal alley. I jokingly said that they must be after me when their sirens turned on! For one split second I was sure I was going to prison but thankfully they sped on past and we laughed about it.

There go the police.  Fortunately they were after someone else.  (Maybe Rex?)

Scoping out the graffiti.

After a few more annoying bridges we arrived at our marina. We had to dock the boat twice because we needed to attach our boat to shore power but the outlets were to far away. We ended up spinning the boat around to be able to plug in. If you want to hear more about the Loggerhead Marina Katie is working on a great blog about it. That’s all for now.

Birthday Party!

Posted by Alexander

So yesterday was my birthday and I woke up to a sign that told me to sleep in. This is because Katie was setting up the party in the morning.

When I was finally allowed to come up, there was an awesome surprise waiting for me. Mom and Katie had made crepes. There was also a strawberry jam/syrup, banana, nutella, and Greek vanilla yogurt. Put all this together in a crepe and you get one of the best breakfasts I have ever had.

After breakfast we played a couple of games that Katie had made all by herself which was really fun. We played special birthday pictionary with cards she had made. After the games I got a few little presents. It is hard to get presents on the boat so we usually have to make do. Mom and Dad had got me a video game way back when Dad was in Red Deer but it’s a good game so no worries. Katie got me a jigsaw puzzle craft that she again made herself and Christopher gave me one of his orange slices when I asked nicely.  My Grandma and Grandpa also sent me some money, so I will get to buy myself something when I get a chance.  Thanks Grandma and Grandpa.

I got to wear the birthday hat to go with my crepes.

Even though it was my birthday the boat still has tons of things to be done so the late morning was all about boat jobs. I cleaned the barbecue and unscrewed the door clips for Mom to clean and then put them back on. Christopher and Dad changed around a bunch of ropes on the front of the boat and Katie did the dishes.
After all the work was done it was lunch time. The awesome birthday meals didn’t stop as we had conch chowder with sourdough bread and dip. It was really good. Scrumptiously delectable might be the correct term. We then transitioned into a nice break time before the evening and the main event.

My presents were wrapped in blankets, with scarves for ribbons.  No wrapping paper mess to clean up!  Katie made the birthday decorations.  Apparently this was a party for nerds.

We walked over to west marine to get some things for the boat in the afternoon. Once we had what we needed we called a taxi and went to a mall with a theatre. We walked in, ordered a bunch of popcorn and watched the Amazing Spiderman 2. Here is a reviewish thing: The Amazing Spiderman 2 is a good movie with quite a few twists. It feels very long to watch and there are quite a few subplots. I was okay with this but Mom said it left her a little confused. Dad and Mom kept going on about how the Tobey Maguire movies were better and how they liked the first Amazing Spiderman but I thought it was worth the watch. If you are a fan of Spiderman you should definitely check it out.

 Back to the blog.  One thing that kind of annoyed us throughout the film was this: Godzilla was playing in the room next to us and every time Godzilla took a step we heard a huge bass boom. The sound was really ominous and every time I heard I thought something exciting was going to happen in our movie. When I figured out where the sound was really coming from I got a little ticked off. Also the theatre was very cold.

Birthday pictionary.

When we got out of the theatre it was really nice and warm and I was soaking up sunlight. After we all thawed out we went to a small Chinese restaurant in the mall. IT WAS DELICIOUS!!!! I ate so much that I felt like I was going to explode. I have always loved Chinese food and there was a bunch of really good dishes that I didn’t even expect to like; the egg roll and shrimp toast would be prime examples. The zodiac was on all the menus so we got to see what our signs were. I was the rabbit which was lucky so that’s great. Unfortunately Mom, Dad and Katie were all roosters so they are my mortal enemies! (Not really). The only thing that slightly disappointed me about the restaurant was my fortune cookie. Everybody else got something really profound but, I kid you not, all mine said was: "You will receive a fortune (cookie)". That was it!  How is that a fortune?

Anyways I am complaining about nothing. My birthday was great and I had lots of fun. I’m fifteen now which is weird but I’ll get used to it. Until next time, bye!