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. 

From Canyons and Caves, to Glitz and Glamour, Vegas!

Posted by Christopher



We love staying in city’s, because only on the outskirts of a city can you stay at a residence inn, the hotel that we like the most because of it’s three room suite. This has two bedrooms and a communal room with a pull out bed, so that everybody gets to sleep on a bed. So we decided that we could stay in Las Vegas for a night since, that was on our route to get back to Canada.

We stopped to check out the Hoover Dam on the way into Las Vegas.

We reserved a nice room in the residence inn, and we stayed there in Vegas. as soon as we got comfy in our room, we decided to go drive up and down the big ‘'strip” where all the Vegas stuff is. So we drove down there and instantly were confronted by flashing lights and giant neon colourful signs, even in the day time. We drove up and down looking at Caesar's Palace, the Flamingo, and the Bellagio. All of them have big shows playing, like Celine Dion, hypnotists and magicians.

If you want to see up and coming acts like Celine Dion, Donny and Marie or Olivia Newton John, head for Vegas!

Money, money, money.

Once we were back at our hotel, I didn’t really know what to think of all of it. We had seen near starving people, but now we were seeing a place where people file their money away in to some big company’s coffers in the form of gambling. Either way, we were near starving by that time, so we decided to go and see if there was somewhere to eat.

One of the fountains outside Ceasar's Palace.

We were walking for a while, before we found anything that we actually thought might be ok to eat at. It was a Mexican restaurant called The Cantina, and it was inside a casino. We thought it would be interesting so we walked in, and sat down. That was when I noticed the second hand smoke wafting in the air. I considered asking to leave, but we were all so hungry I though it was unwise. So I ordered a burrito, via the sub-par service. When it came to me, I was not impressed. It did not taste that bad, but compared to the looks and tastes of other food, even in Guatemala, it was demolished. So we ate and just headed back to the hotel to sleep.

The pools at Ceasar's Palace looked inviting, but unfortunately, we didn't bring our bathing suits.

The next day, we thought we should go see a high end casino. So we went to Caesar’s Palace which came off to me, as pretty much the same as the seedy casino we ate at, but everything was just a bit fancier. After that, we decided we’d had enough of Las Vegas, and drove off to our next destination, Zion national park in Utah.

NASA- The Chief Engineers of Rocketships, Moonbuggies and Cool Theme Park Style Rides

Posted by Christopher

The space shuttle Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center

We have officially started the road trip back, having started the long journey after selling the magnificent vessel Monashee. We were in fact driving out of Ft. Lauderdale when we remembered something that we had thought of, but never seen as we came in to Florida for the first time. Kennedy Space Center and all the sciencey buildings and the tourist stuff that go along with it. 

Taking a sidetrip to NASA's Kennedy Launch Center.

 So we swerved off of the highway, when we saw the exit sign, and we began to drive down the road to the famed space center. It took about 45 minutes to an hour to get to the space center (including a subway lunch break) but we finally got to it, with the first sight of it being a massive rocket waiting there.

We parked and walked to the admission gate. The tickets were not cheap, but they let us go through, and we emerged on the other side looking at a touristy café. There was a lady on the other side who told us to walk down a walkway for a bit and we would find a bus loading in visitors. That would take us to the main exhibits and to a quick bus tour as well.

The rocket garden at the Kennedy Space Center.

But as we walked down the pathway, we got quickly sidetracked in to a show room that was currently showing an astronaut, who was giving a little presentation. So we decided to go in and take a look. The presentation took about 45 minutes and was quite interesting. He talked about life on a spaceship, why it’s important to go to space and answered a few crowd questions.

John Blaha has been into spce a bunch of times, and was a pretty good speaker, too.

After that we actually took the bus like we were told to. We got on, and there were little TV screens attached to the roof every 10 seats or so. Alexander and I sat together, right under one so we needed to look at the next one in front of us which was quite far away. The tour lasted about 45 minutes and was really cool. They showed us where all the spaceships were built, how they moved them to the launch pad with giant metal behemoths on treads that carried them upright, and the launch pad itself. When the tour finally ended we were dropped off in the main exhibits and such, of the Kennedy Space Center.

The VAB (vehical assembly building).

This guy generated as much excitement as the space stuff did on our bus tour.

We got off at the main area, where there was all of the important space stuff displayed in glass containers. There was a moon rock, a bunch of prototype spacesuits, and even a Moonbuggy. when we walked in to the next room, It was REALLY massive, with a massive rocket spanning the entire room, on display about 5 meters up. Also there was a little food place, where we got a couple things to bite because we were hungry.

A re-entry module, for coming back through the Earth's atmosphere.

This is a lunar excursion module (LEM), for exploring the moon.

Moon buggy.

When we kept going, there were a lot of things, like lots of dramatic videos showing different launches, the actual mission control room, and a large room with a circular screen all around that was showing a lot of cool video from space, and it made you really dizzy. It felt a lot like you were actually there and it almost knocked me over a couple of times, probably because I was at the very front of the room, so I couldn’t see anything other than the screen.

The huge Saturn V rockets which powered the trips to the moon.

Neil Armstrong's actual spacesuit.  They didn't wash it after he got back, so that is moon dust on the knees.

After that, the screen opened up vertically, allowing us to go through in to another massive room, with lots of models of ships and stuff, and some video games that were hooked up to a camera (a kinect) so you could move and have that movement in the game. The game was a spaceship fixing simulator, but it didn’t seem to work for me as it didn’t know where I was moving.

Flying the Space Shuttle in the simulator.

We walked down up a ramp to a different spot in the room where there was a glass tube that you could crawl in to and look down a vertigo-inducing height to the bottom of a room. Near there, was a really steep scary slide, that I decided to take to get down to the bottom of the room. That was where I saw the Rocket Takeoff Simulator. It was AWESOME. There was a big presentation at the start, about how a real takeoff is, and then they let you on the ride. At the start, It tipped you 90 degrees, so straight up in a large capsule holding about 40 people that was designed to look like the inside of a shuttle. Then It started to shake, and move a bit around, trying to simulate speed, and G-force, it shook you around a little longer, while showing you the what’s supposedly outside of the shuttle, via a TV screen. It was really cool, and when I got off I felt I bit jittery. After that we went back down to the main area, where we played around with the flight simulator videogame a bit.

Crawling through the vertigo-inducing tube.

The launch simulator was AWESOME.

After that we decided that it was probably time to go. So we packed up and headed out, back on the bus to where we parked the car.

Crowded Shopping malls, Cinemas, and a Store Devoted to Guns and Fishing? Welcome to Florida!

Posted by Christopher

So we are back in Ft. Lauderdale.  So far, we have had two kinds of weather here.  They are: way too hot or way too rainy to do anything outdoors. That’s why we said, “what should we do?” Let’s go to a nice air conditioned mall”.

Welcome to sunny Florida.

On the way there, we went to a massive store called the Bass Pro Shop. One Wal-mart sized half was covered in every fishing gear you could imagine, and the other with guns. There was a small boating section but nothing to talk about really.

After that, we decided to check out the rest of the massive store. We went to the guns part, mainly because we don’t get a chance to see that many guns very often. They had a massive gun wall loaded with snipers and pistols, (which was actually pretty scary) but I hoped none of them were loaded. What we mainly did was play this shooting arcade thing, where you got a rifle that fired lasers, and if the laser hit one of the targets, then it would make a little sound and the object would fall over or something. It was pretty cool and we all had a turn, except for mom.

When in Rome ... 

After that we decided that we would go to the mall. It was called Aventura Mall and they had just gotten a new Microsoft Store which Dad wanted to see. The first dilemma we came to was the parking lot. Something that we had REALLY not expected was that the parking lot was full. There was literally NO place to park. So we drove around the parking lot for a while, with a lot of other cars, but could not find one. Eventually I spotted two guys walking away from the mall on a lane parallel to us. I thought about it for a second then realized that if we could get there in time they would be leaving. So I yelled over to Dad to drive over there fast, and he began to speed up a bit turning a corner tightly. We got there before any other cars, with a bit more gas than was allowed, and we pulled in to the parking space.

I guess we weren't the only ones who thought a walk around the mall might be a good idea.

We went in to a mall that was pretty crowded, although not as busy as we would have thought based on the parking lot. So we walked around a bit, first deciding to go to the apple store. Mom’s Iphone wasn’t charging properly and Katie and I wanted to use the Ipads. So we went in to the spotless white room, and Katie, Alexander and I went straight to the Ipads. Katie and I played a game called Toca Cars, which was pretty fun, and Alexander played the original Sonic game. Mom came back to us in fifteen minutes and said that they couldn’t fix her phone so she would either need to buy a new one or live with weird charging. We of course chose the latter.


Next we went to the Microsoft Store which was really cool. At first I thought “what would Microsoft do to top having thirty Ipads with games on them? I found out. The first thing I did was I went straight to the first computer I saw, and tried out the keyboard. ( I have sort of a thing, where I need to find the nicest keyboard in the store, if they sell keyboards) About three minutes into me trying it, Alexander came over and said “come over to the cool part of the store man!” I was having fun with my keyboard testing, but I decided I’d come with him. Alexander led me to the back where there was 12 Xbox’s setup all participating in a store tournament with everybody else, and each of them had their own computer monitor, with side walls so you couldn’t see what other people were doing. It was pretty awesome. I got on one pretty quickly and began playing in the contest. I had been playing for five minutes and was almost winning, when mom came and told we it was time to go! It was really hard, but I let someone else play and I walked away, even though my turn wasn’t nearly over.

Back in the land of video games.

We had just left the Microsoft Store, when we decided that we would try and see a movie. Dad had seen good reviews for X-men Days of Future Past so we decided we’d see that. When we checked, they said that a movie was starting right that minute, so we grabbed our tickets and made a dash for the theatre. We needed to watch 15 minutes of ads anyways, but we were quick.

I thought the movie was quite good. It was certainly an action movie, but It had a really good story and was very fluent. For X-men fans, this is definitely a movie I would recommend.

24 theatres in one building.  And one good movie.

After that, we quickly grabbed Japanese food at the food fair, which was really good, then we went back home. 

I thought it was really fun to be back in a big mall.  It was really clean, which appeals to my OCD side, and it was air conditioned, so it was cool.  I liked running around to all the stores and doing all the demos.  My favourite store was the Microsoft store, by far, because of all the tech and gadgets and video games.

It was a bit intimidating at the start to have all the people there.  It was definitely the biggest, most modern building we have been in for a long time.  I guess some stores don’t even bother to have branches in other countries where people can’t afford their products.  It is a bit weird getting back to all this modern stuff, but it is still pretty fun.  I sure feel lucky to be able to do it.

Mmmm, Japanese food for dinner.

You Get Key Lime! You Get Key Lime! YOU ALL GET KEY LIME!

Posted by Christopher

Tourist time in Key West!

We got in to the shuttle bus that goes from Stock Island Marina, to down town Key West where all the tourism happens. There were some other nice boaters in the bus, and our parents began to talk to the other boaters, about this and that. The shuttle was very nice, and MUCH less cramped than the one in Guatemala had been. Also, I had a nice seat at the front, this time facing the windshield. We drove for about twenty minutes with all the talking going on, until finally we stopped next to a walk, that was by the water. We were going to spend the day in the colourful downtown of Key West, and apparently, so were the other boaters, as they clambered out behind us.

Cruisers waiting for the shuttle to Key West.

The first order of business was food. We were all starting to get hungry, considering it was high noon. Something that we had not had for a long time, was the ability to choose any restaurant without fear of diseased or spoiled food being served. But because we were in America, this was not an issue. So we went in to a nice little café restaurant place called Key West Lime Shop. We went to order, and our server, was really nice. He recommended a drink called key lime soda, so much that we all ended up getting it. It was, really good and we were all happy he had. He also explained why they had key lime soda. Apparently sailors used to bring limes to key west, and so they used it in a lot of recipes. It ended up being a bit of a gimmick and so the whole town had key lime things. I ordered a sandwich, and when I got it, I knew it was going to be just scrumptious.

We had an awesome lunch at the Key West Lime Cafe.

When we were done eating, Alexander prompted me to go to the gift shop with him. So I went with him, only to learn why they called it the Key Lime Shop. It was FULL of different Key Lime flavored things. There was Toffee, jelly beans, ice cream, pie, and everything else you could imagine. Alexander and I kept looking around for a while, then we decided to keep going to something different.

Darn Hippies.

We walked around the town, a bit only to find out how much key lime there actually was. Everything in the town was just key lime. It was pretty crazy. At one point, we went in to a cramped little mall, where they were selling everything key lime, including key lime cigars. We walked around the mall a bit, and dad bought some sunglasses.

If you like Key Lime, you`ve come to the right place.

Next we walked over to the West Marine, (which for those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s essentially where you buy everything you’d ever need for boats) and we spent about an hour there, getting touch ups and extra spare parts and stuff. I mainly just sat down and watched the video that the little GoPro stand was showing. It was about a half hour long, so I spent half the time doing that.

Which one is real, and which one is the statue?

Dancing in the street in Key West.

Finally it was 4:00, so we began to head back to the shuttle pick up station. We waited there fifteen minutes. Then the shuttle arrived. The shuttle was very relaxed, with not too many people in it, maybe seven including us. So we collectively decided to go on a bit of a tour with the driver. So we drove us around the town a bit showing us the coolest stuff that we had missed.

Hanging out at Cigar City.

We finally got back to the marina, after an educational tour of the island.