The Travel Day That Would Not End!

Tuesday was mostly a travel day, but as usual we tried to make some stops for entertainment. The main feature of the day was a stop at historic Valley Forge in Pennsylvania to study the site of Washington's winter encampment. We discovered a great Philadelphia element in the National Storytelling Benches called Once Upon a Nation. At these benches you could sit down and they had a person telling animated stories about famous people and entertainers.

Jake and Emma enjoyed viewing the cannons and housing for the soldiers. They also had to discuss the geography and the food supply in order to gain yet another NPS Junior Ranger Badge. Unfortunately, we have no picture of them with their badges as they ran out and will be mailing them to us (insert photo of Jake pouting).

We also had the opportunity to see a variety of monuments and plaques celebrating the history of the area. I was quite taken by the amount of symbolism related to the many things you see in Dan Brown books, such as the Free Masons and the Illuminati- he may have been on to something.

The next six hours plus were extremely boring and littered with massive payments to the Pennsylvania Toll System to ride on terrible, crowded roads. We also stopped for ice cream and gasoline at the slowest convenience store in the history of time.

The crazy highlight of the day occurred when we stopped for dinner and to view a lighthouse in Pulaski, NY. As we pulled of, one exit too early I might add, we rambled down barren country roads until we suddenly came across a small ice cream store. Would you believe, in the middle of nowhere we found an ice cream shop called Emma's Shake Shack and they served- wait for it..... Perry's Ice Cream (see the flags!) We had no choice but to stop!

After this stop we decided we must get to Canada before they somehow closed the border for the night. Fortunately, we made it across with no problems- then the fun began. The only thing I learned about Canada on Tuesday (in the pouring rain) is that it is the darkest place on earth and they do not have very good reflection paint on their roads. By 11:30 (We left NJ at 10:00am) we finally arrived in Kanata (outside of Ottawa) to the smiling faces of Delphine, Axel, Amandine, Elias, Corinne, Eric and Leopol. 

Tune in to tomorrow's update to figure out how five children (two who speak only English Emma(10), Jake (8)- two who speak only French- Elias (12), Amandine (9), and one seven year old (Leopol) who speaks both but doesn't want to translate figure each other out.