We just arrived home from our trip to the Northeast with my Mom, Dad, David Nicole, and Sam. It was a great trip that seemed to fly by. Probably because we did a lot of driving from one place to another, and lots of setting up of campers, and tearing down of campers. but thats what you do on this kind of trip. It was a little different for me doing a trip like this at 6 months pregnant. It was only a little more challenging than usual but we managed fine. I only had two days of pretty bad lower back pain. I haven't yet decided if it was from sitting in a car too long, or doing too much activity. When I was this far along with Annie I would get back pain from washing the dog or cleaning the house. So I guess it's normal to have some again. It's not all the time, just occasionally. Any way back to where we were. We started our Journey on Sunday morning leaving Knoxvegas. We decided to knock out a big drive right in the beginning so we drove 10 hours into New York for our first stop which was Niagara Falls. We set up camp in the dark but we were at our first location so the next morning we could drive right to Niagara Falls and spend the day there. Mom did an awesome job of planning and making meals for us all. She had a wonderful breakfast of eggs with sausage and toast ready for us in the morning. Mom and Dad have a huge camper with a slide, and we brought Scott's parents little pop-up camper. Annie slept in her pack'n'play on one side while Scott and I had the other side. Every morning Annie would wake up and instead of crying she would just start talking and laughing and playing in bed. She was just so excited to be somewhere different than home, and it was such an adventure for her. Be prepared for lots and lots of pics......This was our view for all of our driving. HaHa.
Annie loved spending all this time with her uncle Sam and David Aunt Nini, and Nana and Poppy. For some reason Sam was her favorite. Every morning she would wake up and start calling out for Nana and Poppy and the kids, and she would run over to their campsite to see everyone.
I thought this was so funny. If you have never been to or heard much of Niagara Falls it splits the Canada, U.S. border. I thought it was so funny how close we were to Canada. I thought it was cool looking at this sign cause we could see the other side of the river which was Canada. It was weird seeing a sign that said Canada this way. Ok I'm weird I don't know why I thought this was so cool.
Here is part of the falls. It looks like you could walk right off the grass into the water. Actually, it was that way, you could walk right over and climb over the rail to jump in. I guess I thought there would be more safety boundaries to it.
Here is part of the fam minus Dad, who was buying us tickets to ride the Maid of the Mist, and me, who was taking the pic.
Ah! There we go, the Andrews family.
Here is Canada's tourist area for the falls.
The water was a cool looking green color. Don't ask me why because I don't know. Theres our boat down there, waiting for us to board so we could get an up close and personal view of the falls. The actual big falls.
The whole family on the boat. We got to wear these lovely ponchos which looked so flattering especially on me with my big belly sticking out. I look huge!!! The ponchos came in handy though because it was already kind of a rainy day there.
Our little Family again.
Annie was a little iffy with some of the ride, probably because everybody was so excited and walking around the boat that was moving toward this great amount of water pouring down into the water we were on. She actually did great and had fun. As you can see here with Uncle Dave, she has a big happy smile on her face.
This was the first part of the falls. The ones we see from land.
Here are the larger ones. It was so misty and foggy and rainy out, the closer we got, the harder it became to see as you will see in the following photos.
See what I mean.... That white backround is somewhere near the falls. Nicole posing like a superstar.
After we got off the boat we decided to dry Annie a little so she wouldn't get too cold. We used the dryers in the bathroom. I don't think she was a big fan, but I'm sure she appreciated the warm air blowing on her. As you can see my belly is in the shot. Hey I wan't trying to steal the shot, I was actually holding her up to the dryer with my legs, while taking the pic. Id'e say thats pretty talented right?
So after, the boat ride we walked over to the other thing you could do which was walk down by the bottom of the falls. This was called cave of the winds. Dad paid for all our tickets again! He is so generous. This time you get so wet they give you ponchos, and shoes. These were the lovely shoes we all wore. It's a good thing too because by the time we finished this hike it looked like we had taken a shower in the falls. I doubled up on my ponchos and rolled my pants up high so I stayed as dry as you can.
The flimsy ponchos for the more wet experience.
These birds were all over the rocks around the falls. And most of them were sitting on eggs. It was crazy how close we were to them.
This is at the bottom before we got too close to all the water.
Moving in to the falls. I can't believe none of this scared Annie. The water was raging and loud, and wet.
A pic of mom and dads camper. This campsite was after we left the falls we packed up and drove to Vermont. We spent one night in one part of vermont, and the next night we spent two nights in another campsite in vermont.
Can I just stop and say that Annie was probably the best 1 1/2 year old traveler I have ever met. This was her pretty much the entire vacation of driving, which was many, many, many, hours of driving. She hardly made a peep. She was soooo good and I am so proud of her.
Back to the falls. David went out in only his swimsuit where the water shoots down the hardest. He was crazy, and it was freezing. I'm surprised he didn't get hypothermia.
Sam joined him, although Sam decided to keep all his clothes on. At this point the ponchos became pretty useless.
We loved driving through the Adirondack mountains in New York. I never knew that other parts of New York state were so beautiful. Scott and I wanted to camp in these mountains but I don't think any of the sites in the park had hook ups so that didn't work out.
We were so excited the weather was finally starting to clear up. It had been a pretty rainy trip so far.
We pulled off to stretch our legs a bit from our 8 hour drive at a random rest area/pull over, and Dad saw this little pond so he ran to the back of the camper and pulled out a fishing pole to fish for a few minutes.
Finally making it to another campsite we got the bikes ready for when we got to Acadia National park. Scott had to install a bike seat on moms bike for Annie. It was either Mom's bike or my bike, and since I may not be as coordinated as usual being 6 months prego, mom got to drive Annie around.
So we went to this farm in Vermont that was a living farm. Basically it had cows and sheep and chickens and they made their own cheeses and such. It was a huge farm and has been around for a very long time. Since it is only early May a lot of places weren't running for the season yet so the farm was closed for riding tours. But we were aloud to walk around on our own if we wanted too. Which of course we did. It actually worked out nice being early season everywhere we went, because all the summer tourists had not yet arrived so it was pretty calm and nice, especially in Maine, going through Acadia, and walking around downtown.
Here is the fam minus david the photographer at the farms.
Posing with the weird stick figure things.
This is a semi-pic of the barn area where they show you where they make the cheese and keep the smaller animals.
Like the chickens, that Annie tried to feed her honey lolli-pop to.
The baby sheep that Nicole wanted to take home. They were so cute. Ever since Annie saw these the rest of our trip she would randomly say "Sheep go Baaaaaa" This is the first time she was starting to put more than one word into a saying. We loved it. I think her vocabulary has majorly increased being on this trip and constantly having people tell her to say different things.
This humungous cow scared her a little. This was seriously probably the largest heifer I have ever seen.
Looking so pretty with the flower uncle Sam picked for her. theres the barn in the backround. We had to hike a small ways to get there.
Here we are in downtown Burlington, VT. This was a pretty cool downtown. I loved walking around and seeing all the cool shops. Some were unique, and others were well known stores.
Before I overload this post with too many more photos, i'll stop here and continue in the following post.
Yours truly
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