Beer, Beavers, Borders, Bronners, Behemoth & BOO!

So what can one cram into the second half of October? After coming back from the States and going back to work, the tourist pendulum was still swinging full tilt.

First off........ the beer. Kitchener is very Germanic in its origins and was originally called Berlin until about the time of WW1. So with those connections and it being October, what else would be happening but a Beerfest. The Kitchener one is second only in size to the one in Munich and starts about the time the Munich one finishes, and goes for 10 days. There are street parades, bands galore and all around the city about 7 large Festhallen. (Festival halls, gosh this German language is easy!) We headed off to one and were most impressed by the dancing, ooompah bands and the fashions! And in true Beerfest style pretty German fraulein were wandering around dispensing beer in large pitchers, for equally large prices! Other ones posed for photos in ridiculously short skirts and similarly low cut tops, with their blond hair in long pig tails! Wunderbar! Steph filled the role of designated driver and was rewarded with free drinks and far better quality photos!! Heather was rewarded with a bit of a fuzzy head in the morning. But she'll show you how to do the 'elephant dance' one day. zigga zigga zigga...oi oi oi!!!

Once that set of shifts had finished we headed north again on our quest to see the last 2 of the Great Lakes we hadn't been to, Superior and Michigan. This involved travelling to Sault Saint Marie where we stayed for 2 nights and visited the local sites, albeit in coats, hats and with umbrellas as this part of country was decidedly cooler now. Photos of Superior were able to be taken showing all its moods with lots of grey skies and equally grey water. In SSM whilst wandering around the rapids by the locks, we came across our first beaver dams and houses and marvelled at how clever these little guys are. Not a bare one in sight tho, perhaps a bit too cold!

From Sault Saint Marie we headed south, crossing over the International Bridge, over more shipping locks and into northern Michigan. At the border we struck a rather obnoxious woman customs/immigration officer who insisted on rifling through our boot and stealing our oranges, as we couldn't tell her where they were grown and they didn't look like California ones to her! Made her day to be able to confiscate something off these bloody Kiwi tourists who had lied about having no food in the car (it wasn't food it was fruit!) - probably got a incentive payment for that. Heading south we then crossed over another huge swing bridge larger than the Golden Gate bridge across the Straits of Mackinac. Apparently this bridge can move so violently in high winds they close it when the wind gets up, lucky for us it was a calm morning. We then travelled down the west coast of the Michigan peninsula to view Lake Michigan, having lunch on the shore there before crossing back towards the eastern side for our night stay in Bay City. (Not the home of the 'Rollers' of the same name we're told!) So we have achieved our goal of seeing all 5 of the Great Lakes. We swum in Huron, paddled in Ontario and Erie, and stuck our hands in Superior and Michigan.

Bay City was the main ship building centre on the Great Lakes for many years and whilst a bit of a dreary city now has a impressive nautical history. Included in this are the ruins of a number of ships visible below the waters of the Saginaw River which flows through the city and out into Lake Huron. These were both passenger ships and freighters from the Great Lakes that got laid up here in the early 20th century and eventually were vanadlised and burnt to the water line. Quite an eerie sight now.

Just an hour south of here is the small town of Frankenmuth, a replica of an old German town and home to Bronners, the worlds largest Christmas shop. Founded in 1945 by Wally Bronner and growing ever since, it now covers an area of 5.5 football fields with the shop alone being nearly 2 fields in size. Every Christmas decoration, tree, ornament imagingable is displayed and sold here, and 2 million visitors come to the place annually. (Steph also wants to work here!) Just the light display every night on the half mile drive into the place (#25 Christmas Lane) is supposed to be something else. So several hours of the day were lost in here! The rest was lost in the super sized shoppers outlet mall in the next town south. These visits are not by chance and are the result of people, usually at Ian's work, saying " if you're going there, you've got to visit this and that" - thanks guys!

So that was northern Michigan in a nut shell and we headed home, across the border again, no hassles this time, and celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary with soup & toast for tea in a roadside cafe. After Bronners Christmas Wonderland, attempting to put any sparkle into the rest of the day would have been extremely difficult, but we did buy a personalised Xmas decoration to mark the occasion.

And so to the Behemoth..... Sunday the 26th between Ian's night shifts we headed into Toronto to Canada's Wonderland. Owned by Paramount, this Disney inspired fun park is home to the Behemoth, the largest and newest roller coaster in Canada, and about a dozen or so other slightly tamer ones and a huge waterpark, whose rides were all closed due to the fact it was about 3 degrees outside! So for about 4 hours we rode as many of the rides as we could, with several of them being the old wooden clankety style that leave you with severe neck damage!

Then finally it was on to Behemoth, last ride of the day as a bitterly cold rain storm swept through and the closed off the rides. Too late for Ian, he was up on top of the climb awaiting the 70 metre, 78 degree drop with hail stinging his partially open eyes and beating down on his already white knuckles! Woosh.... down at 125 km/h in 3 secs, and after 1.6km of track its all over in 3 minutes. No, Steph and Heather did not do this one! Be really nice on a nice warm summers day! However we did have the bonus of no queues (in summer they can be an hour long per ride) which allowed us to ride 12 of the rides in the 4 hours, and really cheap admission prices only $20 as against the normal entry price of $54, thanks to tickets obtained for us through a company rep who sleeps with a firefighter! (Actually he's married to her and yes she is the firefighter!) It must be said that Heather did ride on 2 of these roller coasters, though they were rather tame. On one of them she cried and the other one she said zip! Plus a few choice 4 letter words when back on the ground!

So if you want to experience the thrill of riding Behemoth yourself go to the attached YouTube link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75tMcKChlG8

We had our first snow fall on 29 Oct, only a light dusting but made Heather & Steph excited enough to run outside in bare feet to take photos...crazy kiwi's! The first official day of winter is 21 December...!

Its Halloween on the 31st. The Canadians really get into this celebration of ghouls and goblins and decorate their porches with inflatable scary things, and pumpkins, graveyards, etc etc. We have got into the spirit and did our own wee bit of artistic carving. Look out kiddies when coming to our door!!

I guess November will be quite tame after all this? Catchya all.

29 Oct 2008

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