Posts Tagged “beach”

Vancouver itself has some pretty cool things, such as this random-seeming rocket:

But we figured, what better way to spend your time in Canada… than to drive to the USA?

Actually, we wanted to check out this little place called Point Roberts, Washington. It’s a geographic anomaly:

As you can see, in order to get to Point Roberts, you have to go through Canada. We thought we better find out whether being there felt like being in the US or being in Canada. Plus, we heard there was a really good chance we’d see an orca. And it’s only half an hour from Vancouver. Oh, and we really wanted Brian to get to use his hard-earned passport. So we were off!

As it turns out, Point Roberts is kind of a USA-Canada hybrid, and also it’s pretty deserted. Check out the beach!

Nice, right? Alas, we didn’t see any whales. We did see this marina, though:

The marina has a very distinctive shape, as you can see from this satellite photo:

That’s just an FYI for later.

We returned to Vancouver in time to check out this large drill bit before turning in:

The next day, we went to the airport to catch a plane to Seattle, and I seriously thought Brian (who is no fan of flying even on a regular jet plane) was going to kill me when it turned out our plane was this:

However, he forgave me when we saw both Point Roberts (easy to find via its distinctive marina) and orcas from the air.

Also, I haven’t traveled internationally in a couple of years, and good lord, getting through customs took for-freaking-ever! Did I forget, or has it gotten worse? Discuss.

Traverse City is more than just the cherry capital of the world, but it takes its cherry-capital status very seriously (as it should, considering that it proclaimed itself the cherry capital). Our first stop in Traverse City was to see the World’s Largest Cherry Pie Pan!

This pan was used to bake the World’s Largest Cherry Pie in 1987 (the sign there told us the pie was 28,350 pounds and 17′6″ in diameter!). Awesome!

Traverse City is also home to several cherry-themed stores, including our choice, The Cherry Stop:

…which is located in the charming downtown area:

…which is serviced by, I kid you not, the “Cherriot”:

Bwahaha! Awesome. Anyway, we got an array of cherry items at the Cherry Stop:

The cherry-mustard bbq sauce is totally delicious (they have everything open so you can taste it), and I also tried some cherry wine there that I quite enjoyed! We also got some cherry pie from the Great Traverse Pie Company today that was totally amazing and made me want to make pies constantly and own a pie shop.

Anyway, Traverse City also has this:

I had NO IDEA such a thing existed in the midwest. Seriously. But it is an absolutely beautiful beach (Traverse City sits on the Grand Traverse Bay, which flows out of Lake Michigan). Nicely done, Traverse City.

One thing I noticed about the beach was that it was kind of weird to have the sun behind me when facing what looked like the ocean at 5pm. I had the same feeling of disorientation the first time I went to the Pacific Ocean. It’s not bad, it’s just odd. I guess growing up on the east coast has oriented my body to a particular sun/water relationship without me realizing it!

*sigh*  It’s always challenging for me to leave my family after spending a week with them at the beach. I start to get used to the luxury of hanging out with my nieces and nephews every day. They’re great kids and I really enjoy spending time with them. I’ll definitely miss them. But alas, our OC trip is over.   In a way, it’s probably good that it is over, because I don’t know how much more abuse my body can take. As Isabel mentioned in an earlier post, I did a head plant into the ocean floor while trying out my new boogie board. I received a nice goose egg for the effort. Also, the repeated tumbling I suffered from the waves has put my back in quite a state. Always a good starting point for a 5 week road trip.

So anyway, we actually left OC an evening early because of this:

Somewhere under that green/orange/red blob is Maryland. We heard yesterday that there was talk of closing the Bay Bridge to traffic on Saturday if the winds picked up. We decided that was reason enough to pack up early and head home. We still ran into some treacherous conditions last night, but we managed to make it back to DC around midnight. So now we’ll have two full nights in our own apartment before heading west for the next leg of our journey. We’re trying not to get too comfortable.

Greetings from Ocean City! We’ve had a really nice week here as part of the annual Ambrose family vacation, and now we’re starting to look ahead to properly beginning our road trip! Before I get to that, though, let me share some highlights from our week:

The ocean this week has been crazy! I don’t know if it’s related to tropical storm season or what, but the waves have been really strong and tall and they’ve been breaking super close to shore. One of them tossed Brian on his head — ouch! I’ll let him fill you in on the details… Also, we both got sunburned, but not too badly.

We didn’t end up going to Delaware on our way over after all, but we went yesterday so we could go to the DMV. Why did we go to the Delaware DMV, you ask? So we could get this:

Now we have an EZ PASS! We won’t need it too much for this cross-country trip, but in October when we head up to New England, it’s going to be awesome. Totally worth an hour in the Sussex County DMV.

In addition to Delaware, we’ve also had excursions to Assateague Island (where, somehow, we did not see a single pony! ) and to Salty Yarns (not technically an excursion, I guess) where I bought a learn-to-crochet kit so I can (ultimately) make this:

and these:

Awesome.

By the way, omg:

I’ll write a post later on our packing situation!

Check back soon for more updates!