Once we knew Emily and I knew that we were going to have to wait for our CJIS checks and the apostille process, we hit the road. We left Minnesota on May 22nd, headed for southwestern Florida. Our daughter, Natasha, and her husband Dane had decided to move from Minnesota to Florida, so our destination became Estero, FL.
Natasha and Dane are staying in Dane's folk's snowbird townhouse in Estero while they look for a place of their own. Next door to Dane's folks (Tom and Jayne) place is their friends the Younger's townhouse. They graciously allowed us to stay there while we wait for the background checks and apostilles to occur.
Since Emily and I knew that we had a couple of weeks to wait (sigh!) for CJIS to complete their process, we took the scenic route. We traveled through Chicago from Minneapolis before turning north for Toronto. Emily had been to Canada once in her life (a brief trip to Kakabeka Falls and Thunder Bay), so this was a chance to expand on that. We went to Toronto and spent a couple of nights there.
In Toronto, we (as baseball fans) went to a Jays game at the Rogers Center. The roof was open for the game and the Jays won, so the people of Toronto was in a festive mood. We also walked past City Hall where I had done some consulting work in 1991. That was fun to relive.
From Toronto, we drove passed Niagara Falls. I'd been there before, and I suggested to Emily that seeing Niagara would be like seeing the Grand Canyon after seeing all of the other canyons that we'd seen driving west in 1994. That truth held out; Niagara Falls is beautiful, but for us, all that it required was stopping on the side of road so that Emily could snap a couple of pictures.
From there, it was on to Cooperstown, NY. We both wanted to see the Baseball Hall of Fame, and it did not disappoint. Cooperstown is a very small town, and finding the HOF was not easy. It's an unassuming building on Main Street, but the displays inside are amazing. Any baseball fan could spend an entire day there as we did.
Emily had never been to Washington, DC. I was there when I was ten years old, but I didn't recall many of the details. We stayed in College Park, MD and took the Metro into DC. From there we walked the Mall, going through the Capital, past the White House and seeing the memorials to the wars and presidents. If you've never been to our Nation's capital, I highly recommend it. We wore casual sandals during our tour of the mall, so we spent the next day sitting by the pool relaxing our feet. DC is a destination vacation.
After a couple of weather delays (of course), we arrived in Estero, FL. We are very fortunate enough to stay in the Younger's townhouse while we are here, so our staging is in place. We are repacking our lockers for the move to EC, and having their place to stay is really a blessing. We get to spend our days with Tasha, Dane and the grandkids Justin and Lexi; tennis in the morning, pool time in the afternoon.
It's Father's Day today, so we'll be grilling steaks and fillets once Dane gets home from work. Tasha made me a home-made Salted Nut Roll (a Midwest specialty!) and nailed the recipe. Quite a treat!
The rest of the day will be spent repacking lockers and getting ready for our departure flight on Wednesday.
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