road trippin'

Joel and I just got home from a week-long roadtrip to Florida and back. Our actual destination was Disney World, which I know is totally hypocritical considering I won't even buy breakfast cereal from corporate giants...but I had never been to Disney World before, and the kid-part of me really, really wanted to go. I have no excuses or reasonings other than that. All I will say about it is this: despite wanting to go, I was still sceptical as to how great a giant fake world spattered with animated characters brought to life could possibly be. Well, it turns out it is so much fun. I loved how everything went so all out to make you feel like you were walking through Mickey Mouse's house and were exploring the Swiss Family Robinson's treehouse and were witnessing a pirate fight. Everything was so creative and imaginative and cool. I loved it. I'm having a hard time right now remembering why I hated Disney before this, sneaky corporate masterminds that they are. I am sure that this is all a part of their plan to take over the world. Whoever would have thought an over-the-top theme park was the way to do it?


It's been a long time since I was in the U.S. at all, and I've never been as far south as Georgia and Florida. Some things were really different than they are here in Canada. For one, there were a lot of breakfast places, like Ihop and the Waffle House. The further south we went, the more Waffle Houses we noticed. Joel and I thought this was funny since Waffle House doesn't even exist in Canada, but we counted 31 between Macon, Georgia and Orlando, Florida alone, along i75. At one point, we could see three Waffle Houses at the same time. They were close enough geographically that you could literally have stood at any one of the Waffle Houses and seen the other two. On the way home, we counted 37 along i95, between Orlando and somewhere maybe in North Carolina or Virginia. The further north we got, the fewer there were until they seemed to just disappear. Oh well. It was an interesting car trip game during the tedious 26-hour drive home.

I also thought it was harder to find vegetarian options at restaurants. We ordered pizza one night in Georgia and the only veggies they had were black olives, mushrooms, green pepper and hot peppers. Maybe it was just the restaurants we stopped at, but a lot of the time the only vegetarian options I could find were either salads (with no bacon bits, please) or - yes - waffles. There were always waffles.

People seemed really nice everywhere we went, albeit a little misinformed about Canada. One lady in Georgia asked us what airport we flew to. Joel said, "We actually drove here." The woman looked at us like we had gone mad. She said, "You drove here? You can do that? I thought you had to take a boat or something!" We thought she was joking, but she was serious. That was just kind of the way it was, though. In Canada, America is always so prominent and obvious and there. In the U.S. Canada seemed non-existant.

But you see, this is why road tripping is great - the whole process becomes a part of the trip, and you not only get to experience the destination (i.e. a big theme park), you get to discover how you get there and the very country that can create and support such a thing (i.e. the mighty USA). The week went too fast. A part of me is happy to be home. The other part of me wonders what I'll do the next time I have a craving for waffles without a Waffle House around the corner...