Travelog for: Fiete

We didn't do too much in Ohio besides the zoo, Jayme was too busy making phone calls! But then we found out we had a road trip to go on! We spent a very long time in the car...

When we looked out the window quite awhile later we were... in CHICAGO?! I thought were supposed to be headed towards North Carolina...

Apparently we had to come up to an area near Chicago to pick up Jayme's furniture that had been in storage. In the meantime, we decided to take some time to check out the city

Since Jayme's father hadn't been to the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower we decided to head that way. Here I am outside.

And here are the views of the city from the tower.


They had this neat new thing there. It goes out over the street itself and has a plexi-glass bottom so you can look straight down at the street. I thought it was scary! But Jayme's kids loved it.

More later,
Fiete

After Chicago we had to go up to Wisconsin to pick up Jayme's items. We only had to go just over the border, and we weren't there long but sine Wisconsin is famous for cheese we had to stop to get some.


We also stopped by a restaraunt called Cracker Barrel. They have lots of what's considered American country cooking and you can find them all over the country. Mm. Lunch.

One of the fun things here is that they have these little wooden table games you can play. We got to relax and play one while drinking some root beer while we waited for the kids to finish eating.

Whew. On our way to North Carolina finally! Next stop Wilmington.
Fiete

I'm so sorry it's been so long since I updated! Jayme's been too busy. She also realized she forgot to put up the 4th of July photos! Oops! We arrived to Jayme's new home just in time for the 4th of July here. We spent the morning on a quick trip to the beach, it was lots of fun.


We spent the afternoon unpacking, yuck. Then it was time to head out for some fireworks. Aren't they pretty?



More soon,
Fiete

We had to make one fun stop before the kids went back to school as a special treat. We stopped by Krispy Kreme Donuts. Yum!

Unfortunately the hot donuts sign wasn't on, so we couldn't see the donuts being made. But we did get to enjoy a tasty one.

More soon,
Fiete

Wilmington is very well known for the it's downtown area on the waterfront. We didn't have long to look today, but we wanted to go check it out finally so down we went. Here's a view of the water front.

And a little view of the downtown.

They were also having a farmer's market the day we were there with lots of things for sale.

More soon,
Fiete

Today we visited one of Jayme's relatives and she took us to a local farm. Here you can ride on wagon rides, here we are waiting in the barn for the wagon.

Once on the wagon ride we got to ride around for awhile and feed various animals. The children had lots of fun feeding them as the animals ran up to be fed. Here are some views on the ride.





After the ride we walked down a small path that had these funny gourds growing from the arch.

And we stopped by the petting zoo and to see some camels are on our way home.


Hope to have more adventures soon!
Fiete

Hallo to my Family
I arrived savely and met new friends. Now I ve to sleep but in the next days my host will make a few pictures

Oh, now it´s time to update.
I have a good time at the host home in Mönchengladbach.
I met a few friends

They are called SamWhite, Cilly and BeePoh.
I really like them.
One day I met the three guinea pigs of my host.
Me and Mürfel. She is really shy.
Me, Kolja and Toffifee. I thing they love each other   
The weather isn´t good but we had a great day and went geocaching...
This was really funny.
We went into the wood and searched for tupperware ... and finally we found it.
We wrote our nicknames in a book and after this adventure my host logged the "found" cache in the internet.
We checked the coordinates
a little break with my friends...

It´s not a lake or a river but the beginning
and YES ... we met cows... I spoke to them and my host looked so confused...


My host had her final exams last week and she passed it really good.. I think we find now a little bit more time ... but the weather ist still sad...
ah .. one impression I got for you... I was celebrating Halloween. (but this was too much for me, too much people, too loud, so I just have the start before we went out on a photo)

This was my bag for the evening
Take care, mommy

Hi Mum,

I am in Canada ! Tonight I felt a lot of paws funmbling around my envelope .



And when I eventually came out I found three TVs ready to welcome me : they are Dottie Mouse and Pitzelpatz who both come from Germany too and sammino a stay-at-home TV.



They were very curious to hear about my travels, so we spent the evening chatting .

Hi Mum,

Today is an holiday in Alberta , so smaug wasn’t working and took us out to breathe some fresh air. At one point we had to leave the car as the highway is closed in winter.



The trail was very snowy and mostly between the trees...



...although we could occasionally see our surroundings .



Eventually we reached the summit of Prairie Mt., from where I could see the prairies in the east...



...and mountains everywhere else .




Those clouds didn’t look nice...



...and the wind was freezing cold , so I took a final photo with the summit cairn and we quickly headed back to the warmth of the car .

Hi Mum,

Today smaug took a day off and told us that we were going skiing . As we knew that temperatures in Calgary were going to be a bit frigid , we checked how things were on the mountains....not a comforting sight .



We tried to suggest that it was maybe a good day for staying in bed with a hot chocolate , but smaug wouldn’t listen to reason, so, to ease the shock of going outside, we decided to train a few minutes in the freezer ....cold, very cold, but not nearly as a cold as our destination.



If anything it was actually way colder than what the forecast said, so, not surprisingly, the runs were nearly empty ...



...but the views were great .




And once my toes were so frozen that I couldn’t feel anything it was actually great fun, off we go !!

Hi Mum,

Today we asked smaug if we were going to hit the slopes again, but he said that his toes where still a bit too frostbitten and insensitive from skiing last week and he didn’t want to lock them in the ski boots yet...so we went for a hike around Banff instead . At the beginning of the trail we crossed this nice little canyon.



In the distance you can see Lake Minnewanka...completely frozen.



When the trees opened up a bit we could see more of the lake .




It seems that no one has been on this trail for some time....we actually started wondering if it was a trail at all .



Eventually we reached our destination, the shore of the lake a few km away from the parking lot. Here the landscape was very...white .





We walked to the middle of the lake to take some photos from there .




Eventually the wind started picking up and quickly the temperature fell down, so we decided to hide in the backpack for the rest of the day .

Hi Mum,

Today we had a new arrival here in Calgary .



It’s Monkez, a nice monkey travelling on the WTVT, and he brought over a lovely card from his last host .

Hi Mum,

Today is the first day of spring and we are celebrating it...with a fresh dump of snow, of course .



Well, we were not going to do anything anyway, since smaug was at home sick . So we actually had to make sure that he took the right medications. sammino suggested to give him every pill in the house to speed up his recovery , but we all agreed that we didn’t really want to take the chance of poisoning our host, so we just followed the doses suggested on the packages.



Later sammino showed us some of the maps of his pre-TV travelling life ...




...and the photos from his private album. We particularly liked his photos in Greenland : maybe I'll go there too one day .

Hi Mum,

It seems that someone forgot to tell to Old Man Winter that we are supposed to be in spring, so the weather is “not particularly nice” and this week end we didn’t do anything more than a short walk to stretch our legs. As you can see the atmosphere is still very wintery.




We walked down to the river to take a couple of photos...




But when we asked if we could jump on the ice smaug told us that the river ice is not good for walking so we just headed back to the warmth of home .