Driving Around Lost in Canada

Last year my family took an amazing road trip! We first stopped in Cleveland to see a family member. Then we continued on to Hershey, PA for an amazing conference and a super fun filled 4 days of family time. Seriously, I loved Hershey and can’t wait to go back. 4 days was great and we were able to do a lot but I could use a couple more days to see the rest.

After Hershey we drove up to Niagara Falls. I had always wanted to go there and since Hershey was just a few (like 6 or so) hours away I thought it would be an awesome addition to our super road trip. We first explored on the US side then crossed over to Canada to play at a waterpark and stay in a beautiful hotel overlooking the falls.

Because I’m a traveler I wanted to continue our road trip home by continuing on through Canada, visiting a cute little Merry-Go-Round my sister told me about and passing through Detroit as our entrance back into the US. This was all fine and dandy because we had smart phones to guide our path and a Garmin GPS in the car.

When we got about 20 minutes into Canada it was time to turn off the highway and make our way to the Merry-Go-Round in St. Catherines. We were relying on our phones to lead the way. The map on our phone took us most of the way but it immediate stopped working. Realization hit that we didn’t have international service on our phone and we were far enough in Canada to not reach our US signal anymore. I turned on the GPS in hopes of being rescued to find that we didn’t have international maps installed on our Garmin. A lot of good that navigation system was.

Luckily there were signs to the Merry-Go-Round since it was a historic location. Riding was 5 cents and so we all rode it several times and enjoyed our time in St. Catherines. After the Merry-Go-Round I was feeling nervous because we were still lost in Canada. We managed to retrace our steps to get back to the highway and figured if we continued the way we were going it would eventually dump us out in the US.

Luckily the plan worked and we ended up in Detroit. Once we got near the US border again our phones kicked back on and I felt a huge sense of relief. It was quite the adventure during our two hours lost in Canada.