Grazing Rites

When making my timeline I didn’t know the kid would be spending the night before with his grandparents so I didn’t factor in the time it took to pick him up and I didn’t expect an hour long border wait. It wasn’t that the border was busier than I expected, I had just never seen it move so slowly. I found myself wondering what the alert level was and given the scrutiny we got for only having photocopies of the kid’s ID it was clear they were being thorough. So despite starting the day sooner than I would have liked we were a little late getting stateside.

One nice new feature at the border was a light half way through the waiting area. This kept cars stationary for about half the wait time rather than perpetually inching along. This way you could shut your engine off, get comfortable, and have a conversation. This new procedure is so much better for the environment, your car and pocketbook, and stress levels that the wait hardly felt as long as it was.

The waiting having been longer than anticipated and our departure rather rushed we were pretty hungry when we got to our first destination, Cost Cutter in Blaine. They didn’t have the Jones Soda I was looking for so we just picked up some Wild Cherry Pepsi, Vanilla Root Beer, and Vanilla Coke Zero instead. Then Jon got us some stuffed crazy bread from Little Caesar’s which, while very good, the cheese felt a little thinner than back home and by that I mean less dense.

Next it was off to Ross. Jon got a desk organizer while I was happy to discover Rockport makes socks and I found a wind-up powered light, both for dirt cheap. My girlfriend made a pass through the women’s clothing area and came back with about a dozen shirts which after trying them on were whittled down to 4. Given that this stop was largely for her this was a pretty good result. As for investigating the American recession – the Ross was not only hiring but so desperate for people they had to advertise with a huge banner. Just down the way was a Circuit City – Jon and I had hoped to find some deals at the liquidation but it seems we were too late, it was shuttered and evacuated. So there were contradictory indications on the economic front.

Then it was off to the Premium Outlets (which seemed to be doing very good business with a couple stores hiring) where I went a little crazy in the Kenneth Cole outlet store. Now I normally come out of that store with one purchase, in Vegas it was a couple golf shirts for less than $40 USD. Well this time I spent nearly $100 USD on pants, a belt, and a zip-up outer sweater thingy which Jon and the girlfriend were both very much in favor of. I was slightly on the fence with regards to the sweater but asking me to take a leap of faith on Kenneth Cole is like asking a cat to try a platter of milk. As the trip progressed the sweater really grew on me and I discovered its usefulness. I picked up 2 pairs of sunglasses for the kid at The Children’s Place and a new golf shirt, khakis, and 3-piece sleepwear set for the kid at Carter’s. He stained the khakis later that same day with red Gatorade, I am not impressed but you better believe we’re not throwing those out even if he only wears them on Mr. Mom days. Jon got a pair of shoes for himself and a shirt for his son. My girlfriend spent what felt like an eternity in a women’s store and ended up not getting anything although her search was interrupted when my son randomly and quite suddenly went crazy – just crying inconsolably.

Back on the road the kid calmed down pretty quickly but we were behind in our schedule which wouldn’t have mattered but unbeknownst to us until mid-journey Jon had specified a 2-hour check-in window at the hotel which we would now be quite late for. We arrived at the hotel without incident and checked in just fine though – more details of the hotel will be included in an upcoming post from an upcoming Trip Advisor review.

After settling in at the hotel we set out for the Rainforest Café with a bit of a false start due to some backseat driving. Once there the wait was 45 minutes – so this business about the Rainforest Café being in some kind of financial difficulty seems a little inaccurate. I think other business streams must be dragging the company down as this place was bustling with activity. My son became a bit of a handful but my girlfriend and I traded off dealing with him during the substantial wait time. The service was great and the food was good as always and the volcano dessert was an event. After a brief stop for some essentials at Sears (they had crazy clearance sales going on so word of their financial difficulty seems accurate enough) we headed back to the car. It was a 5 minute walk that started out in hail, became rain, and eventually became hail again which was par for the course as we encountered all sorts of weather when on the road all day.

Back at the hotel no one but me seemed interested in swimming and given the somewhat unimpressive pool at the hotel I couldn’t really blame them. So we put the kid to bed, watched some TV, and then went to bed ourselves.

So while things didn’t go exactly according to plan Day One was a huge success – we made every stop we had planned and got quite a few goodies along the way.

This entry was posted on March 9, 2009 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.