Not going anyplace

My last post here in February 2020 said I was going to be traveling to Chicago and clearly that trip never happened. This post has been sitting in drafts since June of 2020 and I just never found the energy to finish it. Covid-19 has been part of all of our lives at this point in one way or another for almost a year. It has taken a lot from many. Obviously traveling is no longer possible and I find it hard to get out to take photos around the city not only due to the lock-downs but also winter in general.

Of course at some point travel will be possible again even if just within Canada and I can write about travel again. Until then I’m just going to experiment a bit. I’m working on getting some new camera gear to review. I’m also hoping to get in some outdoor gear that I can review through the ens of accessibility in the coming month. Maybe I’ll write about random thoughts that come into my head, who knows. All I know right now that I’d like to write a bit more than I am currently and this seems like the best place to do it.

For now I think I need to keep in mind that I can make images that I like close to home. As spring comes I will try and explore the city more as lock down guidelines allow. I’m kind of looking forward to it.

Chicago bound again

It’s travel planning time and once again we are going to Chicago. We are in Chicago in 2008 as one of the first out of Ontario trips we took. We had a great time then so this year when we wanted a trip that was going to be an easy family thing this is what first came to my mind.

Flight
I ended up booking our flight on good old Air Canada. I was considering booking with Porter because we are close to downtown and it might have been easier to make it to the Island airport instead of Person. But I’ve read just enough bad things about flying into Midway in Chicago that I decided against it. It would have also been a bit more expensive per ticket. I remember accessibility at O’Hare not being too bad for myself at least so we shouldn’t fun into too much trouble. The plan is to take the L train downtown which I did last time and it worked out just fine.

Hotel

Hotels in downtown Chicago are quite expensive. Especially when you factor in the US dollar to Canadian dollar exchange rates. This kind of make the choice are because you really don’t want to mess it up. I was going to go with a Hilton near the park but when I called to speak with someone about rate they seems a bit unorganized and just wanted to make a sale. Contrast that with when I called the Virgin hotel to ask about accessibility and they were super helpful. This won me over so I went with them. We booked a large two queen bed room so we should be all set. The room has a roll in shower with fold down seat which should be perfect for me too.

Now the scramble is getting passports for the rest of the family as we haven’t been outside of Canada in over 5 years. I look at a lot of document at work each day but trying to navigate government website is still one of the most annoying thing possible. Also going to start planing our main activities. We are going to try and take it easy and not squeeze in too much, maybe just one major thing a day.

More to come.

A Newfoundland Experiance

As I wrote about previously, my family and I took a summer trip out to Newfoundland for the first time this year. We flew directly from Toronto to St. Johns on Air Canada. We were on quite a small plane compared to other trips we’ve taken before but it was a decent flight. As luck would have it the back of the seat entertainment system in my spot didn’t work, but those things are kind of garbage so no big loss. My son watched a movie most of the time so I just read, which is just fine by me. Air Canada did let me check my Freewheel attachment in oversize baggage without issue or extra charges which somewhat surprised me but was great.

We arrived in St. Johns mid after noon to what seemed like a very small airport. Though I’m told it was expanded in the last year. A weird note about accessibility at St. John’s airport, because of those recent expansions the elevator that brings you down from arrival to baggage claim puts you on the wrong side of the airport where you would normally meet people after picking up you bags. You then have to walk back into the airport to get back to baggage claim. It was fine just a bit odd and not well signed.

Since we were doing a lot of traveling with a youngster we decided to spend one night in St. John’s to give ourselves a break. Nothing in St. John’s in the summer is a bargain and we decided to stay someplace nice since it was only one night anyway. We decided on the The Jag Hotel at 115 George St W. My understanding is that the only accessible rooms are ones that have a single king bed. We decided we need two beds however. Since my accessibility needs are mostly just space in the room we decided on the room with double queen beds. It ended up being a great room and the only issue I had was the height of bathroom sink.

Breakfast was included in our room as well so we ate at the adjoined restaurant call Exile. It was quite nice and comfortable. The breakfast that was included was simple but good and they had a small kids menu as well. I’m sure their lunch and dinner would be good but I didn’t have the time to try either.

Later that morning we took a cab to the Rooms art gallery. I didn’t really consider trying to get an accessible cab since my chair will fit in the trunk of most cars. One interesting thing we found was it seems that most of the cabs carry kids booster seats with them. This is big change from Toronto where I’ve never seen that option. At first taking a cab seem silly since the museum was not very far from the hotel. Once I saw just how steep the hill was though it became clear at the cab was worth it.

The Rooms was very nice with a good number of interesting things to see for kids and adults alike. A lot of the exhibits are about the history of Newfoundland so being our first time there it was some great background history to take in. The restaurant at the Rooms had a good reputation so we decided to stay for lunch as well. Part of the appeal is the view, unfortunately that day there was a thick fog that had set in and we couldn’t even see down to the water. I was also a bit disappointed by the kids menu. The options were fine but the portion was too small for even a kindergartner who tends to eat well.

The rest of the trip was spent visiting my parents and traveling around the Bonavista - Bonaventure area. We did a lot of driving and found a few icebergs we could check out from the small beaches near the road. It was neat to see just how many small beaches there were along this coast. All of them made up of rough sand or more likely small stones. Having my FreeWheel when trying get around these areas was wonderful. It meant that I can push myself along all of the dirt road and grassy areas. I was able to get into a lot more place to take photos on my own that I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.

The highlight of these day trips was going out on the water with Discovery Sea Adventures. My wife and I got suited up in our bright orange survival gear and went out in an inflatable boat for a 3 hour tour. It happened to be a pretty cold, wet and windy day so although it seems crazy at first, we were both very thankful for pumpkin suits. The two guides operates a small inflatable boat that seats only a few people. We were only 10 people including out guides that day. Once we left the harbour we took our time going out past the Bonavista lighthouse and then down the coast. We were able to see a few different kinds of seabirds including puffins. There was one small island that we came across with high cliff sides, there were hundreds, possibly thousands of birds circling it. It was pretty great to watch them swoop and circle back all in a group. It made me think of the kind of thing you’d see in a planet earth movie. As you can see from my photo we managed to get fairly close to what the captain called a medium sized iceberg. By the time we get to the iceberg a fair bit of fog had rolled in as well. We felt fairly alone out there next to what seemed like a large iceberg from water level. We could see some clear ice down the middle in a vertical line. We were told this meant that the iceberg had melted and refroze in that area. We made a few circles around it slowly and spent a while there in what seemed like silence before heading back north up the coast. The trip back up the coast was much faster as the board was really cruising along. The fog was reasonably thick and we felt very far off shore. Looking around there were a lot of times that I couldn’t see land in any direction. I thought about what it must be like for the commercial fishermen 30 kilometers offshore for days at a time.

I’ve spent a lot of time on boats over the years and don’t need a great deal of accommodations. I got some help to transfer from my chair down into the boat and onto a seat. From there I was able to get comfortable and have a few places to hold on to as we went along. It was a bit tricky keeping my camera in a dry bag , holding on and picked the camera up when I wanted to. I didn’t not take a ton of photos out on the water as I thought it was best to just try and take in the experience instead.

The rest of our days were slow, visiting a few small towns in the area including Port Rexton and Trinity. Mostly a tourist spot now and not quite at high season yet it was very quiet. There is a lovely small church and graveyard in town. This is the third church to stand on the same spot. St. Paul’s Anglican was built in 1892. It holds some very nice stained glass as well and is worth the time to pop inside.

In what seemed like a true Newfoundland experience we walked down to the pier and bought some cheap lobster out of the sea from a fisherman who is a family friend. Our son was very excited to get a giant bucket of water from the ocean to boil them in. Although he didn’t end up eating any of it (we thought it was wonderful) it was a great experience all the same.

The trip home was thankfully uneventful, other than a 4 year old who doesn’t stop talking for a second during a 3 hour call ride He did enjoy watching planes from the windows in the airport though. A flight and a long cab right home in bad Toronto traffic and we were glad to be home. We’ll probably got back to Newfoundland again in the coming years. Although we’ll try and spend more of our time this coming year up at the family cottage and maybe visiting some other interesting places in Ontario.