Number of Miles Driven: 154

States Driven Through: Ontario 

Hours Driven: 4.5 hours total (Toronto traffic...ughhh)


The sun rises around 5:45/6, so most of the kids were up and talking before I preferred to be, but we were aiming to leave early so we could get into Toronto for the zoo. We hit some bumps with helpfulness from the kids, but we pushed through and had the campsite packed up by 9:30. I was tasked with buying ice but the main office at the campground was closed, so I went to a gas station and decided to go ahead and get gas. We’ve been confused how the gas works because the signs say 154.9 – we’re assuming it’s not $154/gallon or $1.54/gallon, but we’re not sure what it is. $1.54 per liter? I had to prepay and I honestly had no idea what to ask for – so I put “$40” thinking that is probably a little less than we needed. Apparently, it’s 154.9 cents per liter (never would have guessed that – it equates to about $4.50/gallon), so my $40 didn’t go far. I barely got up to half a tank – oh well, good enough to get to Toronto.

The next campground was Bronte Creek Provincial Park and it was about an hour away. I spent the drive arguing with my FSA people about a denied claim, but otherwise, it was an easy drive. We set up our tent and as soon as we finished it started raining – perfect timing!

Next, we made the supposed 1-hour drive to the zoo on the east side of Toronto (really 1.5-1.75 hours), and by the time we arrived the rain had stopped and it was sunny and muggy. The zoo was divided into continents like the NC Zoo, so we started in Africa. Unfortunately, many of the animals were not visible – no elephants, no giraffes, no cheetahs; and the animals we did see were sleeping. The highlights were the polar bear, the tiger, and a hyena. The hyena was surprisingly large, but as ugly as expected. There was a lot of walking and intermittent raining which equated to a lot of complaining – we actually had a mini-powwow to hopefully shift attitudes and that seemed to help because the rest of the afternoon was pleasant. Another highlight were the bathroom sinks – each sink had a soap dispenser on the left, the faucet, and then a hand dryer on the right (that looked like a second faucet head).



The Hyena exhibit




Dani was VERY tired of walking - good thing she's got a sweet big brother


Of course Dani wanted the $150 stuffed polar bear

She insisted on riding the carousel

and Dani wanted to go too

It should be no surprise that half of them bought stuffies

We left the zoo around 5:00 which meant driving back through Toronto during rush-hour – ughhh.. What should have been an hour trip turned into a snaking 1.5+ hour trek back to camp. We were all hungry and tired – Dani fell asleep in the van. 

When we got back to camp, Andrew was put in charge of making the fire, and it took a bit to get going (he tried his lent trick), so we didn’t eat our hot dogs until 7:30. We had another night of s’mores and then the kids played on the campground playground – so the night ended really well. We had a family meeting in the tent right before we went to sleep, and we each shared what we could do differently to make the trip better (it had felt like a long four days with shorter tempers, more annoying behaviors, and more bickering than usual). Each kid had pretty good insight into what they were doing that was less than desirable. Michael and I said we’d try to let smaller things go, have more patience, and not worry so much about certain behaviors. For example, I got upset because Andrew burned 3 marshmallows and then went for a fourth. Big deal…so we buy another bag of marshmallows. I’m going to channel Elsa…”Let it go!” Everybody seemed on board and eager for a fresh start to the trip – recognizing that we need to give extra grace and be more thoughtful than normal since we’re in small spaces with limited sleep. With that, lights were out by 10:15. Let’s see how tomorrow goes 😊