The photo above was taken outside our hotel window about an hour ago. We are now safely holed up at the Waterfront Hotel in downtown Burlington. Yes, those are breakers. There’s something about Burlington’s waterfront that gives it impressive waves when stormy weather comes calling. We’d give you a closer look, but we’re not going out there in this weather.
We were warned of the weather heading back from the Great Wolf Lodge at Niagara Falls. An approaching snowstorm was promising winds and around 10-20 centimetres of snow. We would have stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge, but the place has filled up. And the drive back from Niagara started out well enough: there was good visibility, there wasn’t much traffic, and the drivers that were on the road were respecting the conditions. However, as we rounded Hamilton, we could tell that the conditions were getting worse, and we were losing the light of the day. After Burlington, there’s a long run up Highway 6 where flat fields promise lots of blowing snow. There’s also few decent places to stay between Burlington and Kitchener.
So, with the last best chance of a decent hotel right nearby, we decided to pull off and take an extra night at a hotel. The kids are treating this like an adventure, and it kind of is. The pizza place has been called and a delivery has been promised in about a half hour. The hotel is quite nice, and the room is half the price of what the Great Wolf Lodge room would have been. We’ll set out tomorrow morning. Hopefully it shouldn’t be much more than an hour to get home.
The Great Wolf Lodge is the next thing to Disneyworld for our kids. They were so excited, and are still on quite a high. And it is a good respite from winter to be able to enjoy these summer activities in heated comfort. Even after we checked out, we were allowed to stick around in the watermark, and Vivian dragged Erin to all the watersides up to three in the afternoon. Nora checked out early, and she and I went to the arcade and used our free token voucher to win 330 prize tickets (Nora does a mean whack-a-mole). All in all, a successful outing, and another good memory for our kids.
