Hi, friends! I am alive. It has been so hectic to try to find the time to blog.
I know blogging and even IG might be going out of “style”, but I love sharing memories of what my family is doing through blogging so I have it to look back on.
I wanted so bad this summer to get back into a blogging routine but it didn’t happen. Being realistic now with how busy life is, I hope I can pop in whenever I have some down time to let y’all know how The Bolin Bunch is doing.
This summer we hadn’t planned to go anywhere on vacation. We are saving for Liz a new car and we knew we had a huge trip planned for summer 2023.
But, the closer it got to the end of summer we realized we wanted to do “something” and make some memories with the girls. This translates to I finally wore Chris down where he agreed to let us go somewhere. HA
He looked at the budget and told me I can give you xxxx amount of dollars and we have 4 days. So he told me I could whatever I wanted within those boundaries.
Challenge accepted!
We thought it would be fun to go on an actual road trip. No plans really and just see where we ended up.
The planner in my had a hard time with this and knew I wanted at least one destination. So we agreed that we wanted to make it to Niagara Falls in Buffalo, NY at some point.
We told the girls the day before to pack for 4 days and that we were leaving in the morning. They were so excited that we were going to have a mini vacay!
We left super early on a Sunday morning. And told ourselves we might as well get all the way to Buffalo, NY in one day. It was a 12.5 drive there, but we knew we could do it!
On the way there we did a lot of sight seeing.
About the time we were ready for lunch, we realized we were near Bloomington, Indiana. Since I am a HUGE Karen Kingsbury fan I knew this is where all her Baxter books were based. So we had to stop by Lake Monroe and have lunch there, just like the Baxter family does for 4th of July! It was the perfect setting!
We also had to see Bloomington Hospital where Dr. John Baxter works.
Next, we were able to stop in Akron, OH and see LeBron James’ Ohio house. There were tall gates and security guards all out in the front of it, so we didn’t get very good pictures, but it was so cool to see the house he built during his rookie season.
We then knew we were close to Canton, OH, which is home to Candy Apples Dance Studio from the show Dance Moms that we are fans of. So we had to stop and check out the studio.
Chris was getting a little tired of our sight seeing at this point and we were making slow progress so from that point forward we just drove and drove and drove to NY. It was beautiful countryside and we finally made it to a Buffalo, NY late that Sunday night.
The next morning we were up super early and ready to make the most of the day! Niagara Falls was the first thing on the agenda.
We arrived by 7:00 a.m. and got free parking! We also had the park pretty much to ourselves. We were able to walk all over the park to see all the different views of the falls. We were in awe of how breathtaking they were!
We wanted to go on the Maid of the Mist boat tour and they opened at 9:00 a.m., so we got in line around 8:30 to be one of the first in line.
This smart planning paid off and we were able to get on the first boat tour of the day! The Maid of the Mist was well worth the money and memories were made here I’ll cherish forever.
I’ll never forget laughing and laughing at how soaking wet we got on the boat when we went under Horseshoe Falls. So much fun!
The tour lasted about 30 minutes and by the time we got off the boat, the park was starting to get super crowded, so we were glad we got there early and beat the crowd.
Well, that’s all I have time for today! I’ll come back later this week and finish the trip up.
Hope y’all have a blessed week!
Niagara falls makes a perfect weekend getaway! We went on the Maid of the Mist tour too and had such a fun time getting soaked.