Day Five--Detour!

We left Chicago after breakfast and headed 15 minutes in the opposite direction of where we needed to go so that we could see the original McDonald's. They have made the original into a museum....that's only open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. So, we settled for taking a picture in front of the sign.

Then, we tried to head East to South Bend, Indiana so that we could see Notre Dame University. I think the GPS lady had some sort of nervous breakdown today...half the time we weren't where she thought we were and was leading us in circles. Once we finally figured out how to get on the highway (no entrance ramps!), we finally made it to Notre Dame. AWESOME university!! The drive up with the gold dome of the basilica is breath-taking. We drove around a bit and spent some time at the Visitor's Center and the bookstore. I tried to get the kids interested in possibly wanting to attend Notre Dame someday, I even bought Thomas a t-shirt...they think the only places to go are A&M and UT. Not only is it beautiful, but it has lots of history and student pride. It is very Catholic and my history of Catholicism was about 15 years ago so I'm sure there was more symbolism I should have understood than what I could remember from college history!

While in the Visitor Center Scott picked up a brochure on a hotel with an indoor water park. We've seen them all over up here and yesterday he remarked that he thought we were missing out by not staying at one of them. So, when we got in the car he called and made us a reservation at one for tonight! We ended up cancelling our room in Toledo and stopping in Shipshewana, Indiana for the night. Very rural, very pretty....out in the middle of nowhere. It's in a large Mennonite community. We passed at least half a dozen horse and buggies on the two lane highway here. Tomorrow I'm going to try and make Scott stop at some of the markets we passed on the way in. We hadn't told the kids about the water park in the hotel and when we pulled up it looked from the front like any other hotel. Grace asked if they had and a pool and when I said I didn't know, Thomas replied that they probably didn't from the looks of the hotel! We had them fooled all the way until we walked into the splash park! They were totally stunned! They played in there for about 3 hours. They were prunes when we got back to the room! They have a lazy river, two huge water slides that even went outside the building, and an entire play system. Mandy had fun playing in the kiddie pool area and floating in the Lazy River with me and Scott. WHY we don't have these in Texas I don't know. Well, I think one just opened in Grapevine...I may have to get a season pass. No oppressive Texas heat, no sunblock, children contained, relatively low-level threat of drowning...it's great! The name of the hotel is Splash Universe. It's great. Super clean, has a poolside cafe, restaurant, soda shop all here in the hotel. Our room has a king bed and then bunkbeds for the kids. If you should ever find yourself in Shipshewana, Indiana with kids, this place is a MUST!!

We don't have a top 5 tonight from either of them because they are passed out in the aforementioned bunk beds. But, I'm sure they would have all been about the water park anyway!

Due to our little water park detour we'll have a loooong drive to Niagara Falls tomorrow. I'm sincerely hoping that GPS lady has recovered from her psychotic break and can coherently lead us to Canada otherwise, it'll be Scott having the nervous breakdown and psychotic break!

Blessings,
Leslie