Canada....and Back

View from Split Rock Light house

Friends, few weeks back, I had an adventurous trip to Canada and back to US. Note: DO NOT TRY IT.

I and one crazier guy were thinking where to go on weekend midnight. After lot of checking and thinking, we agreed to visit Duluth. Point to note is, I am living in Minnesota (U.S.A.) which is a border state to Ontario (Canada). The border city is Duluth. Our plan was to reach there early morning and take rest for some time before exploring Duluth. So we reached early morning and were looking for a silent place to sleep. We passed from a place where lots of Cops were there due to some issue going on. As soon as we passed, one cop caught us, courtesy of my crazy friend, he was about to hit a curb and cop saw that. He was a good guy, he left us just like that.

Light House

We roamed around the area for some time and parked our car to have some sleep. Morning, we got fresh and walked along side Superior lake. It's the largest lake of North America, it’s so big, that they should rename it as ocean. Well the walk, bridges and all were good but we were not able to enjoy the fall color as its still weeks for that.

Next we moved to the Light house. It’s good to visit the light house if you want to enjoy history as well as beautiful area near the lake. Split rock Lighthouse is one of the picturesque lighthouse of US. It was built after a famous storm in which 29 ships were lost. Until 1969 before retiring, it played a very good role of guiding ships at lake. Now we were feeling damn hungry, so we started looking for some lunch. Unfortunately the only veggie-Subway was closed due to Labor Day, so we managed with DQ.

Boat for display @ Duluth

Now, we would have seen Gooseberry falls but we were more interested in adding a Country to our list. Hence we continued our journey towards border.  The most hilarious thing about Canada-US border was that there is no proper border. Until you have already stepped foot inside Canada. We just wanted to see border from a distance, but we never knew when we have crossed US. There is just a one way bridge and as soon as you cross it, you will be in Canada. Now you have to pass immigration to enter in any country. There was a car line ahead of us who were going for immigration check. We didn’t had any plans/passport/visa to enter Canada, so we planned to pull into a side parking and take a U turn. Shit happens and it happened-that lot was inside Canada. You have to cross a truck line to reach there, we didn’t knew that it was a truck line.

Morning @ Duluth

Siren started buzzing and Canada Border patrol came rushing towards us. They were the one who confirmed us, that we are actually in Canada and now we had to go through Immigration. We explained them our situation. The guy who caught was a good guy, he asked us to sit and wait for immigration officer call. We were slight tensed, actually waiting for the unknown was killing us. We didn’t know what’s going to happen as it was the first unknown border crossing. Soon the same guy called us and guided us to sign a paper. It said that we are withdrawing our visa application which we never applied. Instead we entered.

Welcome to Ontario

He explained us that it’s the best and fastest way to get out of Canada. He was such a good guy, that he even called America and informed them about our commencing. So, American immigration will not question much. We thanked him and came back to America. As expected, they also asked us to pull our car side and enter for immigration check. We explained them the situation and they checked our identities. Soon they were able to grasp it and informed us not to do it again. Sometimes border patrol may not be able to identify us especially without passports. Hence it’s good to avoid such situations.

Finally, we were back in our home country-America. Sounds funny, still true in certain ways.

Then we headed towards our home in Minneapolis with a pizza break on the way.

PS: Let me know, if you wanna see a video of me entering Canada, it would be risky to post here.

Its Vegas… Baby

Ceasers

Las Vegas or just Vegas is most mast (happening) place of Nevada, US. It’s famous for Gambling, Shopping, Dining and … last but not the least- Night Life. Its major attraction is gambling and night life, I was there for 2 nights and was playing all time. So you can imagine, how it is. Some people even call it as The Entertainment Capital of the World. I must say, Vegas has the best hotels I have ever seen. All the hotels have a different architecture, some are theme hotels. For example, there is a hotel-Venetian. It wonderfully depicts Vatican City architecture. They have even created the artificial Tiber River in which you can spend some romantic moments in a boat. There are many hotels to talk about, will come to that part later in the post.

New York

We started for Vegas on Friday Eve, reached by 8 PM local time. The most amazing part of the trip was, we visited their at a Friend's Bachelor party. What could be the best place to have a bachelor party other than Vegas, at least I hoped that.  So, we reached at the airport and waited for our friends to join, once the crew was set to go. We checked in our hotels and I must say it was huge. As we wanted to be on top floor, we got 26th floor room. When we were fresh and fired up, we took a Mono Rail to MGM Grand Hotel for DJ Tiesto. The Club was swarming with people, it took us 15 minutes to enter and have a proper space to dance. We danced around 3-4 hours and next plan was to hit one more club, but due to some confusions, we reached a wrong club. Still few people wanted to go original one, so we waited for our car and went there. Even after all the efforts, we dropped our plan of going in. Its cover fee increased as we didn’t used their cab. Bummer.

Paris in vegas

Finally we went in Palazzo casino early morning around 3-4 AM. We tried to play Roulette- a crazy one, actually lost some money and slept. Next day, we headed for Indian restaurant, had nice food and started hitting casinos. Due to hot sunny day, we entered in the closest casino near us @ Encore. It has one of the best architecture in Vegas, especially the pool area. It’s like cake for your eyes. Then we entered Wynn, met with rest. Played till night and had few drinks, yea I don't drink but groom made me to take a sip-neat. For a moment, I felt heavy headed and then it was normal.

@ Circus Circus

As per plan, our next adventure was a night club. Beep Beep Beep. Headed to our hotel and then slept. On the last day, we checked out, had lunch and said good byes to our friends as they were heading back. We still had the whole day at our disposal, so we started exploring all the hotels. Starting from Ceasers-A Roman theme hotel with a Colosseum. Nearby we had Bellagio and its famous Fountain. Then we moved to Eiffel Tower-Paris, Brooklyn Bridge-Newyork. Next was Aria, The Cosmopolitan and finally MGM Grand. Since Sun was going down, so we thought its better to collect our bags. When we reached hotel and collected bags, still had some time before we should go airport. Hence we made another stop at Hotel Circus Circus for obviously Circus show, it was good. Then we played for some time there and lost some more money hi hi hi. Their casino was looking like poor people’s casino, but took the same money from us. Presenting a glimpse of Vegas in below video.

Now it was time to reach airport, booked a cab and reached Airport. The trip was good, with a few twist it would have been better, but that’s fine. Next time.

Jewel cave

Jewel Cave Groupy

It’s been a long time that I have written something, just out of laziness. Never the less, now I am back at top speed, will be posting at least 2 articles. In this post, I am going to take you to a cave filled with all the jewels you want.

Our last day @ South Dakota was the most adventurous day of the trip. Last but the best. It started as usual-with late comers joining the club. We had plans of only watching Jewel Cave National Monument and then returning home as one of our crew member had a flight back so we wanted to come back on time. Once we reached cave, we had to wait until the tour started. Note that tours run as per a schedule. So plan accordingly. Authorities took us to a complete dark cave with no lights as they wanted to make it old school. This tour was named as Lantern Tour as we had to carry Lanterns in our hand inside the cave. Thank God we had Led lanterns among with the old gas lanterns.

Outside Jewel Cave

Cave had different kinds of paths which were known as “Fat man’s misery”- A thin area from where, its difficult for fat people to go through, then there was a “long man’s misery”- A place where you have to duck and pass. Overall it was a good experience, actually the best tour of the trip. It can be considered as the desert of our trip, sweet in the last.

As soon as we started heading back home, we started suffering from Diabetes in other words- our adventure doubled. Heaviest rain, I ever saw in lifetime started hitting us badly. It was such a heavy thunderstorm that nothing was visible. Viper was running at top speed, still it was so difficult to drive that I had to pull up car on side. Then I checked one more setting of wiper, which increased its speed. We waited for some time to allow the storm to lower down a bit and then again started our way back.

Great Indian Food

The crew wanted to have Indian food, so we entered in Rapid City, had dinner and then finally started going back. Thunderstorm was still there, it actually accompanied us on the way back to Minnesota. There was one more new thing I learned, when we were passing from cities, there were alarms buzzing, since it was the first time for us to listen to such kind of warnings, we were quite confused with it. Then we checked our mobiles and got to know that there was a Tornado waiting for us, also the radios, warning started saying that take cover now. Since we were late and in the middle of highway, we stopped under a bridge. There was one more car ahead of us, taking shelter. We asked them about the status and were surprised to know that Tornado was right in front of us.

We stayed under the bridge for some time and then continued our journey. Next we stopped for fueling and to get latest update on the current situation. It seems that Tornado wasn’t an issue now, so we took a sigh of relief and next directly stopped in Minnesota-Home Sweet Home.