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One of my favorite hobbies is traveling. I love viewing North America's beautiful lands and wish to experience the pleasure of visiting more continents overseas. My family finds joy in traveling as well. No wonder we visited Canada when I was ten years old.

During the Christmas vacation of 1995, my church pastor decided to take me, my brother, and my mother out of my hometown of Marion, Indiana for a few days to see Windsor, Ontario. Aside from the city's close families, friends, and a strong bondage with comic strip character Garfield, Marion can occasionally become quite boring to us. My mother wanted to go someplace that is different, something that is foreign. Canada was the answer.

My pastor drove my family and me out of Marion in his blue Buick car on a chilly and cloudy afternoon. As we traveled through Indiana's gently rolling hills on Interstate 69, we listened to some radio tunes that received heavy rotation in the mid 90s, such as "Time" by Hootie and the Blowfish. After we crossed the Indiana-Michigan border, my pastor turned onto Interstate 94 that leads to Detroit, which is just a mile shy of Windsor's city limits. Later in the evening, after my pastor experienced difficulties finding the correct directions to get to our hotel (Detroit is one big city of nearly one million people as of 2009), we were finally settled in our hotel rooms after spending a day on the road.

The next morning, my family, my pastor and I were on our way to see Canada. My pastor drove us through Downtown Detroit's streets that were filled with sluggish commuting traffic, and we finally reached a toll booth that transports drivers via tunnel. Actually, there were two entrances that connect Windsor and Detroit. The other way to get to Windsor is by driving on the Ambassador Bridge. This bridge, which looks like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, looked very high over the Detroit River. I noticed that the traffic on this bridge was traveling very slowly. My mother complained about the Ambassador Bridge being so high over the river. I'm assuming she was afraid that the bridge is going to collapse as we literally sat in the traffic above the Detroit River. She demanded that we use the tunnel instead. The tunnel it was. And traveling in it was amazing. There were bright lights inside, and I kept wondering how a sturdy tunnel such as this could hold so much water that surrounded us.

Finally, we all crossed the international border into one of Canada's most southernmost cities: Windsor, Ontario. It was just like any other American city. There were a lot of beautiful homes at the skirts of Windsor. The green entrance signs looked just like the entrance signs back in the United States. There was one thing I noticed that was different about Windsor: its speed limit signs were printed using metric units (kilometers per hour) instead of the United States' standard system (miles per hour).

During the visit, the gang visited a shopping mall in Windsor. Unfortunately, I didn't buy anything, but my brother purchased a handsome picture frame that had a portrait of former Orlando Magic player Anfernee Hardaway on it. We then went to a pet store to look at some animals. Some were cute; others looked scary, more notably the reptiles, especially the lizard.

Before we returned to the United States, again, because of my mother's apprehensive ways about taking the Ambassador Bridge, we took the tunnel. As we were returning to our hotel rooms, I sat comfortably in the backseat of my pastor's Buick, recapturing my unforgetful visit to Canada. I want to go back to the country, too. This time, it's visiting the province of Quebec.

Source

Rand McNally - "The Road Atlas '05" (2005)

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