While I was still living in Chicago, I wanted to legally drink alcohol while I was still younger than 21 since that’s the legal age in the USA. You always hear about people going to another country and drinking before they were “legal,” and I wanted to do it as well. The obvious choice was Canada since it was so close.

I was 20 and had some time off for spring break so I drove my car from Chicago to Toronto, Canada, which was only about 8 hours.

On the way there, I had to go through border control, and I actually had some issues. The first was that I had not previously booked a hotel or hostel or anything since I wanted to just wing it. They found that incredibly suspicious. I suppose with my lack of specific destination other than “Toronto” and with the way my car looked:

They decided to pull me aside and grill me with questions. After that, they wanted to search my car, undoubtedly looking for drugs. I had nothing to hide and it’s not like I could have told them no anyways so they started rummaging through everything. Lo and behold, I had forgotten about some cheap throwing knives I had purchased a long time prior. I had absentmindedly put them in the little storage pocket on the driver’s side door a couple years prior and forgot about them. I never noticed them because I had later shoved my collapsible umbrella in the pocket above the knives, hiding them from view. I never pulled out the umbrella either, and so the knives remained hidden and forgotten.

They pulled the rusted throwing knives out and very accusingly asked me what those were about. I mumbled the truth and told them that they could throw them away if they wanted to, which they did. After a bit more stink eye from the border guards, they finally let me continue.

I arrived in Toronto and the first few hotels I checked had no vacancy. I called around, though, and I found one which had a room, although it was regrettably a bit more expensive than I was hoping for. Without many options, I booked a room and went to bed for the night since it was a long drive to get there.

The next few days I simply walked around and checked out downtown Toronto. I quite liked it and I felt like it had a more rugged charm to it than a lot of other cities I have been in within Northern America.

 

 

 

 

 

The tower also has a glass floor that you can stand on (and jump on, which I did).

It was pretty fun to watch the people who were too squeamish to even stand on the glass floor look on in horror as I leaped up and down on the glass.

 

 

 

…and I thought they were awesome!

I was only there for a few days and I didn’t do too much else other than walking around during the day. I went to the bar near the hotel a few times during the evenings and got a few drinks in a bar, all before I was 21, so mission accomplished.

After Toronto, I went to Niagara Falls. The waterfall was pretty impressive, and since it was winter, the mist that the waterfall spat out made the air quite chilly.

 

 

After that, I hopped back in my car and drove all the way back to Chicago.

I would like to say that the drive back was uneventful, but I unfortunately had an allergy attack sometime about halfway home in Michigan. I don’t have any known allergies, so it was quite foreign and surprising to me.

As I was driving, I started having some minor issues breathing, but luckily nothing too bad. What was the hardest to deal with was my eyes watering up so much that I had troubles seeing. I pulled over for a little to see if it would pass, but it didn’t seem to be getting any better. I needed to get out of there.

There were a lot of alfalfa fields and around, so I assume it had to do something with that, but I grew up around lots of alfalfa and hay in Wyoming and have never had an issue, nor have I had one since.

Not knowing what else to do, I got back on the highway and drove slowly while alternating rubbing an eye and getting as much water out as I could before switching to the other eye, trying to always have at least one eye open and relatively tear-free.

After about 30 or so minutes of that hell, my eyes started to clear up and I seemed to be out of the sphere of whatever it was that was causing some allergic reaction.

After that, it was smooth sailing and I got home without any further hitches. I had a good few days in Canada but regrettably only saw a tiny fraction. I definitely plan on going back one day and doing some more extensive traveling and backpacking.

I have also had no more allergic reactions ever since that one time. I guess I must simply be allergic to Michigan.