A Blast from the Past (1986)

I found a letter that I did not send dated August 8 1986 to my brother and his family when they worked at Duke University.
Dear Chong and Margaret,
Come your birthday (Chong's)it will be a month less a day since we came home from our Grand Tour. We enjoyed and recall with pleasure our visit with you.David is very taken with James. We did go on the last section of the Skyline Drive(105 miles) and came out to a town called Front Royal. We stayed there for the evening and continued on to Rochester in the morning.
The slow drive along the Blue Ridge at an average height of 2500'was refreshing;we saw over 50 deers. The waves of neighbouring hilltops entangled in mists were a delight to David, the older ones were too sophisticated to show enthusiasm,while we were only too willing to join David. From Rochester we re- entered Canada at Niagara,an area familiar to Ian.We proceeded to behave like tourists,classy ones of course. The kids and Ian saw the falls from a helicopter and took video from that perspective.An added bonus was the presence of rainbows. Hunger struck and we had to look for a place where hamburgers were not 4.50 each.
After lunch a short drive took us to Welland where Ian showed the kids the various houses he had stayed in when they first came fro England.We stayed at a motel a little way outside of Niagara but still on route to Toronto. On reaching Toronto we went to an area on Lake Ontario developed as an Amusement Park known as Ontario Place.Quite middle-brow after Smithsonian Institute but fun in its own way.An item of technological excellence is the facility for showing films on a curved screen bigger than cinemascope,as well as ,an almost 3-D effect. Everybody let their hair down and did silly things like going in paddleboats and down water chutes. We did not go far that day but bedded down in a motel called The Flying Dutchman just outside Oshawa. The next day we headed for Brockville to visit CJFR,a radio station where Ian Had worked for 2 years.His ego was pleasantly assuaged when the boss's son showed him a picture of himself (Ian) working as a broadcaster at the Montreal Expo in 1967,the picture is still on their public relations portfolio. Having done the nostalgia bit we proceeded to Ottawa and checked in at a Best Western motel. As it was still early in the evening we took the kids to have a look at the Parliament buildings and was able to grab the last official guided tour. We planned to stay another day and night in Ottawa and thus was able to visit Ian's brother Richard who lived 30 miles outside of Ottawa. From Ottawa it was a long drive to Edmunston,New Brunswick. Mercifully, the Best Western motel we checked in had a heated pool with a lounge area and the kids and us were able to unwind. Next day was a long drive home. We got a lot of satisfaction out of the venture.