This past weekend was a lot of driving. Like a LOT. A quick mapping at Google says 1,230 miles (25 hours) over three days. And it sure felt like that much. Bracken was a champ at the wheel. I don't know how he did it.
When we arrived in Minneapolis Sunday night, I was exhausted. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
We left Burlington Thursday night and camped at Grand Isle State Park on Lake Champlain. Friday morning we set off to Montreal and the Apple store there. One of the button's on my iPhone 4 had decided to stop working, so I wanted to see what my options would be.
The Apple store was right off the highway, so I made an appt. and we set off.
At the border we got searched. Not just questioned (and oh there were questions!), but asked to pull over, vacate the vehicle and stand behind the yellow line. Luckily, our stories and the van matched up (duh!) and the officials let us bypass a full immigration search (I don't even want to imagine what that would've been like) and sent us on our way.
Entering the city of Montreal:
For those of you who don't know, Montreal is in Québec - a very French-speaking Province. Which made the Apple store fun.
Waiting for my appointment. We were an hour late, but they were awesome and got us in right away.
Even the keyboards are different:
It turns out I needed a replacement phone, but out of warranty, it'd cost me a bit. We figured I could wait a few days and get one back in the states to avoid the exchange rate and Canadian taxes.
So onward.
We crossed the border into Ontario and headed north along the river, stopping to camp at Driftwood Provincial Park. Which was awesome. The view and atmosphere was perfect and I was actually able to sit down for more than 10 minutes and absorb myself in a book.
We both went on a quick run (separately since I wasn't going as far). I quickly turned around after experiencing the state of the trails. There had been a crazy storm earlier in the year that destroyed tons of trees and made a mess of the trails. When the ranger told us we'd have to "step over logs" I didn't envision the depth of destruction or continuous "stepping over logs" we had to do. I stuck to the gravel road for the rest of my run while Bracken braved the mosquitos & terrain.
And I took pictures.
Of flowers.
With our van in the background.
And the sunset.
At close to 10:00pm.
Relaxing is pretty awesome.
Saturday morning we continued on. I really wanted some farm fresh maple syrup, so we found a Farmer's Market in North Bay.
Of course they only took cash, so we headed to the nearby ATM for some Canadian funny money.
Syrup, check. Lemon lavender cookies, check. More cookies & snacks, check. Just enough cash left over for some dairy ice cream along the way.
The city of North Bay:
We stopped along the road for lunch. A little more relaxing snuck in there:
The road is lined with trees, with only an occasional glimpse of the water.
Next stop: The Upper Peninsula of Michigan.