Ontario Bound April 12-15, 2023

We left fairly early in the morning...too early for me to be thinking straight, though! I had packed a lot of cheese for our trip...and left it all in Grandma's fridge! Apparently they enjoyed it for us. We passed someone in the ditch just past a stretch of black ice. Fortunately we had safe travels. We were a ways further before we saw an emergency vehicle heading to the scene. It would not be fun to end up in the ditch on a lonely stretch of highway! You might not even have cell service if you end up in a particularly remote ditch.

Evelyn asked for some yarn to finger-knit while were driving. An excellent way to stay occupied. :)

We are heading back home. Trying to stay cheerful and look forward to what lays ahead.

We spent our first night in Edmonton, the same hotel as we enjoyed on the way there. It was cheaper than two very basic and less pleasant motel rooms in the middle of nowhere halfway through Ontario...because we can book just one big family room. Plus with a kitchen we can cook a dinner and not have to buy a greasy heavy deep fried dinner. I had a super easy to cook meal packed. And we made do with whatever dishes they had available.

The pool was nice, and hopefully helped us sleep better.  Or maybe it made Matthew sick? Either way, fortunately he wasn't too sick for too long.

Off through the prairies. Somewhere along here we picked up a little rock. The van started making a strange loud noise. We pulled over in a town at a Canadian Tire. Would anyone be able to look at it? Nope. And no one else in town could until maybe tomorrow, if we were lucky. So I chatted with my Dad who assured us that we just had a rock in the brake of our rear tire, and we could keep driving and ignore it, because it wouldn't wreck anything or cause any trouble with braking. So all in all we stopped no longer than half an hour, and went back cruising on our way.

We decided to try driving through the US this time. We've always thought we should try it. It's supposed to save you 2 hours or so of driving time. The border crossing was annoying, though. Three of the kids only have birth certificates, not passports. So we had to wait 10 minutes while they processed them manually. And we had to throw out our grapes (from Chili or the US, not sure) and apples. Good thing we hadn't brought all that cheese. And we'd had to gobble all our sausage before getting to the border. Once over, the terrain looked about the same as Canada. Only we had a lot of strange small roads to wiggle over on until we got to a more major highway.

They had a reasonable hotel to stay at, though. We had a nice sized family room, again. And were able to enjoy an indoor kitchen.

This time we had some more Mr. Noodles. They had a really nice breakfast bar in the morning too. Which we took time to enjoy before hitting the road in the morning. Yum.

New territory. Not very epic, though. The signs are weird, and everything is in miles.

We were told not to go near Chicago, because if you have to stop there, it's crazy to get out in the city. We thought we'd be smart, and just drive through it, without stopping. Of course we needed a bathroom stop. And couldn't find a bathroom!! The first stop was not a public service station. The second one had no public washroom. Finally the third one had a toilet. What a waste of time!!

Back on the road again. We spent our last night in a very cheesy looking motel, and one of our two rooms smelled like smoke. So happy to leave the place in the morning. Going to be back in Canada soon!!

Crossing the border took a lot of time. Unlike in the prairies, where we were the only ones in the lineup, here we had a long wait until it was our turn. And the birth certificates took a while to process again. I'm not sure it was any faster after all. Plus we have to look up all these toll highway things online when we get home and pay for the bits through the Chicago area that we think we went through, and hope we don't miss any.

But we made it home safely! What an adventure!!!