Trip - Week 13

Here are some thoughts from June's diary and Arnie's reminiscences.

The Northern States we went through on Highway 2 have many Rest Areas and places to pull off for a break or a coffee. Canadian highways have very few. The Maritimes have a few. Our "stops" are gas stations. The Interstates have nice rest areas every 50 miles.
The contrasts are interesting. In Ashland,Wisconsin (population 17,000), there was an ad in the paper boasting that the Ashland Clinic now has the latest MRI technology. In many little stores there is a poster and a can asking for donations for a little boy who had a car accident so his family could pay for the operations and the medical bills. This shows what's wrong with both countries. In Canada a small town like Ashland would not have an MRI but the kid would have had medicare at no cost.
We have never seen so many Finnish names as we did in Minnesota and Wisconsin -- or Lutheran Churches.
You can see where an asphalt siding salesman came through, followed by an asbestos siding salesman, and then an aluminum one, a steel siding one, and finally a vinyl siding salesman. Probably the same guy over the past 50 years.
The poor guy in St. John's who left there as a tyke some 50 years ago and returned from New Jersey for a family reunion. He had not seen his 95+ year-old grandfather since then or met many of his cousins. His Travel Agent sent him to St. John, New Brunswick, instead of Newfoundland! He realized the mistake when they got off the plane so he phoned his agent who said she could get him to Montreal for an extra $500. He rented a car and got to the reunion and few days too late.
Many roads and sites reminded us of places we had been before: BC, Northern Saskatchewan, Maui. If you were plopped down in most of Canada you couldn't tell where you were unless it was on a sea coast or Regina. All are beautiful.
People are friendly everywhere if you are friendly to them.
For the three plus weeks the sniper was active ruined many travel plans. We would have liked to see Washington, DC, and the historic places around there. It also ruined TV and the news as CNN kept going over and over every little detail with every possible jerk of an expert in the world who knew a little about nothing. It is a terrible thing to say but they seemed the most excited when there was another killing to report so they could get away from being bored.
As Michael Moore (Bowling For Columbine) said, when the sniper warned " ... your children are not safe," "There was no hue and cry about the 40 children shot and killed in the same three weeks throughout the US of A."
Why don't you ever see a headline: Atheist Kills Family? Why is it almost always some religious nut?
Arnie had grits for the first time.
Cod fish, catfish, all white fish tastes the same.
Ferry boats are fun.
If we ever get a Van or a small RV it has to have a bathroom and air conditioning. A shower we can do without.
Arnie's years of staying in hotels and motels soured him on travelling. He could never sleep well the first night in a strange bed but on this trip he started to welcome a motel every second night.
We've always hated eating three meals a day plus two coffee breaks in restaurants but this life has cut that down to one or two a day. Being able to stop anywhere, enjoy a quiet spot and have a coffee or a small snack for lunch is great.
Many times on the side roads we would be the only car for hours. We went about 80 kph (50 mph to you Bob) and it was relaxing.
Why don't you ever see a headline: Psychic Wins Lotto?
At Lake Itasca Campground we saw a family with six kids and two adults pulling into the campground with a home-made open trailer loaded with tents, equipment, toys, bikes and the kids. Very enterprising.
Passed through Lake George. Lots of gift shops. Tiny wooden US Post Office not much bigger than an outhouse. Town reminded us of Waskesiu.
We met a young couple at Ontonagon River's Agate Falls. They had two dogs: Jake and Gypsy. He worked for General Motors and told us that our van was the best thing that GM had ever built. He also told us about varnish in the gas tank.
Finnish saunas: Arnie's mother had a sauna in Finland and then jumped into a snow bank and then a lake in the middle of winter. She said she only did this once. We tried it in Sudbury but it was a nice fall evening and the water wasn't very cold. There is significant shrinkage. It's not that bad if you do it quickly and then run back into the sauna.
Sudbury has been completely changed. We didn't recognize anything downtown. Millions of trees have been planted so it doesn't look like the moon. Falconbridge, where Arnie worked, had not changed very much.
Oastler Lake Campground: Met a Dutch couple from Oshawa. He had worked on the Chevy Vans. Said they were great. We have seen so many on the trip but mostly they were newer.
It was too bad that we had so many delays getting to Toronto as we couldn't stop and see friends -- just family. We even missed Jake's birthday in New York. Hope y'all forgive us.
People are so friendly everywhere. When we got lost several people would say, "Follow me," and take us to where we had to go.
In Brockville June went into a bakery and the young guy asked, "Would you like whole wheat?" "Yes, please." He said, "Sorry we don't have any whole wheat. Do you want Rye bread." "Yes, please." "We don't have any rye." It was like the Monty Python Cheese Skit.
It seems that Quebeckers have grown tired of the "Quebec Libre" politics and they couldn't have been more friendly.
Driving into a campground we saw three deer cross the road in front of us.
Taking the side roads along the north shore of the St. Lawrence is very hilly. We can't remember any in the Rockies with a 14% grade.
Poutine at McDonalds in Regina can't possibly taste as good as in a small Quebec restaurant.
It's hard to sleep on a seven-hour ferry ride starting at midnight going to Newfoundland. Coming back on the ferry it was easier to sleep in one of the cabins even when you forget to turn the thermostat up.
The extra half hour in Newfoundland is no problem if you remember to set your watch ahead.
Just outside port Au Basques, Newfoundland, we stopped for breakfast, after the midnight to seven ferry ride, in a little restaurant, Helene's, that an older couple had just bought. It featured Home Cooked Meals. Everything tasted like fish: the water, the coffee, the tea, the eggs, the hash browns, and the sausages. We thought, "Boy is this going to be a fun week!" We didn't have the heart to tell her. In no other place did this happen; if you ordered seafood, only the seafood tasted like it should. In St. John's Arnie had fish & chips and the fish was so white and tasty that he couldn't believe it was cod.
All through the trip we ate a lot of fresh seafood and it was great; whereas, the beef in the States is terrible. But the bacon is good -- we even found some 'sugar free' bacon which was even better. Some breakfast sausages are fantastic but others are the pits.
We had lobster once! That was when we met Howard and Anne at Peggy's Cove. They wanted to take us out for lobster but the motel owner said it's better to buy them already cooked along with potato salad, etc. They bought four big lobsters and we had a feast. If you think of it, what's the difference between boiling them at home or in a restaurant? Answer: about $20 per person!
One of the best lines was from the young women who booked the Springhill Mine tour. When she found out we were from Saskatchewan she said, "Oh, I have a cousin in Saskatchewan. Her dog ran away and she watched it for three days."
We ate a lot of good Brie. Surprisingly, some makes of American Brie are very good,. which is amazing as their cheddar is terrible.
It's a good thing we have this diary and the pictures because locations and thoughts after three months start getting mixed up. Old age we guess.
There are an awful lot of lighthouses along the Atlantic Coast. At one in PEI we met two Swedes and then two ladies who had just won the gold medal for Bridge at the Seniors' Games.
Riding ferries are fun. Driving on and off is exciting.
Driving an 8-foot high van in high winds is fun. Every wind we've had for 16,000 km has been a head wind or from the side. Never a tail wind.
The tires were due for changing and the front one had a slow leak, but we put it off as the back ones were okay. We booked into the Myrtle Beach Sears Auto Center for our second oil change. A fellow had followed us and when we parked at Sears he came over and told us that the inside of the rear tire had a bulge the size of your fist. We took a look and there it was -- like a balloon ready to explode! So we got four new Michelins! Better on this trip than next summer. We must have a guardian angel (sorta makes an atheist wonder!) because for every problem we've had there has been a good Samaritan to help us out. Like the radiator in Quebec. We drove less than a block and June spotted a 'Radiateur' garage. This is in a town with one gas station and a population of 300. In other cases when we have a problem it's close to a Canadian Tire.
The Michelin tires make the van drive like a Cadillac.
The jacuzzi we had was beautiful but useless; you couldn't even stretch out your legs. Give me a bathtub like they used to have in the old CPR hotels. Three feet high and six feet long -- you could swim in it.
I had a haircut and the barber was completely understandable. I was asking her about alligators and sharks and she started telling me about when she was brought up on the St. John's River in Florida. As she was talking her backwoods accent crept in and I found it more difficult to understand some of it. She had a pet 'gator who would come to the dock after Daddy had been fishing and wait for the fish guts. She also had a pet heron who would sit on the roof and wait for the fish cleaning and then swoop down and grab what the alligator missed. She told me that little mud sharks would bump into her when she was swimming but they weren't as big as the one we saw. She also told me to never go swimming if you can't see the bottom. Gators and poisonous snakes like water moccasins and black mambos can hide in murky water. She had other stories and I could hear the banjo playing the theme from Deliverance. Scary, but she gave me a very good haircut because all my hair was standing on end.
I take back my previous comments about southern accents. After driving through the Deep South to get home we stopped in many small towns and the accents were just as beautiful as always.
We had never seen so many different churches in the South all with weird names like Muscle Shoals Baptist Church or Overcoming Faith Church. It seems like there was a new one every five miles and the poorer the neighbourhood the more churches there were. Some towns had five in one block.
You've all seen signs like "The Home of Miss America, 1999, Mary-Lou Higgins. Well we had never seen so many "Miss America" highway signs as in Mississippi: Miss. Department of Transport, Miss. Highway Maintenance, Miss. Sanitation Board.
Did you know that in Mississippi a 'doggy bag' is called a 'take-away box' and in Iowa it's a 'take-out box'?
US roads are so much better than Canada's. Even the State and secondary highways are better than the Trans Canada.
Tim Hortons still has the best coffee anywhere.
Thank you all for sticking with us. We hope you had as much fun as we did.

Revised: January 31, 2003