What a Day!!

So while Dave is whittling away his time on a comfy train wending its way to Toronto, then Kitchener, I have been busy since waking this morning at 5 a.m. to the sound of a gentle rain. I lay there listening awhile then "WAIT .. I didn't close the car windows last night!" So up I jump, wide awake by now, and run outside to close the windows. The little container on the picnic table showed about 3 cm of rain. Sigh. I tried to go back to sleep, but couldn't, so got up, showered, dressed and went to check the damage. The little pockets and spaces in both doors were deep in water, the floors wet and car seat soggy. Front seats of course! What to do? Make a cup of coffee, eat breakfast, and then call the Toyota dealership, detailing department. The gentle man kindly suggested that I run the car for 2 or 3 hours, windows almost closed, heat on high, and that would do it! Here it is, 12:3o and everything is toasty warm and dry. It must have been 45C in there! Outside, the thermometer reads 23C and the weather network says with humidity it feels like 32C ... No rain, though!

In the meantime, I cleaned out eavestroughs .. because there was water in the back basement, which happens when the eavestroughs need cleaning out! Thanks Mike for helping out in a pinch .. And then out comes the dehumidifier in the basement, a fan, and am I ever glad that everything is up on bricks. Yes, water in the back basement isn't totally new. So now I can focus on getting myself cleaned of eavestrough goop, eat some lunch, and on with normal weekend housework plus extra so that I will return at the end of this adventure to minimal work needing to be done, and then there is the packing. Oh yes, laundry too, some phone calls and emails, etc. Whew!! It all will get done, as is my style, just in the nick of time! LoL.

I'm off!

Well, the day has finally arrived!

I got up this morning, did some last-minute packing, took Maggie for a walk, and called the taxi. Just as I told the taxi driver "train station, please" I realized I had left all my paperwork with our motel reservations and my plane ticket sitting on the printer. I asked the taxi driver to wait, and ran upstairs and grabbed it. Hopefully I haven't forgotten anything else!

So now I'm on the train on my way to Toronto. I decided to plunk down the $8.95 that Via Rail Canada charges for wireless internet access for the day. That way I can post to the blog, check email, and surf the web for the day. It's maddeningly slow, but no big deal. I've got time to kill at this point!

This trip is something I've wanted to do for ages. Ever since I've heard of these places that shoot boiling water hundreds of feet into the air, I've wanted to see a geyser. Yellowstone National Park and Mt. Rushmore have long been on my "bucket list".

Well, that's all for now! No pictures to post yet...

Departure Date is Coming!!

I figured its about time I (Emily) post something here .. can't let Dave do all the work. He has been absolutely wonderful in arranging room reservations etc. I am so grateful. Since I want / need this to be a budget trip, I have been stocking up on food that we can prepare easily en route, have a little portable picnic table-top stove if we need it, canned foods etc. This part is an experiment that I hope works, as I don't want to spend tons of money on restaurants, buying more food than we need or is good for us! And now I get the notice that its time for Drive Clean test and license renewal! Another thing to attend to. Sigh. It seems these days I am burning the candle at both ends, as there are the preparations to do as well as work my 12 hour days. But a good woman is like a duracell battery .. keeps going and going and going. I'll be glad when the weekend comes and we've actually gotten on the road.

I am looking forward to using my digital camera to take hundreds of pictures every day! I have about 5 or 6 1GB memory cards so that should get us there. We always can burn the photos onto a disk if necessary.

You'll be hearing more from me! Keep in touch.

Yellowstone Reservations

Following a comment left by my brother Jeff, I figured we should try to make some reservations in (or near) Yellowstone. It's a good thing, because most of the hotels were already full. We weren't able to find any place that had availability for the three nights we're planning on being there, but we did find accommodation for all three nights.

On July 2 we're staying at the Yellowstone Village Inn. It looks really nice, and is the least expensive of all the places we've booked, and reviews I've read have been really good. They gave us a room in the front with a view of the park.

Welcome to our blog!

Hi everybody, and welcome to our blog!

Emily and I (I'm Dave) have been friends for almost 30 years! So when Emily told me that she was driving from Kitchener, Ontario to Gibsons, British Columbia, and asked (half-jokingly) if I wanted to go along for the ride, she wasn't really expecting me to say yes. But I did! My only condition was that we go via the U.S. so we could go to a few places I have always wanted to see, but have never had the opportunity, like Mt. Rushmore and Yellowstone. So that's what we're doing! Both of us enjoy getting off the beaten path, and we're really looking forward to our trip.

Here's our planned itinerary:
June 28 - I take the train from Montreal to Kitchener
June 29 - We drive to Muskegon, MI, and spend the night there
June 30 - We take the morning ferry across Lake Michigan to Milwaukee. We then make a beeline through Wisconsin and Minnesota to South Dakota. We will try to get as close to Badlands National Park as we can that day.

From then on, exactly what days we end up where kind of depends on how fast we travel, and how much time we take to see the sights. What we want to see is:

July 1 - Badlands National Park, Mt. Rushmore, Devils Tower (Wyoming), and head towards Billings, Montana
July 2 - Take the Bear Tooth Highway from Billings to Yellowstone.
July 3 and 4 - Continue touring Yellowstone
July 5 and 6 - One last pass at Yellowstone (yes, we realize that we'll only be able to skim the surface) and drive like crazy towards Seattle.

We're planning on arriving in Gibsons sometime on the 6th or 7th.

Doesn't that sound like fun?