Day 4 - Pembroke, ON to Montpelier, VT

Sydney - my nephew




45-minute wait at the border Canada-USA

Self-explanatory

Restaurant in Quebec

Rain, rain and more rain

Always preparing - breakfast at the Sleepy Haven Motel in Pembroke

Alice wrote: spent a good night in Pembroke, Ontario despite the snoring coming from the other bed!

Since we had a microwave and real dishes we got to eat hot oatmeal, which I insisted on taking along, while planing out the route for the day.

We wanted to go visit Montreal, have lunch there and then head south toward the USA.

It rained for most of the night and kept on going when we left so sometime on the road we decided that Montreal wouldn't be much fun in this kind of downpour so at a service station we bought a Quebec map and decided to take back roads through some of the smaller towns.

Off we went into the rain! After crossing the St. Lawrence River into Quebec and driving under this huge power plant, the roadsigns suddenly changed from English/French to French only which we thought was pretty outrageous and arrogant, but we all know the French, so bitching about it is pretty useless. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em so I'm sure glad I brushed up on my French! At least I was able to impress Tim a little, since he's capable of speaking French big time and as the navigator I had to distinguish est from ouest, which I have a hard time doing even in English.

Anyways, at least Quebec is a lot cleaner and better upkept than Ontario, so it was fun driving back country roads. We even found a town called St. Timothee, which we thought was worth stopping in and having lunch.

Of course we wanted to order everything in French and totally blend in with the locals which worked for about 30 seconds - then we were lost.

The waitress was nice enough to speak English so we sheepishly caved in and ordered the coquilles fruit de mare (me), and baked ham in the language we knew better.

We then cruised the countryside a little more in the rain, noticing that a lot of the towns looked like in France, except for the pickup trucks.

After a few hours we had enough and headed toward the border which we had the privilege of staring at for 45 minutes before we were finally let through.

The drive to Vermont was quite interesting, crossing a bunch of bridges over scary waters. No wonder the taxes in VT are so high, with the great roads and visitor's centers they have - lots of free organic, fair trade coffee and muffins. Volkmar is now rolling his eyes, but tough luck - we loved it!

Around 19.30 we arrived in Montpelier at my sister's Janette and her husband Dave, being enthusiastically greeted by nephew/granddog Sydney.

After a great meal and lots of wine we're now saying: "Gute Nacht!"

p.s. we drove 367 miles today.

Day 3 - Manistique,MI to Pembroke, ON

Yay, we're in Canada, eh!

Tim writes: OK - readers... tonight it's my turn to write something more than just a smart-assed comment! We didn't hit the sack until 1:00 am so couldn't make tracks until after 9:00 this morning. That, plus slow Ontario speed limits and bad weather, getting - uh -misplaced in Sault Saint Marie [a town that doesn't waste much time and money on road signs], and much traffic put us into Pembroke behind schedule - but what the hey, as this voice keeps nagging at me: "Nur keine Hetze, wir sind doch im Urlaub"! [I have to add that that nagging voice helped with much of the driving today!]

Impressions from Canada: having worked up here, I remembered it as clean and tidy. I once worked south of here, down near London, Ontario so they might be clean and tidier there, but sure aren't up here in Northern Ontario... lots of weeds, scrub brush, and Kentucky-like houses and mobile homes complete with junk cars and washing machines - plus snowmobiles, lots of junk snowmobiles, in the yards. It did seem to improve some as we neared Ottawa so we're anxiously awaiting tomorrow and our forey into La Belle Quebec. After finding our motel [which thanks to an erroneus Google map we found to be on the other side of this fair-sized city], we were treated to a rack of fresh baked cookies by our humorous landlord Adam and his wife Lynn. Never had that happen to me at a Holiday Inn! We checked in and found the room to be o.k. - it included a little kitchen and a wallpapered bathroom. The furniture was old and well-worn, but the matresses very comfortable and we have wifi!. We do have to watch out for vertigo though, the floors are up to three inches out of plane [Alpen Tussi and Mr. D, how aboot a fixer-upper in Ontaario, heh?]. With some notable F-250 exceptions, the people so far on this trip have been as expected - friendly and helpful, and that includes of course - Canada!

Highlights from today: Finding Canada! [Hell, all we had to do was follow the arrows!] The wind-and-rain-swept beach/boardwalk/lighthouse of Manistique, on the shores of Lake Michigan, lying to the Canadian border guard this morning: "no sir: no alcohol on board" [a case of wine wouldn't really be an alcoholic product, would it?], a very impressive bridge-work over the Sault Ste. Marie locks, introducing Alice to the popular Tim Horton's coffee shops, and a return to the metric system!

Downers from today: the extremely high prices with an exchange rate almost at par, the afore mentioned down-at-the-heels look of upper Ontario [and upper Michigan too, for that matter - [but then, perhaps we've been spoiled by Iowa and Wisconsin], and getting ripped-off by the local Pembroke McDonald's [shorted two fajitas]. We'll live through it and are looking forward to a dejune' tomorrow in Montreal, and a safe landing in Mont-peel-yer Vermont tomorrow evening!

Alice wrote: that's what you get when you support part of the evil empire (Micky Dee's), hehe.

Arrows to Canada [duh]!

Endless Michigan and Ontario woods.

Nagging voice on the Manistique boardwalk... ain't she purty?

Lake Michigan: beach and lighthouse at Manistique.

p.s. we drove 535 miles today!

Day 2 - Mineral Point, WI to Manistique, MI

Alice writes: after a really quiet night in Mineral Point (no snoring, farting or bank account numbers), we decided to first go for a walk and then visit Pendarvis Historical Site. This consists of a bunch of cottages built by Cornish miners (before anybody speculates, Cornish are people from Cornwall, England) which can be toured with a guide.

Our guide was Nancy, a retired school teacher, which became clear latest after: "So put your listening ears ON and you two people WILL learn..."

Nonetheless it was so much fun that afterwards we went to a local restaurant and ordered pasty (rhymes with nasty, what you strip club visitors thought it said!), a Cornish poor-man's specialty consisting of a pastry shell and a ground meat/potatoes/onion filling; very tasty since the grin says all!

Eastward we then went to Little Norway - a Norwegian village that some rich dude had restored. We learned what Norwegian men do when there's nothing else to do (like carve stuff, not what you think. Oh boy, you stip clubbers are really on it today!) and got to see a lot of interesting artifacts.

Tim went all ballistic over some old fiddle, but then again he's easily entertained and that's a good thing :).

After all that sight-seeing it was late in the afternoon and we had to high-tail it, since we still had over 300 miles to drive. Unfortunately there were traffic jams and heavy rain all around Oshkosh so that set us back about an hour. That and the entering of the eastern time zone which cost us another hour. For that we got to drive along lake Michigan and the view was sometimes breath-taking. And scary.

We arrived at Manistique, Michigan around 21.30 and checked into the Budget Host Inn where we had wifi and were able to post this.

The pictures are from bottom to top: Main Street, Mineral Point, our tourguide Nancy in traditional garb in front of Cornish buildings, Tim eating Pasty and a building in Little Norway (this one was actually at the World Exhibit in Chicago).

Another bottle of wine met its maker and now it's bedtime for tomorrow we are actually attempting to find Canada!

p.s. we drove 340 miles today

Tim wrote: bank account - what bank account?

Day 1 - Ark City, KS to Mineral Point, WI

Alice writes: Actually did get started around 6.20 – not bad at all! Finally the mystery of the vehicle is solved ; it’s Tim’s trusty Corolla. After all, we didn’t want to spend all of our travel money at the gas station, but instead invest it in the local cuisine and beverages.
Check out the picture – which suitcase do you think belongs to me? A little hint: mine is purple. Yeah, men can lug too much stuff around. And he calls that packing light!

Anyways, after a trip to McDonald’s to get coffee we were off, heading toward El Dorado and then on to I 35. We even saw some real-life cowboys on the way following the interstate all the way to Kansas City. There we crossed over into Missouri, staying on I 35, then heading into Iowa around 12.30. We pulled over into the Welcome Center, which was a huge building with a bunch of antiques, Amish crafts and furniture for sale.
There was also an Amish girl in the parking lot of the adjacent gas station, selling baskets. She had her carriage with her, but no horse. Guess it went home to sit in the shade.

We decided to have lunch downtown, at a cattle auction place. Lots of locals there with not so friendly stares, but the food was really good. Best mashed potatoes I ever had! The town itself had more Amish girls selling produce and was unbelievably clean. In general, Iowa was very clean with a very appealing landscape – there were actually trees! Oh yeah, and rest stops every 40 miles. Check that out, Oklahoma!

Since this part of the trip was such a long haul we decided to stay on the interstate for a little while longer, taking the bypass around Des Moines and then heading on I 80 toward Cedar Rapids. Shortly before reaching that town, we headed north to drive on some back roads. It was then we discovered the Amana Colonies, several towns founded by a religious group that had been kicked out of Germany back in the day, the leader being Christian Metz. They believed in isolation and God’s principles with the isolation part pretty much working out until the advance of the automobile and the resulting roads.
So that having failed, this religious group decided to become a stock company and cash in which resulted in old Christian spinning in his grave. Nobody can say religion doesn’t pay!

Anyways, the town itself looks like straight out of a storybook – very kitschig, like something out of Disney Land. I’m not complaining though, at least I got some cookie cutters there.

Leaving Amana, we drove toward Cedar Rapids on US 151, circumvented it, and continued to Dubuque. There we took a little detour south, because the map said there was a “picturesque Luxembourger village” in St. Donatus. We did find 3 houses there that looked like the ones in Luxemburg, but that was it. Oh well, at least we tried...

Continuing over the Mississippi River and into Wisconsin, we followed US 151 until reaching Mineral Point around 20.00, which is on the historic register. Yep, the whole town is!
We checked into the Dairyland Motel and then headed downtown to a local pub. We got to sit on the patio, surrounded by flowers, and give ourselves up to public drinking with a waitress that spoke Fargo (you know, like the pregnant cop in the movie). The food was great and I was just thrilled with my surroundings. In fact, I loved the whole town so much that I decided that we need to retire here – sorry Tom for breaking the news to you this way. But check out the bright side – there are 8 bars within walking distance and the town looks like Mr. Clean is the mayor.
Our motel is very clean and cute but doesn’t have wireless connection so I’ll post this tomorrow as soon as we get somewhere that does have it. Right now we’re under a thunderstorm warning and it already started raining, but Tim brought in a bottle of wine so who cares about the storm!
Also, gute Nacht und Prost!

p.s. drove 680 miles today…

Tim writes: of course I have the larger bag – where does she think that I stash all the wine!

Alice writes: all vicious lies!

p.p.s. couldn't get the photos posted in the right order so you'll have to figure it out - sorry!

the night before

Tomorrow is the big day - the journey begins!

Tim arrived from Albuquerque around 20.00 (yes folks, get used to the military time :)) and thought it was a good idea to go to the bar down the street to celebrate with a burger and beer. I still don't know what we were celebrating, but it really doesn't matter - the sun rising in the morning is a good enough reason to party.

I had imagined to walk the 10 minutes, but some of us thought it was too hot and had to take the air-conditioned car. And that person lives in New Mexico, which is a big desert, last time I checked.

Anyways, despite efforts to sabotage me, I managed to walk away with only one beer. And the burger of course.

Wanted to keep a straight head for the long trip tomorrow.

Once we got home, it was time to mark out the first route in the map. Of course that's my job, because just like I like to be the map-manager, Tim likes to be the driver. So I get to use all the pretty little markers and get some funky colors on the map.

We decided to leave early - get up at 5.30 and leave around 6.00. In Tim-time that would be around 7.00; Carol knows what I'm talking about.

We're figuring around 10-12 hours to get to Mineral Point, Wisconsin, where we'll spend the first night.

Bedtime! Well, I think I'll watch Gordon Ramsay on "Hell's Kitchen" first, to pick up some words I can hurl at erratic drivers tomorrow.

Gute Nacht!

routing

Only 2 more days to go. To give everybody an idea of what routing we've planned, I'll list it for you (for those of you who have no clue what I'm talking about, go to google.com or yahoo.com, click on "maps" and then type in the start and end of the route).



Day 1 (Tues, 17. July) : Arkansas City (Kansas) - Topeka (Kansas) - St. Joseph (Missouri) - Des Moines (Iowa) - Cedar Rapids (Iowa) - Dubuque (Iowa) - Platteville (Wisconsin) - Mineral Point (Wisconsin).

665 miles (1070 km), 10 hrs



Day 2 (18. July): Mineral Point (Wisconsin) - Madison (Wisconsin) - Green Bay (Wisconsin) - Marinette (Wisconsin) - Escaneba (Michigan) - Manistique (Michigan)

353 mi (568 km), 6 hrs



We were going to poke around in Mineral Point, a historical town, then visit the Cornish miner's huts in Pendarvis and a Norwegian village close by. Hence the "short" drive for that day.



Day 3 (19. July): Manistique (Michigan) - Sault St. Marie (Ontario, Canada) - Pembroke (Ontario)

523 mi (842 km), 10 hrs



Day 4 (20. July): Pembroke (Ontario) - Montreal (Quebec, Canada) - Montpelier (Vermont)

342 mi (550km), 6hrs



Another short day - of course we're going to live it up in Montreal, then go on to my sister's house in Montpelier, where we intend to spend the weekend (days 5 and 6).



Day 7 (23. July): Montpelier (Vermont) - Saranac Lake (New York) - Watertown (New York) - Syracuse (New York) - Elmira (New York) - Mansfield (Pennsylvania)

449 mi (723 km), 8 hrs



Day 8 (24. July): Mansfield (Pennsylvania) - Williamsport (Pennsylvania) - Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) - Gettysburg (Pennsylvania) - Uniontown (Pennsylvania)

340 mi (547 km), 6 hrs



A stop at the Civil War battlefield in Gettysburg is an absolute must!



Day 9 (25. July) Uniontown (Pennsylvania) - Morganville (West Virginia) - Huntington (West Virginia) - Lexington (Kentucky) - Cox's Creek (Kentucky)

422 mi (679 km), 6.5 hrs



Cox's Creek is where Tim got into a lot of mischief as a kid; we'll stay with one of his friends there. I can't wait to hear some of the stories he'll tell!



Day 10 (26. July) Cox's Creek (Kentucky) - St. Louis (Missouri) - Branson (Missouri)

550 mi (885 km), 9 hrs



Branson is famous for its country music and yee-ha shows. Of course we had to get tickets to one, because when in Rome, do like the rednecks, or something like that.



Day 11 (27. July) Branson (Missouri) - Arkansas City

292 mi (470 km), 5 hrs



Since we like to be adventurous (and we're cheapskates) we booked rooms ahead of time at mom-and-pop motels along the way.

Costs are high (did I mention we're cheapskates?), even at the independent motels, so I'll have to share a room with Tim.

Great fun - 24/7 family time! I just hope he doesn't snore, but maybe he talks in his sleep and I can get the number of his off-shore bank account out of him.

preparations

Anybody who knows me also knows that I am the preparation-queen. Preparation is my middle name. Well, it would be if I had one. My therapist, Dr. Phil*, says it's genetic so take a quick guess which parent I might have it from (I see a mighty lot of fingers pointing to you, Tim).



*Fuer meine deutschen Freunde: Dr. Phil ist ein Fernseh-Psychologe.


So how to prepare for a trip like this?

First of all, I figured out that Canada must lie to north of us, because everybody knows Eskimos live there and the National Geographic channel never shows one drinking a margarita, so it surely isn't south of the border.

Rumor also has it that they are divided into 2 parts and each speaks their own language, a form of English and French - how ridiculous is that? That would be like the United States being divided into Florida and The Rest and one part speaking English and the other another language, say Spanish.

I have no idea how this language thing came about - maybe the French ran out of people to execute and crossed the ocean, looking for new possibilities; wait, maybe I got that mixed up with Texas.

Anyways, I got the English part down pretty quickly by watching Canadian - dubbed movies. Lots of "ey" and "aboot" going on there!
I walked around practicing it so often that my husband Tom finally said he'd put "a boot" somewhere if I wouldn't quit, but by that time I pretty much had perfected the art.

Next problem: learning French. I don't want to show up somewhere and sound like a little dummy just because I can't order escargots in French. So I armed myself with a language CD and a bottle of merlot - I figured, if you have the drinking of French wine down, the rest will follow.

Well, it so happened that I had to find out that je parle mal francaise et moi Kopf est tres mal aussi.
Maybe I should stick to memorizing "I have to barf" in French.









So forget that; if I do know how to do something, it's figuring out a map. I told Tim I'd do the routing and pick out motels if he told me the general direction.
O.k., o.k., I am a control freak - there, I said it! Dr. Phil, are you proud of me? My theory is, if I do it, it'll be done right.
So I spent days at a time figuring out routes, calculating mileage and researching websites to find places to stay, being only interupted by the feeding of our 3 hungrily screaming kids (the 4-legged kind), which in itself is a full-time job, and the cleaning up of their hunting trophies.

Then, as sure as Captain Ahab sank with Moby Dick, when I had it all figured out THE email would come: "Maybe we should take this route instead".

Soooooooooo, let's do the whole thing again - and pass me that bottle of merlot!