Friday, July 11, 2008

The Trip in Sum

So the cross-Canada trip turned out to be pretty awesome. Now that I'm back life is just a bit depressing, but it always is after a good vacation. Of course I have had several regrets about not staying in a couple places long enough, or wasting my time on stuff I shouldn't have, but all in all I think I saw and did a lot in a pretty short amount of time! Some interesting statistics:

- Driving through the prairies I almost ran over at least 20 prairie dogs and saw about one hundred others.
- When I was in Northern Ontario there were always cliffs and rocks along the road. I saw a ridiculous number of inukshooks. But not many others in the rest of Canada.
- It feels like about a million people have responded "By yourself??!!??" incredulously in response to me telling them that I went on the trip alone.
- Can't even count the number of times I thought to myself "I'm driving to Vancouver!" or wherever and smiled to myself happily.
- Talked to my car, the radio and my GPS system an embarassing number of times.
- All the motels have begun to blur into one little motel room in my mind.
- Saw many many state troopers on the highways, cops in Canada stopping motorists that had passed me and did not get pulled over once. Nice!
- The odds that my car would survive the trip: 1:1 000 000 000!! But he's still alive.

Since I am a very greedy girl, I've already formulated my next vacations in my mind. You'd think I would want to put my money towards those pesky osap payments, a decent car, a downpayment on a house perhaps; but nope, I'm already planning my next trips!! Next summer I want to do the ultra-touristy cliche backpacking trip around Europe. I want to see all of the places in real life that I only got to glimpse in Art History classes. I want to be an unwashed backpacker carrying a couple changes of clothes and my passport to countries like Germany, Poland, Italy, all of the UK!!

The summer after that? I want to hike the Bruce Trail. It's about 800kms along the Niagara escarpment from Tobermory to Niagara falls. How awesome would THAT be? All I need to do in the meantime is find myself a big buff male who's crazy enough to be willing to go (and put up with me for over a month!!), able to help me carry provisions, and serve as protection (mom has of course informed me that going by myself is a bad idea and I tend to agree)! A friend knew this girl who did it by sending herself packages along the way, which is smart.

After that, I'm not sure... any suggestions? Donations are also very welcome. My job doesn't pay all that well.

Friday, July 04, 2008

Wa Waaaaaaa

Why is Ontario so freaking big?? My second day in Ontario now... still driving. I'm in a town called Wa Wa on the way to Sault Ste Marie. Today I drove from Dryden to Wawa and it took me from 9am to 7pm (stopped for gas twice). It wouldn't have been that bad if I wasn't stopping for construction along the trans can all damn day! Northern Ontario is beautiful though, lots of hills and rocks and lakes.

Tomorrow I'm going to head out early and hopefully make it to the Peterborough area to visit Katelyn and Chadd. I'm finally getting sick of driving now! I just want to sleep in my bed! On my way into Wawa I was really hungry, tired and had to pee so I went to the first motel I saw, the "Wawa Motor Inn", which I think turned out to be te most expensive place in town! Later I was looking for food and found a bunch of cheap places (such as the illustrious Beaver Motel), but decided it was fine since this is hopefully going to be my last motel on the trip!! Ideally. I fel like I got nowhere today, hopefully the driving will be a little better as I get further south!

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Manitoba

And now I'm in Brandon, Manitoba. Started off the day driving p to Riding Mountains National Park and got in for free since apparently it's Canada Day! This meant that it was hellishly busy on the beach, but that didn't stop me from having a sim in "Clear Water Lake". There was also a band there and I got to hear a heartfelt "Oh, Canada", which was quite nice. Then I drove back down to Brandon, where I am right now. Tomorrow a stop in Winnipeg to look around (there's supposed to be a gallery of grafitti!!) then I'll be back to Ontario already!!

Gangsters and the Prairies

This morning I drove to Moose Jaw to visit the somewhat famous Al Capone Tunnels. Everyone’s heard of the big crime boss Al Capone selling booze during prohibition in New York, then Chicago. But did you know he had a series of tunnels made in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan? Our tour guides showed us around the tunnels which had Capone’s office, bedroom, an illegal underground bar, and of course the storage of the illegal booze!! While it was entertaining, I wonder how often Al Capone himself actually came to Moose Jaw? Once? Maybe twice? I’m also inclined to think that those “offices” and most of the tunnels were built long after Capone was gone. But nonetheless I was entertained, and thought Moose Jaw was a cute little city.

Driving through the prairies has been pretty dull, I’m not going to lie. It’s flat, dusty, with fields as far as the eye can see. You know that song “I can see for miles and miles… I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles…and…miles…and…miles”? I couldn’t stop singing that song, which is a good thing because it kept me awake. To break up the monotony, I also stopped off in Regina to have a look around. Apparently as the city was coming together and slowly being built, they also planted many, many trees, because the city itself was like a forest, whereas the rest of the province is mainly field and just a bit of brush.

Right now I’m in a town called… Moose something. Some strange made-up sounding word, or perhaps Native? Moosomin? Moosemen? Hmmmm… I should probably know this. Ah, well. Tomorrow I’m hoping to find myself a lake somewhere in Manitoba so I can do some swimming and escape the heat! My car sadly has no air-conditioning, so whenever I’m not on the highway I’m literally baking in my little tin hot-box!

Funny story: You may remember that as I was entering Calgary my “Check Engine” light came on in my car, and I was very angry and a little worried about it. So, I’m in Regina, and I decide to go through a car wash because I was literally having issues seeing due to all the bug guts I’d picked up driving on all those highways. After I finished with the car wash, I found a place to eat and as I’m starting up my car afterwards, the “check engine” light is off again!! Maybe Pabo was just a little angry because I let him get too dirty? Does this make sense to anyone? How can a washing effect my engine? Very odd.