which is to be expected right? When I was first formulating this blog I assumed the main topic would be a detour we took in Ottawa, and then there was another smaller detour, and then the van broke and its now been four days and so this blog will be much much more than the first detour. So grab a drink and sit back while I fill you in.
Sunday, June 27
Allison was an awesome host, and we all had a great time. We were even able to meet with some good friends of ours at Allison and Blakes before heading out around 1pm to Ottawa, or so was the plan. This needs a bit of explanation, so here is the back story: In a vain attempt at locating a non-plastic water container for our trip I finally found the one place in Canada that sold Stainless Steel containers a couple of weeks before our trip. I was worried about shipping times, but as the town the store was located in seemed close to Ottawa, I thought it would be possible to "swing by" on our way through and pick one up. With the delay in departure coinciding with slow email communication with the store, I wasn't sure if this was actually going to happen. I also forgot that we would be traveling on a Sunday, and so was not sure if the store would even be open ( I realized this on Saturday), but left a message with the store and asked them to call my cell if they were. As we were entering Ottawa I checked the messages and they were indeed open. Thus we detoured. Many times in fact as we attempted to find Wakefeild Quebec ( cool town BTW). We did eventually find it, and I did eventually buy the container, but at this point we were quite behind the schedule and so decided to take the route 117 through Northern Quebec instead of the 17 through Ontario. We slept on a dirt road that was located in a huge reserve, and all gotten eaten alive by mosquitos. Quite the battle was had actually, and there is still blood on the walls of the van from it :).
Monday, June 28
We drove through Quebec stopping for gas and to cool the engine every 200km or so. We drove until just after Hearst Ontario, and then pulled over and slept just off the highway again Not much to report, took some photos in Cochrane Ontario of some giant lawn chairs.
Tuesday, June 29
This time there were much less mosquitos, and we were able to be on the road and driving at 7 am. We were planning to take the 17 into Manitoba, but the road was closed, thus we detoured and we ended up on the 11, which was a bit longer route. We were hoping to get to Kenora, which we almost did, but the Van began to overheat more often, and so we were stopping more. We ended up again sleeping on the side of the road (this time in a gravel/sand pitt, which the kids loved to play in when they woke in the morning) just before Kenora.
Wednesday, June 30
This morning was a little bit of a slow go. Monte woke in the middle of the night complaining of a stomach ache, and then proceeded to throw up twice - and while he aimed for the bowl, he still managed to get himself, his sleeping bag, pillow, and the van mattress - talented kid ! At least by 3 am there was enough light to attempt to clean it up. Once we were packed up and ready to go, it became apparent the van was having issues. It overheated after about 10 minutes of driving, so when we reached Kenora we stopped at the nearest bodyshop, and were diverted to Canadian Tire, and then to "Rogers". Rogers had a couple of VW in his lot, so we felt a bit better about his ability to fix it. And he did, it just took all day. So we hung around the shop with the dogs and the kids. It was beautiful weather, so we sat around on the grass, and when it got too boring, walked around a bit. We set out around 6pm, and needed to find a laudrymat to wash the sleeping bag and pillow etc, but they were closed. So we headed towards Winnipeg with the intention of finding a campsite with laundry facilities, but ended up in Winnipeg instead. We are now at Erin's house and she has graciously washed our stuff. We will head out towards Calgary today - not sure how far we will get, and its the long weekend now, so things might be crazy busy. Sorry for any grammar/spelling mistakes I wrote this quickly.
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