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Wednesday August 7, 2013:
After work, Lynda had supper waiting for us then we hit the road at 5:30 to drive to Halifax and visit her son's family. Since I tend to fall asleep while driving (or drumming, eating, walking etc.), we were going to spell each other on the way. However, for some reason I mostly stayed awake so I drove all the way there and back. We took Lynda's laptop, plugged it in to my cigarette lighter and listened to our MP3s. Lynda played along on the ukulele and I followed with the harmonica.
Lynda brought her GPS to navigate. This came in the form of an annoying English lady named Gladys (or Glad Ass as we called her). The slightest wrong turn and she would yell at us, "Recalculating, recalculating!!" We also had a CAA tripticket and a regular map of Canada. None of them matched up. I think they were all wrong.
We drove through Montreal in the light rain. We were on a six lane highway, when suddenly, out of nowhere, it seemed as if someone dropped about 5000 gallons of water on my car. I couldn't see at all for about 20 seconds and had to almost come to a standstill. No one else was affected. I still have no idea what happened there.
We stopped for gas somewhere in Quebec. Half way through the fill-up, Lynda decided to stick her credit card in the gas pump slot. Everything shut down and an error message came up. A customer came out and asked in French if we had a problem.
"Le gassy no workie", I said.
"Quoi", he replied.
The clerk had to come out and reset the whole pump. We continued on and at 1:30 a.m. we pulled in to a rest stop near Riviere Du Loop. They had little wooded areas much like campsites where you could rest for a few hours. We picked one out of the way in hopes that the French axe murderer wouldn't find us. We folded back the seats, threw some blankets over us and after a short reading spell, we were sound asleep.
Thursday August 8, 2013:
Woke up at 6:30 and hit the road again. Lynda turned on Glad Ass just as we passed our turnoff. This caused a flurry of "recalculating, recalculating"!! Other than that, the rest of the day was fairly uneventful. However, we did almost run out of fuel on the gasless stretch just before Moncton. Later, Glad Ass insisted we turn off and got us lost for fifteen minutes.
We stopped at a rest stop for a trunk lunch. Lynda had made a pile of sandwiches and cheeses, pickles and fruit juice and stuffed it all into a cooler. We spread it out on my trunk and had a feast. Then we played catch in the parking lot with a set of Velcro paddles and a ball.
We finally arrived at Sean's house in Dartmouth at 4:15 p.m.. We sat around talking talking with him, Kate and Luc until 10:30. Had chili for supper and took their dog Eddie for a walk.
Friday August 9, 2013:
Got up and had a bagel breakfast then sat around talking until 11:00. Sean drove all of us to Crystal Beach. It was too cold to swim but we had fun walking the beach and watching Eddie run around. There were some movie scouts there doing a location check.
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Kate's Home Made Earring |
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It's Amazing How Much Sean & Luc Look Alike |
On the way back, Sean stopped to pick up his Volkswagen camper. I drove back with him and Kate drove the rest of them home. Sean gave me a Norman B-20 12-string guitar that he'd bought at a yard sale but never used. He's now my new best friend! I will be making sure it gets played a lot. A great guitar!
We sat around the dining room table eating supper. Luc was in the corner on his piano composing new works and writing them down in music notation in his little black book.
"Come on, Luc", said Kate
"I'll be there in a minute", replied the six year old little Mozart, "I just have to finish this composition.
We went for another walk around their neighbourhood with Eddie before retiring for the evening.
Saturday August 10, 2013:
After breakfast, everyone ran off to do separate things like groceries and buying a scooter for Luc's birthday. I was going to go as well, but Luc insisted I stay and play games with him. Well, that was more up my alley anyway. We played "pirate" and I was pressed into walking off the plank and into a shark and alligator infested ocean. Then Luc showed me all the latest toys he had. They seemed to have changed quite a bit from when I was a kid. I would have needed a manual to operate most of them.
Kate wasn't able to join us, but I drove the rest of us to the dock where we took the ferry across to Halifax. Here we wandered up and down the busy boardwalk checking out the sights and stopped for some fries at a small stand. Then Lynda and I treated us all to the Harbor Hopper tour. This is an old amphibious vehicle from the Vietnam war, that tours the Citadel then drives into the ocean and tours the harbor as well.
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Returned home after traveling (as Luc would say) about 20 thermometers. Sean and Kate prepared a great meal of barbecued burgers and we sat on their deck and talked until bedtime.
Sunday August 11, 2013:
Today we decided to go camping at Caribou Island Campground. Sean said it might take them a while to pack. I replied that it would be easy for us, as we would just take everything we own. Lynda and I took my car and the others went in "Miss Piggy", the Volkswagen bus.
We had one site between us. Lynda set up her tent then we all walked to the beach where we spent the next four hours. One could see Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton from where we were. Despite it being a little cold and windy, we swam and played catch. Luc, Lynda and I built a large sand castle with a huge moat. The moat was about a foot deep. We had a bucket brigade to fill it with water. Later, a woman walked by with her dog on a leash. She was brought up short when her dog fell in the moat. When everything had quieted down, I made a little house out of pebbles. I saw Lynda point at me and whisper to Kate, "You can only leave him alone for a few minutes before he has to do something to amuse himself".
"I see that", said Kate.
"I can hear you", I replied switching to throwing rocks at a bucket
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Back at camp, Sean and Kate made us another great supper of chicken wraps. Luc was just learning the ukulele (maybe the "Lukulele") so the three of us got out our instruments. I made us a music stand out of some sticks and we played a few tunes around the fire. Later everyone left to walk Eddie so I took that opportunity to try out Sean's guitar. Two eight year old girls on bikes stopped to listen so I invited my fans over to sing. Me and my groupies did "You Are My Sunshine". They left and the rest of us sat around the fire telling scary "Purple Stew" stories. I think Luc's was the scariest and most inventive.
We turned in for the night. Lynda and I read by her lantern.
Monday August 12, 2013:
We were up around 8:00 a.m. in time for Sean to make us a going away gourmet breakfast of egg and bacon wraps. Amid a tearful goodbye, we packed up our stuff and began our journey back to Ontario. By 10:00 a.m. we were back on the road. Lynda fired up her laptop and got out the ukulele. Luc had detuned it so she got out her tuner and began trying to correct it. Her batteries died. She sighed and rummaged around until she found my tuner. It's hard to see the LED readout so it took her over 20 minutes to tune…even with my help…and I was supposed to be driving. Now she was ready to play. The laptop froze. She restarted it and waited for the rebooting process. Since there was no mouse, one had to use finger pad to move around. The road was bumpy and she kept missing and picking the wrong song. Her sighs were getting steadily more audible. Finally she managed to hit the song she wanted. Now there was no volume but she couldn't reach the speaker which was tucked away in the back. Lynda unleashed her seatbelt which set off an unceasing beeping and blinking of lights on my dash. She was then able to reach behind and turn up the volume…just as the computer froze again. There was a loud "hmph!" as she belted herself in and yelled, "I give up"!!! I let her stew for a few minutes until the music called to her again and she rebooted her laptop. This time everything worked. The whole process had taken just over 120 km of travel time to get to our first song. I found it quite amusing. Lynda…not so much. Soon, we were playing along to various songs with me filling in on the harmonica.
At 10:00 p.m. we pulled in to a truck stop just before Quebec City. We were surrounded by large tractor trailers. Lynda decided to give us a little privacy by putting her towel across the inside of the front window. I closed the my door on one end of her towel and left her to play with the other end. Her idea of rolling the power window up on it was a good one…had she remembered to remove her fingers first. She yowled a few times until she got the hang of it.
"Don't forget to put your eye drops in", she said helpfully.
"Already did it", I replied smugly.
"When did you do that?" she asked.
"Around the time you were fooling around trapping your various appendages in the window", I replied, getting a punch in the arm for my efforts.
We read by Lynda's lantern again, then folded the seats back and disappeared into dreamland. It's actually quite comfortable.
Tuesday August 13, 2013:
Woke up at 5:30. Lynda was still sleeping so I put her seatbelt on so the beeping wouldn't irritate her (or me) and drove to the restroom. By now she was awake so we cleaned up and headed down the highway again.
While driving through Montreal, I was puzzled what the large "X" and "right arrow" meant that was lit up over my lane. I was just going to ask Lynda about it when a road crew truck cut in front of me. Everyone ahead of him pulled off. I thought this was great as he was paving the way for me and I now had clear sailing. Then he stopped dead. I was starting to get the hint that he didn't want me in that lane. I pulled over then he started lobbing lit flares out his window. A police car screamed by. As far as I could tell, there was just a minor accident ahead.
We stopped at Tim Horton's for some snacks and later had supper in Grand Falls. We had planned to zip line across the gorge but there was an hour wait and we had places to be. Instead we stopped at Iroquois and toured the locks. Not much to see there. We searched unsuccessfully for the fabled Anderson's Music store that was going out of business. Maybe that's why it went out of business - no one could find it.
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The Great Thinkers |
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Politically Correct Photos |
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At Brockville, we walked around the farmer's market. We left and I was finally starting to fall asleep when we arrived at Lynda's at 2:00. Great trip, with no car problems! Total gas spent was $271.03 to go about 3500 kilometres. Must go home now and play my new guitar!
