Day 1 - East Coast 1999
August 13-25
We had started to plan this trip back in the winter of 97. Maybe it was the Ice Storm that had us thinking or the prospect of me quitting the government. What ever the reason, (it seems there were many) --You know the usual stuff -
Michelle and I have traveled to both coasts before, but for the kids it was going to be their first time. Realizing the size of our 20 foot travel trailer and combined with the limits of our car, we started looking for alternate modes to make our tour. Then a friend, Don came to the rescue with the loan of his RV. It was a 1975 GMC Class A Motorhome and had all the comforts of home. More on this latter but we all admitted (even weeks after we were home) that it definitely made the trip the success that it was. Timing for our trip became a problem when both Niki and Matt had separate weeks at camp. They lived for 5 days on site at Upper Canada, dressing and acting the part of early settlers for the tourists. Then, with Michelle having to be back early before the start of school, we had to cut our summer trip down to 13 days. But it was packed full with lots of fun and laughs and the occasional tear. We had a neighbour feed the cats, birds, fish and hamster and that took care of them all but our Black Lab. We took our big black monster 'Coal' ('...oh but he's such a cute little puppy...' ) - famous last words before he grew up – to Camp. (Camp is a code word for the kennel but don't tell him that)....the kids are getting older and if we don't do it now, we probably won't ever if we wait too much longer, not at least as a family...
Coal, our 1.5 yr old Lab on the way to 'Camp'.
Okay I'm ready, where is everyone else?
The trip started in rain, so we figured we would try and make as many miles as we could. Then we hit Montreal rush hour at 5pm on a Friday, in the rain. The thought of making miles changed to 'who else can we talk to on the CB while were stuck here'. (This may have been a blessing since much of the time we were navigating the 8'2" wide RV along the narrow expressway flanked by transports either side. I'm sure the lanes were only 8'6". I didn't mind the slow traffic.)
We cruised on until nearly midnight putting the miles on and pulled in to Rivere du Loop. Even though the campground was closed for the night, the guy on the gate let us just pull up to a post and plug in for free as long as we were gone by 8 the next morning. Sleep came easy for us all.