Road Trip Home

I'm finally sitting at my desk in my office again, very tired but home. We decided to drive straight through from Halifax to Toronto without stopping overnight.

We started the day (Wednesday) by sleeping until we got up. For me that meant about 10am. We had a leisurely morning packing up, having lunch and talking with my sister Dorthea and her husband Michael. Then we headed to downtown Halifax with our car packed to browse that CD store and the big used bookstore again. Of course the afternoon was beautiful and I let the boys browse and I walked down by the harbour and took a few more photos (second and last photos).

We met up again, had a coffee and at around 5:15pm (Maritime time) headed out of the city over one of the bridges to Dartmouth (top picture), the city on the other side of the Halifax harbour. The running joke out East is that Halifax has everything that Dartmouth has except a beautiful view of Halifax. (Apparently, Dartmouth is not a very nice place to live or to visit - but don't tell anyone you heard it from me.)

We stopped for a few minutes at Magnetic Hill just outside of Moncton and let our car roll backwards up the hill - three times! It really is strange and it doesn't make sense to your brain. In the picture to the right we are looking "down" the hill that we just rolled "up" backwards. Click on the photo for a bigger view.

We then just drove - taking turns - all night. In case you're interested, you can make it from Halifax to Edmunston, New Brunswick is seven hours, (it SNOWED - heavily - as we were driving north of Edmnston! - click on the picture and you can see it somewhat) to Quebec city (or Levis on the south side of the St. Lawrence River opposite Quebec City) is ten hours and you can be in the tunnel to Montreal in just over 12 hours. I did discover that the best way to make it through Montreal traffic is to do it at 4:30 in the morning.

We dropped John off in Perth at 7:30am after being on the road for 15 and half hours. We had a leisurely breakfast with him while people interrupted us to say hi to John (small town life is just so ... well, small). We made it home by 11:15. So if you're planning to drive to the East coast You can do it easily in under 20 hours.

My reflections on the road trip? I loved the relaxed pace. It is so good to be able to stop when you want and get out and look. At the same time, one week is plenty long for a road trip ( that is, unless I could have spent two or three days in each spot camping and hiking - but then it would have ceased being a road trip and become a camping trip). Make sure you have a reliable car - we put over 5000 km and my maintenance was to make sure I started with a fresh oil change, and to check the tire pressure occationally. A final (blatantly obvious) tip is - make sure you like the people you are with and make sure you like to drive and be in the car. This was the case for our trip and I loved being able to spend some extended and relaxed time with my son.

This travel blog has been fun and rewarding. It has helped me process and remember the trip and certainly helps in putting the pictures in their proper order. I hoped you liked it and I hope it helped you experience a little bit of our trip with us. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment.