The Path of Shalom
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Jul. 18, 2006
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Le Grande Aventure (Part One)
On the Way to Canada
Since our lease was up on the 2 bed/1 bath mobile we were renting, we decided to put everything in storage and rent something else when we got back from our trip. I can tell you I was hard to live with for that last couple of weeks, trying to pack things for the trip and also move out of the mobile. Talk about stress! We had bought a basket carrier to attach to the top of our 1990 Toyota Camry and one of those canvas bags to put stuff in. We had our camping equipment to pack and enough stuff to live in Montreal for a month. I needed to take clothing for both warmer and colder weather. We moved most all of our stuff into storage on the Sunday before we left and then basically camped out in the mobile until we left on Friday. I was trying to get a bunch of sewing done and we had the place to clean up to leave as we like to leave a place. AND I had the packing of what we needed for the trip to do. Rick had finals that week and was pretty busy with studying and helping with everything but the sewing. I did not get all my sewing projects done. Oh well, that's life when you wait and try to do too much in the time you have to do it. Maybe some day I'll get over being a procrastinator (though I'm better than I used to be in that area.)
We put all the stuff we needed to pack in the car and on top in one room and then moved it as we cleaned each room. I packed most of the camping stuff in the topper other than the sleeping bags and the air mattresses that we needed on the trip. Then I worked on packing the trunk and the car. I had to cull what we were taking and reduce the number of clothes we were taking. You should have seen that Toyota. I bet people don't know how much can be crammed into one of those little cars besides five people. I did the packing because I inherited the ability to put a lot of stuff into a space from my dad. Rick happily conceded the job to me and was the carry it out to the car guy. Our landlady came to inspect on Friday morning and was glad to refund the deposit since everything was clean and in good shape. (We really needed that for the trip!) She even prayed over us for our trip. The children and I went to do laundry while Rick had to take his last final and then we made our last trip to storage. We could barely shut the trunk of the car and everyone had stuff packed around them and under their feet, but we were on our way!
We drove to NE Tennessee the first night and stayed with our friends, Chris and Beth. We met them on the blogs and count them as precious friends. We stayed with them until Sunday and then headed out for Rick's home area in the west panhandle of West Virginia. We drove through Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio to get there and stayed that night about 50 miles to the west in Cambridge, Ohio. The next morning we headed over to the panhandle and Rick's hometown of Wellsburg. All of it was very interesting to me as ever since we had left our friend's place in NE TN it was all new territory to me. Rick was in for a shock when we got to his old hometown and he wrote about it in his new blog, Crimson Commentary. The neighbors who had been a refuge to him while growing up and had kept him from starving fed us lunch and we had a wonderful visit with them. Then we drove around and saw some of the places that were important in Rick's life while he was growing up and visited a cousin and an aunt of his. We went onto Pittsburg that evening, since we were getting together with Rick's girls, Alana and Erica, the next day and we had a really good coupon for a motel not very far from them.
  The Neighbors We met Alana and Erica on Tuesday morning and we had a picnic in the park. We hadn't seen Caila since she was a baby and we hadn't ever seen Patrick, Alana's children. Gaelyn and Izak really enjoyed playing with their neice and nephew, who are more like cousins. The time went fast and they had other commitments in the afternoon, so we went back to the motel just before it started to rain.  Gaelyn and her sisters. The next morning we headed for Fort Necessity on our way to the other panhandle of West Virginia to meet an internet friend and her family that I have known online for about 6 years. We had a beautiful drive through that part of Pennsylvania and enjoyed Fort Necessity. Outside the stockade at Fort Necessity We stayed with Bob and Misha in the eastern panhandle that afternoon. They have 6 children and the older 2 boys were about Jared's age and they had a great time together. Gaelyn had fun playing with the younger ones and I got to enjoy holding their baby. The children all went to Awana together that evening. We found our now "in real life" friends to be very hospitable and warm and enjoyed our time with them. The next morning we left for New Jersey where we were going to stay with some more internet friends we had not met yet in real life - Chris and Dawn and their family of seven children. We had a busy day on the way planned with stops at Antietam, Gettysburg and driving through Lancaster county in Pennsylvania.   Antietam We found our friends, who live outside of Trenton, to also be gracious hosts and we enjoyed our fellowship with them. Our children had a great time playing together and we could hardly visit over all the noise. Dawn also had a baby that I got to enjoy holding. They let us use their computer to check our email and Rick found out that he had got all A's for the spring semester. He was not expecting that as the Research class had been very difficult and he thought he would do good to get a B. It was a first in his life and I'm proud of how hard he is working on his studies. The next day we headed for New Hampshire and the Atlantic coast. We drove around New York City on the furthest out interstate loop and then went through Connecticut and Massachusetts before getting to our destination in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. That was one of our longer travelling days, but the children did really well in the cramped conditions, in fact they did very well the whole trip. We really tried to not have real long days and we stopped pretty frequently because of the "sardine" situation in our car. The next morning we visited Fort Constitution and went up a little ways along the Maine coast to see a lighthouse and say we'd been to Maine.   Fort Constitution   Fort Constitution lighthouse   Lighthouse at York Harbor, Maine The children and I took our shoes off and we played in the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. BRRRR! It was cold, but a delightful memory was made. We really liked the New Hampshire/Maine coast and the old Cape Cod houses. We had sun in the morning, but as we made our way back across New Hampshire we got into rainy weather again(we had a fair amount of that on the trip). We drove through the White Mountains and I told Rick that I could be persuaded to live there in spite of the cold. They are probably the most beautiful part of the Appalacians I have seen. They reminded me just a little of the Rockies, as they were more rugged than the more southerly Appalacians that we are accustomed to seeing. We then drove across the northeast corner of Vermont and entered Canada early in the evening of June 6th. Playing in the Atlantic Ocean
One of the things that I really enjoyed about the trip was the feeling of going back in time as the scenery kept going back to an earlier spring that we had experienced weeks ago. We saw dogwoods blooming all the way to New York and even lower Connecticut. I did not realize they bloom that far north. They had just finished blooming in our area as we set out on the trip. We had just transitioned into the more summer green in the trees and by the time we got that far north, we were back to the very early spring green colors. I love spring and this year I got to experience the longest spring I probably ever will get to enjoy. I will try to write about our time in Montreal soon. Love and shalom, Serena |
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• Jul. 28, 2006 - Just stopping by to say hi...
Have a good day - We've been praying for you.
Natasha