Scattered, Smothered and Covered

25/10: The stuff begins to arrive

My car was delivered early to my folks' house. My piano was too. The difference? My piano is staying here :-( There is not enough room in our new house for it so it will live a couple of miles down the road. Now my folks have two grand pianos. What a life of luxury!

The Xterra - my car - arrived on the same day on the car carrier. It hasn't seen a cross-country drive under my ownership and I don't believe it ever will. It's a solid car but it's getting on in years (8, I believe) and in miles (~112k). It's a great car for skiing, band practice, grocery-gettin', etc.

Here are some pictures of these two big items as they arrived in Jersey. As always, the full set (and lots of other goodies can be seen here.)

The car carrier arrives on the cul-de-sac (the neighbors start to get scared):


The platforms and ramps approach:


The Xterra descends:


The piano arrives (now the neighbors are freaking out):


The ramp to get it down the *one* step:


It's in!


And getting assembled:


The rest of our stuff arrives next week just in time for us to get in to the new house. Good pics from that will emerge, I'm sure.

[Jeff]

24/10: One more highlight from Montreal

File this in the "unbearably cute" category. Prior to departing Montreal, Gracie was asked to keep her sister entertained and this is how it all played out (notice where Gracie's new pink hat is in the video).

For those of you that don't know, Snuggle Puppy is a modern-day children's classic and a favorite in our household for many many years (since the early Gracie years). Now that she can read it, she's making sure Sophie loves it just as much as she does.

Check it out:





[Jeff]

24/10: Nights 12 & 13 - New Jersey!

I'm currently on my parents' couch watching bad network TV (they don't have cable) and keeping an eye on Sophie as she rolls around and practices her crawling. As you can probably guess, we've arrived in Jersey and have completed the massive road trip (albeit a couple of days/destinations early). What happened on our last day of traveling? I'm glad you asked!

We left Montreal yesterday morning well after any respectable road trip departure time. Our hotel room (the first we'd had a chance to truly unpack in) looked like a clothes-bomb had gone off in there. We had tons of clean up to do, dishes to get out of the way (ah, room service) and just general disposal of trash. Then, I had to load the car. There was a medical emergency with a hotel worker right as we planned on checking out and that kept me from loading the car for another half hour. I couldn't get out courtesy of the ambulance and, oh yeah, it was frickin' raining yet again!

We blazed out of Montreal sometime around noon and set off on the, relatively short, 350 mile trip to NJ in the downpour. The US border is only about an hour away and we got through there with no real issues. In fact, the border agent actually started playing with the kids (through the car window) so we knew we were going to be fine. In addition, she was impressed by our road trip stats and got on with casual conversation quite quickly.

The majority of our drive in NY state was through the beautiful Adirondack Mountains. We decided to take in some of the scenery,despite the rain, and diverted the first part of our triumphant US return on to rural routes 9 and 22 -- also known as the Locks to Lakes Passage Scenic Byway. The road twists and winds its way along Lake Champlain and then dips in through beautiful northern NY hamlets and villages that dot the tree-lined mountains. The leaf colors are in full spectacle and that only added to the beauty. The fluffy low-hanging clouds helped too.

The highlight of this part of the trip was Ausable Chasm. It's a gorge carved by the Ausable River and is quite dramatic. It was pouring but we managed to get some photos. Check these out:









The rest of the drive was the lovely I87 - aka the NY Thruway. We blazed through it as quickly as possible. I dusted off my old EZ Pass (which hasn't seen the light of day since we moved to Portland) and it worked like a charm -- which was sweet. I never felt so good paying some silly amount of money for a toll crossing.

We arrived around dinner time and everyone was thrilled to see each other. Carrie and I then managed to sneak out for a little Italian dinner at a place in Ridgewood, NJ called La Piazza (similar to the last place we ate in Portland) where the owner turned out to be Israeli -- go figure. We visited Ikea today and not too much else but the busy-ness of the days is bound to pick up as we need to find doctors, schools, grocery stores, etc etc.

I'll keep you guys updated as things progress around here and we begin to discover the new and interesting sides of NJ. We've already lined up a trip to the farmer's market in Ridgewood this Sunday. We'll see how it lines up with PDX. Keep checking in for frequent updates.

Here are some quick trip stats -- 12 days, 3800 miles, 9 states, 2 countries, 25 lbs of bacon, 56,109 dead bugs squashed on various parts of the car, 12 lbs total weight gained by the family, 0 tempers lost ;-)

[Jeff]

22/10: Night #11 - Montreal, Quebec, Canada (3)

This will probably sound like sacrilege to some of you and, frankly, it would sound like that to me too had I not been intimately familiar with the details of the situation but the fact is that we spent today totally relaxing in and around the hotel. Now, our hotel is not located in the most visitor-friendly location. It's by the airport in an industrial park. Its' not far from most things to see and do in Montreal but it' s definitely a businessperson/airline employee type airport. We ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant, swam in the pool (Gracie's really starting to get it), lounged in the room, watched tv, played games, did arts and crafts, etc. -- everything EXCEPT go see the sites in Montreal. We just didn't want to deal with the hassle of dragging the girls out there, dealing with the Metro stairs again or parking the car, finding places to eat, etc.. So we stayed in....and had a blast!

The realization has set in that while the girls have been great, site seeing is not their first love and forcing them to do it takes away from the enjoyment of the activity.

We went out to lunch at this Italian place near the Place Vertu mall and after lunch we headed to the mall for some quick shopping. I got a new hat (of which Sophie approved) and a new sweater and Gracie scored a brand new snowsuit which should, in all hopes, last her 2 seasons. She loved it.

We got room service for dinner and made a bold decisions to call an end to this road trip and head to New Jersey tomorrow. It's been fun but I think the plains and the shiteous weather that followed us for nearly 4 days really took a lot out of us this time. We told my folks this and naturally they are thrilled. In fact we should arrive just in time to see my car delivered to my folks' house. I think my piano should arrive there tomorrow as well (our new place is too small to house it -- wah wah).

Northern NJ is only 350 miles way from here and, at this point, that's a blink of an eye. It's a straight shot down I87 and it should be a nice drive that dips into Adirondack Park though the weather, once again, is supposed to be windy and rainy most of the way.

I've only had to buy 2 tanks of gas in Canada. This is a good thing because gas is expensive here. We've paid roughly $1/liter which equals about $3.80/gallon for regular. Filling up cost me nearly $70 last time. Even at $3/gallon I'm still saving tons of cash road tripping in the US.

Speaking of which, let's hope the border crossing goes as smoothly as it did getting in to Canada. My worst case scenario fear is that they'll force us to have the car and its entire contents searched. We're traveling with a TON of stuff and taking it all out and then repacking could end up being a multi-hour ordeal.

I do have another video to share and tomorrow I hope to video the contents of the car a they get unpacked. Today's video is one of the girls frolicking in the pool at the hotel (it's a sweet hotel by the way, despite its location). I'm going to upload the video now and as soon as it's ready I'll add it to the post.

UPDATE: Here's the video:



My goal is to post again tomorrow night after arriving and to continue posting as we transition into our new house, jobs, friends, and life in general -- we'll see if I can stick to it.

Bon soire,
[Jeff]

22/10: Night #10 - Montreal, Quebec, Canada (2)

Ok, so night #10 got the best of me. I fell asleep before getting the blog done. We did get Gracie's blog updated.

Yesterday morning was spent lounging around. Yes, I know we're finally in a location where there actually are things to do BUT we just didn't feel like doing much beyond eating, swimming, playing and simply relaxing (this is a bit of a vacation after all). We eventually made it into Old Montreal. We took the Metro in. It looked like a mix between the DC metro and the Paris metro. Some stations were nice while others where definitely not so nice (especially where we got on). What was surprising for us (toting a stroller full of baby and baby stuff) is that all of these stations are NOT accessible to anything or anyone that is on wheels. I guess handicapped folks are hosed in Montreal.

Old Montreal is nice and definitely has a bit of a European feel to it. The river front area actually has a very Portland-like feel to it which, as you can imagine, appealed to us very much. In between these two areas are tons of cheesy souvenir shops. Most items sold are related in one way or another to Canada, Montreal or a local attraction but many were just "funny" t-shirts like the classic slogan "F.B.I. - Female Body Inspector." Ha, freakin', ha! They could've done a little bit better than that in an effort to play up the European aspects.

There were lots of outdoor cafes and the weather certainly accommodated it. We ate at one. It was tres crappie but we did meet a nice local man who told us excellent stories and encouraged us to visit Quebec City. He said it was far more European than Montreal. It's now on our list for the next trip.

We took a cab home. Dealing with the tired girls on the subway and having to carry the stroller and all of our stuff up these enormous flights of stairs was just not appealing. We got in, watched a bit of tv and the next thing you know, it's this morning.

Here is some video and some photos of Montreal and us. The fancy building is Montreal City Hall:













This trip is definitely starting to wear on us a bit. Traveling with 2 children especially a slightly older one has made this cross-country adventure slightly more challenging than our last one. I know I've said this before but we've been repeatedly disappointed with our meals across this great continent and we're itching for a delicious home-cooked meal. We're revisiting the rest of our agenda for the trip at this point.

There's really no need to exercise my French here in Montreal. Everyone speaks English and doesn't really give you the opportunity to speak French. They just switch over immediately when they hear me butcher the first phrase. Nice. What has been interesting is that folks here have thought us to be Canadian several times. It's not that Canadians look different or really even talk differently (except for words like out or about) so I guess I'm not surprised but we've always joked that whenever we go to Europe we should pretend to be Canadian so we won't be hated on for being American. Looks like we can pass ourselves off if we choose to in the future. Yeah!

Today's plan is not unlike yesterday's plan -- eating, hanging out, relaxing, swimming, chilling out. Stay tuned for tonight's update as it will include detailed clues about our next few days.

Smell ya later,
[Jeff]

20/10: Night #9 - Montreal, Quebec, Canada (1)

Two big things changed today when we crossed into Quebec. One - the landscape. Since we left the metro Minneapolis area the land has looked exactly the same. Don't misunderstand, it's quite beautiful -- lots of multi-colored trees with lush green farms peeking in between them. Many calm and clear lakes in varying sizes populate the countryside and every now and again there's a quaint (and at times, not so quaint) little town made up of very few visible houses, a gas station or post office and a quickie mart of some kind. That's all very nice and picturesque but when you get roughly 1200 miles of it, it starts to get old. That was Ontario (and Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and the UP of Michigan).

Cue Quebec.

Finally, some change in the scenery and some concrete! Woohoo! If nothing else, we've re-asserted to ourselves that we are indeed city people. We love civilization -- stores, buildings, lights, dining options, people, cars, noise, etc. Believe me, we've driven through enough rural countryside to appreciate its beauty and calmness (heck, much of Carrie's family lives in that type of environment and we sure love visiting). But the city and its outlying suburbs/ex-urbs our the Gothelf favorite. You should've seen Gracie light up when she saw the warm, red glow of the Target sign. As some of you may know, Target is where the Care Bears live ;-)

The second big change is that all the English is now gone from the road signs, store fronts, and buildings. It is all in French. Now, we certainly expected to encounter French up here but what's interesting is that the rest of the country has signs in *both* English and French. In Quebec (the only French speaking province) the signs are exclusively in French. It's as if the rest of the country accommodates them but they thumb their nose at the Anglophones in Canada.

Fear not brave reader! My memory kicked into action and dusted off 16-20 year old French lessons. In no time I was comprehending road signs, communicating with hotel workers and ordering meals. Thanks 7th grade Latin and 11th grade French!

A brief note that it seems like the weather is finally blowing over. Tomorrow is supposed to be 70 and sunny - perfect for walking around Old Montreal. I only took one picture today. It's of a strip club somewhere in Ontario. The reason I took the picture was the name of the club. Take a look:



From across the highway (where I was standing) this looked like it was called "Fatty's." Which, to me, is hilarious. I hope you're laughing too. As a purveyor of, what one would hope, are svelte exotic dancers, naming your club Fatty's seems, um, I don't know......counterintuitive. However, after I zoomed in with my camera and inspected the photo a bit, I realized that the club is actually called "Fanny's." This is funny for another reason -- it shows off Canadian mildness as opposed to American "in-your-face-ness." An American club would've been called Rump's or Butt's or even Asses. But the "harshest" words the owner of this establishment went for was fanny. Illustrative? Yes. In your face? Not really.

We're in Montreal for 3 nights. Tonight was a slack night for us -- unpack the car (all of it), dinner, baths, tv, slack off in the rooms. Tomorrow and Monday we'll sleep in and sightsee. We plan on really taking it easy here in Montreal. Swimming, exercising and eating good food are all on the agenda.

The rest of the trip is still up in the air. It's been very fluid since Minnesota and we intend on making a few game-time decisions about the rest of it. We're leaning towards a couple of days in the Adirondacks before finally arriving in lovely metro NYC. We're over 3000 miles in at this point but really not that far from our destination. For the next 2 full days though -- NO driving whatsoever. Montreal has a a nice Metro system and our hotel will shuttle us between here and there. Stay tuned for what I hope will be awesome pics.

On the wellness front, all the girls are doing great. Gracie seems like she's finally kicked this cold she's been dragging around for nearly 3 weeks. Sophie pooped today (first time in 5 days for those of you keeping score at home). For your parents out there, you know the relief this brings. Carrie, now that Sophie's pooped, is doing very well herself. She's very excited to get out and about and test out the new walking shoes she picked up in Bend on the old streets of Montreal. Me, I'm doing great too. My chapped "fanny" will get some much-needed relief tomorrow since I will not be sitting in the driver's seat for at least 2 days. In fact, I won't be doing too much sitting at all.

Au revoir, mes amis,
[Jeff]

19/10: Night #8 - Sudbury, Ontario, Canada

Yes! We are in another country. Initially, it doesn't actually feel like it but as you get deeper and deeper into it you start to realize that this ain't the US (and you can't pretend to be Canadian here :-). We drove through the rest of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan today after a late start out of Marquette. The weather went from fair to crappy to awful many times during the trip. In fact, what should've been a relatively dramatic part of the drive -- crossing into Canada at Sault Ste Marie over the International Bridge -- ended up very anti-climactic due to the torrential rains whipped up by 30 mph winds assailing the car as we crossed.

We expected the crossing to be somewhat more eventful but it was simple, quick and very easy. They just asked a few questions about where we were going, why and for how long. They checked Carrie's ID and let us roll into Canada. We're making a pit stop in Sudbury on our way to Montreal tomorrow. We'll be spending a nice chunk of time in Montreal to see the sites, unwind, NOT drive and just relax before heading into the reality of our new lives on the east coast. I expect lots of good photos, movies and hopefully weather while we're there.

The storm we've been dealing with is still on top of us here since, as we move east so does the storm. It is supposed to rain on us one more day tomorrow (which would make 4 days in a row) but we're optimistic that the winds will blow this thing on over to the Atlantic states sooner rather than later. It's quite tiring and we've got ~400 miles to cover tomorrow.

A quick story I forgot to mention that happened to us in Marquette, MI:
After dinner, Carrie wanted to buy a bottle of wine. We weren't sure where to go and it was late so the first opportunity that came up was a bar that happened to sell "beer/wine to go." Carrie was apprehensive but she went in anyway. She came out rather quickly and empty-handed but the not without a vivid description of the establishment and clientel. Apparently this was *the* local hang out and everyone there was stinking of end of the day booze. There was a heavily intoxicated woman playing darts with 2 other guys using swears Carrie claims she's never heard in her life. Her prediction was that someone was getting a dart to the face before that night was through. What was interesting was that the restaurant we ate in that night had a crowd that was very college oriented -- students, professors, yuppies, etc. This bar.....not so much. It was quite a culture shock. In the end Carrie settled for a gas-station provided bottle of wine.

As we've been traveling we've noticed Grace's reading improving significantly. At this point she reads her own menus at restaurants and all the signs along the road, in places we visit and in the hotels. It's getting to the point where we can't spell words around her anymore. We gave her a kids' atlas so she can have her own map to see where we've been and where we've headed. She loves it and uses it every day while in her seat (she updated her blog today by the way with a video entry) -- that's my girl!

We did manage to get a few shots of Lake Superior and the local foliage on our drive today while the weather eased up here and there. Enjoy. Tomorrow, we'll be reporting from the Francophone side of things in Montreal, Quebec.









Had to take this one quickly. You can see the ominous clouds over head:


Au revoir,
[Jeff]

18/10: Night #7 - Marquette, MI

I'm not sure how many of you are aware of the weather system taking its anger out on the central portion of the country but we have seen it first hand.....and it sucks! We spent the majority of today driving in torrential downpours, high winds, lightning and general gloomy conditions. To be fair the sun did peek through occasionally but overall the drive was difficult and slow-going. The fact that once we got to Duluth we were generally on a 2-lane back road didn't help move things along either.

We did have a nice lunch in Duluth at Grandma's Saloon and it gave us a chance to ride out some of the rougher parts of the storm. We think it's actually quite pretty up here in the Upper Peninsula (UP) and we did get a brief glimpse here and there of Lake Superior. The rain, however, kept us from getting a real look at the area and its splendor. So we did not capture any worthwhile photos of the scenery but we did get this great shot of the girls in the hotel room this morning:



At this point we're nearing the halfway point of our trip and while it's been an exciting adventure, certain things are definitely starting to wear on us. We've had only one remarkable meal so far and that was 1600 miles ago in Jackson, WY at Trio. Since then it's been mediocre lunches and dinners at best, mostly fried foods and not a whole lot of vegetables (for the last time, a chilled plate of Romaine lettuce is NOT a salad!). We're missing home cooked meals and Carrie thinks we should start cooking in the hotel room (no, not a bunson burner Beaker, the majority of our hotel rooms are suites).

Speaking of Carrie - for someone who is not terribly fond of maps she has done an outstanding job reworking the itinerary for the latter half of our trip. She took the reins and made sure we were not looking at 2-3 more 10-hour days in the car. In addition she's made sure that we're staying at the best hotels in each one of these "cities" and to her credit again, she's batting 1000 on hotels.

Tomorrow we finally get into Canada. I don't expect it to be too much different until we actually get to the cities -- especially Montreal. Hopefully we'll have more photos and some video to share tomorrow night. Gracie's journal will also be updated then as it is now 12:30 and, well, she's asleep. Speaking of time - we're back on Eastern Daylight Time. This means no more time changes and that we are very close to the East coast. This is a good thing as these last 3 days getting across the plains took some inspiration out of us.

[Jeff]

17/10: Night #6 - Twin Cities, MN

We've driven 1200 miles in the last 2 days. It's put us on the road nearly 22 hours total. At least the 600 miles yesterday were through beautiful country on a beautiful day. Wyoming really has a diverse landscape as well as giant flocks of sheep that hang by the interstate:



Also, not a commonly known fact I assume but the Rocky Mountains cut right through Wyoming as well:



Today's 600 miles were mostly through South Dakota. Now, South Dakota can be a very beautiful state with lots to see - Mt. Rushmore, Devil's Tower, Black Hills, National Grasslands, Badlands, etc. Today, however, in addition to the relative flatness and straightness of the terrain, it was foggy, rainy, windy and cold. Visibility was down to just a few hundred yards at some points which made the drive even more monotonous.

What's truly interesting about this stretch of road (I-90 Eastbound, in case you cared) is that each rest area tries to play up what tiny claim to fame it may have in an effort to entice as many vehicles off the highway to spend $ there. Each place claims it was featured on some tv show, channel or magazine. They claim to have the greatest food, restrooms, novelties, Native American art, whatever -- what they don't mention is in what decade they were actually featured in these magazines. A perfect example is one rest area that claims to have set props from Dances with Wolves (shot in South Dakota!). They gotta do what they gotta do.

We, of course being human, caved to our temptations and checked out the most heavily advertised rest area -- Wall Drug in Wall, SD. This place was a mini-mall of Western kitsch. Lots of stuffed animals, t-shirts, mugs, art, silver dollar collections, Native American photographs and Wild West memorabilia. Wall Drug takes up 2-3 blocks and is almost like a mini-Vegas in this tiny town. Here are some photos from there:





Us and Wyatt Erp:


A final note on the cultural differences between our world and this one we've driven through for the past 2 days. We don't live in gun culture. We don't believe in the supreme importance of bearing arms and we certainly think the 2nd amendment is antiquated along with the NRA. Not so in South Dakota. Guns, ammo, toy guns, and gun imagery is everywhere. To be fair, hunting is very popular here (folks refer to themselves as Elkoholics) but still, it's a bit disconcerting at times. Here is a shot of a magazine rack from Al's Oasis in Oacama, SD (notice the mags on the top rack):



Also, Native Americans are a huge presence here. Again, not so in our typical world. At the Outback Steakhouse in Rapid City last night there was some misunderstanding with the meals of a table of Native Americans. The manager came out and comp'ed the *entire* tab and then proceeded to apologize profusely telling them to say hi "to the chief." We were really curious about the role Native Americans play in this community and how the reservation mixes with the non-reservation portions of the community. We didn't get any answers. So, we're still curious.

These 2 super-long days have urged us to change our travel plans a bit. We're still heading for Canada but we're breaking up the super long days coming up into shorter hops heading for Marquette, MI tomorrow.

We're in St. Paul/Minneapolis tonight. Haven't seen much of it and it's raining so we probably won't. We'll also update Gracie's journal tomorrow night as well. She's sleeping right now (very cute).

Drying out,
[Jeff]

17/10: Night #5 - Rapid City, SD

Quick check in tonight as I am tired and want to sleep. Carrie pulled an ironwoman performance today and drove clear across the state of Wyoming -- 600 miles! It was truly a remarkable feat. Wyoming is gorgeous but the 75 mph speed limit really keeps you from taking any worthwhile photos. This is cowboy country out here -- quite literally. The terrain varies greatly from mountain to plains and painted hills to lush green valleys.

We're in Rapid City, SD tonight just for the night and then off again in the morning for another long day with Minneapolis metro as the goal.

We have a picture or two of a huge flock of sheep that were grazing beside the interstate as we blazed past them but otherwise nothing huge to show from today's drive.

[Jeff]