My Electronic Scrapbook: Leaving Ottawa

Thanks Michelle for this stunning video of my wedding!



Visiting the water down at the docks just below my dad's house in the Thousand Islands one last time the day after our wedding, we knew it was time to go.



Martin and Michelle came with us back to Ottawa. Believe it or not, my husband worked for a lot of the week after our wedding and right before our move. Martin, Michelle and I went to a very cool diner in the market in downtown Ottawa for brunch before doing some final sightseeing.



Carleton University campus was one of our stops and I really wish Reg had been able to go with us but he was finishing up stuff at work before we moved.



The day before our moving day there was a giant rainbow in the sky and I knew it was a good sign. I wish I had taken photos of all our friends helping us pack up the Uhaul the next day but I was too busy helping. Our friends were so amazing, they not only helped load our truck up with our stuff (taking what did not fit, Mike D got our kitchen chairs!) they even helped clean the apartment. It was a tearful good-bye on a cold rainy day.

Unfortunately Reg's luggage was accidentally one of the first things that got packed, filled with all his travelling clothes so when we stopped for the night somewhere between Algonquin Park and North Bay, he had nothing to wear! Our first morning we woke up to this view in our first motel:



Unfortunately, things got much worse after I took this pretty photo. We were driving along the highway when our Uhaul completely lost steering and breaks! Reg managed to get the truck to the side of the road. My old cell phone lasted long enough for me to tell Uhaul where we were. They said to leave the keys in the ignition and make our way to North Bay. Then the phone died.

Are you serious?! Leave our truck with all our possessions in it on the side of the road with the key in the ignition. Letting that digest in our shocked brains, we sat in the truck, having no idea just how far away North Bay was. We put the four ways on and did not know what to do. What seemed like hours later, a good samaritan took pity on us and stopped his car on the side of the road. He said it could take hours and hours for the Uhaul guy to show up and that he would take us to a hotel in North Bay.

We are naturally paranoid people, Reg and I. Normally we would never get into a stranger's car but what else could we do? Thankfully he was truly a good samaritan and did exactly that, take us to the closest hotel where we waited to hear back from Uhaul. The news wasn't good.



They could not fix the Uhaul in North Bay so we were going to have to move all our stuff ourselves into another truck! Not only that, we would have to wait four days. I was furious. Yes, this gave us enough time to buy Reg some clothes in the city but I sat in the hotel fuming and fuming all four days. We were wasting time and I knew that physically my contribution was going to be minimal so Reg was going to have to bear the brunt of all that work which sucked!



Yeah, he wasn't too thrilled about it either! Good news is because he had to remove EVERYTHING he found his luggage and made sure to put it in last this time for easy access.



This part of the move felt like forever and we were so behind schedule as a result, I could have cried. We had not been on the road 24 hours before we had a major issue. Later I realized that it was a good thing we lost breaks and steering in flat Ontario and not in mountainous Alberta or BC!



Then we were off again! We had planned the trip perfectly when it came to an autumn adventure. The trees were gorgeous and in mid-autumnal transition! The golden light was stunning. Wish my photos were better but I was using my old Minolta SLR that I had not used in eons.



Oh how gorgeous is the Canadian shield? The closer we got to Northern Ontario, the more I was in love with the landscape and Nature.



We were driving along Lake Superior and had to stop and listen to the water.



It was so gorgeous Reg took out the camcorder and filmed the water and the waves. Even though Lake Superior is not the ocean, there is a wildness to it that we adored.

That ends of first REAL day on the road which happened five days after we left Ottawa. Because we lost so much time we booted it and did not stop very often. It still took us three driving days to leave Ontario. That province is huge!