Crossing The Country Part 1
When we came back from Halifax, NS, and stared into our storage unit, everything stacked in front of us was built on decisions we made a year before. For six months after we left Vancouver Island, we thought the items in storage would be for the life we wanted in Northern BC. Then, we decided on the east coast.
Our move was complicated because we didn’t have enough time to downsize again for the new life we had chosen. In a year, after selling our house and traveling, much had changed, but not the load we carried with us, and not the load we had left behind.
The last days of April blurred together. We stayed at Pedder Bay RV Resort for nine days. Our site was big and peaceful. It took us a little longer to drive to shopping and visit with family, but we made it work.
U-Haul didn’t call us back after the repack. With fingers crossed, we hoped our shipping containers were safely on their way to Truro, NS. Jamie drained the water out of our tanks, and we stocked our fridge. Ice packs would keep everything cool once we got on the road. I booked a hotel in Osoyoos for our first night. Jamie repacked the bearings on the trailer wheels.
May 1st, 2019: Pedder Bay (Municipality of Metchosin) in Victoria, BC to Osoyoos, BC - 7.5 hrs & 506 kms
We left camp by 7:50 am and got to the ferry terminal at Swartz Bay around 9:15 am. We went through Gate 2 to pay. It cost us $222. We were told to go into Lane 22. Then our daughter texted us to say Part 2 of The White Rabbit was ready early. We were parked beside a minivan with a Nova Scotia plate. I relaxed. What other signs did I need? How about an email from U-Haul to say our shipping containers were on their way. My phoned buzzed, and yes, there was the confirmation.
We were on the 11 am sailing. We had a lovely view from our seats in the passenger lounge on the ferry. When we arrived at the Tsawwassen terminal, it was 17C in Vancouver.
We jammed so much into the first quarter of the year, and here we were traveling across Canada in the second quarter. Mindblowing. I tweeted about the start of our trip using the #Canada #alifelessburdened #ALLBdailyregister #amwriting tags. Our journey was shared daily across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram while we traveled from the west coast to the east coast of Canada.
A sporty McLaren drove by us and then pulled in for gas. The car passed us again, likely on its way to the track in Oliver, BC. In sleek white and black, we both agreed it was really cool to see a car like that being driven on the highway.
May 2nd, 2019: Osoyoos, BC to Pincher Creek, AB - 7.5 hrs & 656 kms
The next morning we climbed out of Osoyoos. I had to keep myself calm through the mountain passes. Jamie said I looked frozen like a rock. That’s because my heart was beating in my throat and my palms were sweating. I was scared to look out the windows while our truck and rig flew down the twisty hills at highway speed. Jamie wasn’t bothered by this at all.
We left before 7:30 am and got into Pincher Creek by 5 pm. There was snow in the higher elevations on the side of the road. We could have had a lot of bad weather, but we seemed to be ahead of it. Construction slowed us down. When we drove through BC nine months before, the orchards were full of fruit. Now we were seeing the trees in full spring bloom.
May 3rd, 2019: Pincher Creek, AB to Moose Jaw, SK - 6.5 hrs & 662 kms
We stayed with the Friesens in Moose Jaw. Two decades had passed, but we were welcomed like old friends to their table. That stop was the highlight of our trip, and what happened in Moose Jaw, stays in Moose Jaw. That’s all I can tell you.
May 4th, 2019: Moose Jaw, SK to Winnipeg, MB - 6.5 hrs & 656 kms
We left Moose Jaw around 10 am. We had a big pancake breakfast before setting out and only needed snacks to keep us going until we got into Winnipeg. It was a boring drive through the prairie landscape. Lots of dusty stops at highway gas stations, but that was topped with blue sky and fluffy clouds over the flat dirty fields.
It was 7 pm when we arrived at the hotel (we’d lost an hour after crossing another time zone). There wasn’t anywhere we could walk to for dinner so we grabbed the last two cans of chili from the trailer and ate chips with that, plus the energy bars Charlene sent with us. We phoned our daughter, Devon, and then went to bed early.
May 5th, 2019: Winnipeg, MB to Thunder Bay, ON - 7.5 hrs & 692 kms
We had a chilly start. It was 1C at 9 am. We’d left the hotel just after 7:30 am. Manitoba had crappy roads. Once we crossed the border into Ontario the roads smoothed out, until we got closer to Thunder Bay. Those roads were awful.
We had five more days of driving to get across Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and into Nova Scotia.