We’re freshly back from our road trip to the Laurentians, I say road trip because we spent most of the weekend driving:

The Road – Part 1
We left on Friday night shortly after 8 PM, wrongly thinking that the Toronto exodus’ heavy traffic #28 would pretty much be done, and also with the intention of stopping along the way once we started feeling like 2 big sleepy heads. We had no hotel reservations for that night, no goals, we just wanted to get as close to our destination as possible so that on Saturday morning, we’d have very little driving and start enjoying our family reunion of sorts. Well, it sounded like a good plan at the time.

Although the city was fairly deserted with its streets very low on traffic, it changed drastically once we hit the “Highway of Heroes” itself, it totally felt like we were the last guests arriving at a party. It was bumper to bumper, cars, trucks, buses, anything with a motor, with no signs of letting go anytime soon. I heaved my first sigh! After 1 hour of going between 20 and 50 KM/H, we finally caught a little break and started moving a tad faster, say maybe 80 KM/H until Belleville where we went back to 50 KM/H or slower. I sincerely think we created a new hole in the ozone layer over Canada that night.

It was 11:30 PM by the time we reached Kingston, 3.5 hours after our departure, a destination we normally reach in less than 2.5 hours, and since we weren’t really that far from Toronto we continued on as the there were fewer cars on the road and we were finally moving at a good pace. By the time we reached Brockvegas at 12:30 AM, the yawning had become much more frequent and we decided to take the next exit and try our chances at very visible Comfort Inn. I’m not sure if the night clerk laughed at us, but she definitely had a wicked smile when she said they were sold out and that the only place around that had vacancy was on the way to Prescott, a neighbouring town to the East. Like champions, we drove on only to find out that they did have a room left but that it went for $200/night!!! FOR PRESCOTT??? I peeled out of that driveway.


At 12:45 AM, on the 401… go to sleep people

We were so close to Ottawa by that time that we decided to make that our new goal and take a chance on a cheaper room. At that point I was getting ready to just sleep in the car.

By 1:15 AM we finally saw a sign with 7 different motels/hotels in the town of Nepean, just before Ottawa, and although the sign with all the sleeping places pointed to one direction, we couldn’t find any of them. After driving around for 15 minutes, lost in the industrial area south of Ottawa, truly the saddest place on earth, DR recognized a street that he thought might lead us downtown Ottawa. I was tired, my jaw aching from too much yawning, we had been up since 6 AM. As we drove on, it turned into a little residential area, then into a business-like area. We found a McDonald, then a Pizza Hut and then a “7-11″. No one has these 3 types of businesses around without having a cheap motel nearby, no way in hell.

Suddenly, rounding a bend in the road, there it was, on the other side of the road, Ye Old Place of Sleep, I truly have no idea of the name anymore, but it was made to look like an old medieval type little castle-ish building, we did a U-Turn and zoomed in to their front door. They did have a room for $75 and we snatched it right away. I think I probably could have rented it by the hour if I would’ve insisted. It looked like that kind of place, but with the carpet vaccumed.

It was 2:10 AM by the time we put the key in the room’s doorknob, too tired to laugh at the decor, that is until DR pulled back the sheets and noticed a black hair on it. He couldn’t stop himself from suddenly role-playing Senator and Secretary. Ye old Place of Sleep might very well be Ye Old Place of Tchekamowmow (insert 70′s porn music).

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