(~5 minutes to read)
Mrs. H. and I recently returned from our longest vacation in thirty-plus years. It was a road trip to the Ottawa area and back, with a ten-day houseboat trip on the Rideau Waterway system in the middle. (Let’s face it, it’d be pointless driving there and back and then doing the houseboat trip, wouldn’t it!)
Eight thousand kilometres of driving gives a person time to smell the roses (and skunk roadkill), and I thought it’d be enlightening to provide some insight to the way my mind processes things I see.
So here, dear reader, are some of the more printable random thoughts that went through my head during our road trip. Unluckily for the bug splats on my windshield, the last thing that went through their heads was their backsides.
Eaten Alive
After being eaten alive by mosquitoes in Falcon Lake (and Kakabeka Falls and Agawa Bay), I got to wondering what mosquitoes feed on when there are no humans around. After all, there’s a lot of sparsely-populated wilderness in that part of Canada, and from what I read, it’s teeming with mosquitoes. So what do they do for sustenance?
Do they feed on animals? (It must be hard work burrowing through coarse fur to get to the goods.) Do they have periods of feast and famine? Do they feed on each other? Do they eat their young? Do they ambush no-see-ums and bleed them dry?
Or do they spend their entire lives looking for humans? I think this must be it, judging from the number of bites Mrs. H. and I suffered. It’s almost like there’s a mozzie grapevine or alerts network that keeps mosquitoes in touch with each other.
“Get your proboscises out girls—there’s a couple of humans in a blue and yellow tent at Kakabeka Falls! And from the taste of it, they’re foreigners: Albertans, if I’m not mistaken!
“No… wait: there’s a hint of fish and chips in the flavour. Hey! I think they used to be Brits! Come on girls, if you like ethnic food, it’s party time!”
I’m sure the real answer’s out there on the internet somewhere, but it’s much more fun guessing.
Like the People of the Beltane
About 135 kilometres south west of Swift Current, there’s a “T. Rex Discovery Centre”.
“Great,” I thought. “For those of us who grew up listening to songs such as “Ride a White Swan”, “Jeepster” and “Get It On” (“Bang a Gong” in the US and Canada), we can finally get to discover the meaning of Marc Bolan’s lyrics.”
But wouldn’t you know it; it’s just a place where you can learn about T. Rex the dinosaur: not that we Marc Bolan listeners aren’t dinosaurs ourselves, you understand.
Polly Want a Cuttlefish?
In Lion’s Head (on the Bruce Peninsula, in Ontario), I saw a lady walking along a beach with a parrot on her shoulder. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t a pirate—she didn’t have a patch over one eye, and both her legs were her own—and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a Norwegian Blue parrot, because it wasn’t “kipping on its back”. Either way, the parrot and its lady generated a fair bit of interest among the people on that beach.
A couple of kids had previously been (unsuccessfully) dropping rocks on ducks—I’m glad they didn’t turn their attention to the parrot.
Highway to… Ottawa? (With apologies to AC/DC fans)
Driving in Ontario is… an experience.
When you cross the border from Manitoba, the first(?) sign you see (after the “Welcome!” sign, that is) is the menu of speeding fines. $95.00 if you’re caught going 20km/hr over the limit, $220.00 if it’s thirty over the limit, and so on.
At fifty over the limit, it’s a $10,000 fine, three demerits on your licence, your vehicle impounded, your first-born sent into slavery in Alabama or Georgia or some such place, and all your future income confiscated and used to finance roadside inuksuk building. (Okay—I exaggerate. A little.)
So what do Ontario drivers do? They drive everywhere at eighteen over the limit. We law-abiding drivers become obstacles that collect convoys and interesting nicknames as the convoy passes us.
The Alberta plates should have told them I’d be driving to the limit. (Because Albertans don’t speed, do they!) But I may have ended up driving at eighteen over the limit occasionally.
The thing is, the highways through rural Ontario are challenging. Only one lane in each direction; lots of curves; lots of hidden intersections; other vehicles; very few passing places: it’s a nightmare, I tell ya!
And if all that doesn’t make the roads hazardous enough, there are signs warning drivers of people driving pony-and-traps on the roads and turtles (or is it tortoises?) crossing them (the roads, that is, not the ponies).
These signs seem to be effective though; amongst all the roadkill I saw, I didn’t notice a single turtle or pony-and-trap.
Now… if they could just put up signs warning drivers about skunks crossing the road…
Feeling Fuel-filled
One very odd thing about the road trip was the need to get fuel every day. I drive a VW Golf TDI, and most of the year, a forty-five buck fill lasts me a month. What a contrast to have to fill every day!
But those eight thousand kilometres only cost about five hundred bucks. We got 57.1mpg on that trip. (That’s 4.95L/100Km for you metric types.) I’m guessing that many of the vehicles that passed us—pickup trucks hauling trailers—were getting something nearer 4.95mpg, which by coincidence, is 57.07L/100Km.
Mind you—I bet they didn’t get eaten alive at night in their nice, air-conditioned trailers…
Seriously Though, Folks…
Everyone needs to do a road trip across Canada at least once in their lives. It allows you to appreciate just what a BBC (Bloody Big Country) we live in, and it exposes you to different landscapes, styles of living, economies, and weather patterns.
And drivers.