Wayward Newlyweds – Day 15: 49th Parallel/Rouy-Noranda

Borders and Time

The attempt at early rising failed… again. We made it up around 9:00am. We decided to forgo formal breakfast and had some left over snacks and protein bars. It was my turn to drive today, so we adjusted a few things for my short self. We started off the drive listening to Liriel again. It was a pretty strait forward drive for the day. We were aiming for Cochrane, and looked like we would make it around 4:30pm.

Most of the highway in this part of the country runs through just that, country. There was km after km of fields, and trees, logged parts, swamps and not much else. At one point we saw a sign that read “No gas for 211km”Of course this was…after the last gas station…not before, AFTER…*sigh* We had a solid half tank and the Fit is pretty good on gas at highway speeds. Dodd was a bit anxious but I was sure we would be fine. We even bet that the gas light wouldn’t come on before we got to the next station (I won that bet). We stopped listening to Liriel when Dodd fell asleep and decided he didn’t want to miss anything. Fair I guess, it’s a good story! We switched to music and Dodd napped some more.

We got to our intended destination right on time 4:30pm. I was not super impressed as it was really open and very close to the highway. It was a neat stop though as it marked the 49^th Parallel which marks the border with the US in most of Western Canada. In spite of this neat feature we decided to go on and find a better stop. We did some quick research and found a free rest stop campsite just over the border into Quebec.

Dodd took over driving at this point as I was missing my afternoon car nap. A kin to the camping read nap (ask Karen about that one too). We found the rest stop with out any issue, and it actually had little camp sites with picnic tables and fire pits and everything! The toilet facilities were a bit lacking, but we made do. We got partly set up then had some dinner and played Gameboy a bit. We went down to the lake that was at the bottom of the hill the park was on to skip some rocks and it was eerily quiet. The lake was very still and there was no bird song…or bugs buzzing…Dodd thought there might be a storm coming in so we went back to the site and finished setting up the bed. We were just finishing when witching hour came up and mosquitoes were everywhere! We dove inside and spent about 10 minutes hunting down the bugs that ventured inside with us. Our lovely neighbours then decided it was a good idea to turn on their generator at 9:30pm and keep it running until at least 11:00pm…not impressed. Eventually we got to sleep, and never saw the storm that may or may not have appeared.

Cheers

Sláinte

Skol