The Road Trip: French Canadia

Canada. Also known as Canadia. Home of my future husband, Corey Vidal. Unfortunately, Corey was in California the day we decided to visit Canada and we visited Montreal- not Toronto. So no Corey for us :(

"Bonjour!"

Driving up to Montreal was a decently far drive from Portland- I think it took us like 5 or 6 hours to get there. In order to get to Canada, we drove through Vermont. Traffic signs in VT were very nice, bilingual signs in both French and English. We crossed the border into Canadia at a not-busy border crossing and then magically, everything changed. The moose signs were happier, the speed limits were in different units and the language was not English.

Snowmobile crossing!

In case you hadn't figured it out, we weren't entirely prepared for this culture shock. The mere fact of being in Canada was exciting enough, but the language barrier was entertaining. Also, somehow we must not have crossed at a common tourist area because there were no visitor information spots. Another thing we didn't think of was planning ahead. Our usual plan of using the internet on Michael's phone to find us a campsite/hotel didn't work when you cross country borders and turn off the internets because of roaming fees.  The phone was also being used as our GPS. Luckily, I had a Garmin which also had Canadian roads and maps in it. Also, I have Sprint which doesn't charge outlandish fees to text people from Canada to America so I texted our brother, Ben, to look up a campsite for us. He did a very good job and found a KOA site. (Side note: there is a KOA site on my way from Downingtown to Kennett Square and it makes me very happy inside.)

We drove an hour before we found anything remotely like a visitor/rest-stop. We walked in and asked where we could exchange our money. In unconfident English the lady wasn't sure how to describe where a bank was so she asked another lady who called the bank to make sure they were still open and they directed us there.

Once we were at the bank, only one guy spoke English well so he exchanged our money for us. I was supposed to do the talking and I did... but I only spoke in English. Michael wanted me to use my French but I wimped out (oopsies). We got our funny money and drove to the site.

Our campsite yay!

The camp we stayed at was very nice. We were the only ones tent-camping though; everyone else had RVs. But that also meant we were the only ones in our area so we could take up more than one site while trying to get the tarp up. While we were checking in, a guy in the office made a really bad joke to one of Michael's comments about a bag of firewood. I dumbly smiled because I had no idea what the guy meant (neither did Michael) but because I smiled, he thought I got his joke and then harassed us and called me smart and it was awkward. Michael told me that I shouldn't smile so much to old men because that's how I attract creepers. Which is probably true (excluding my pheromones). But we did get our firewood yay!

Canada is cold. Even in June. Not as cold as it usually is most likely, but I was cold. Storm clouds were also brewing so it looked like it was going to be a miserable night. Fortunately, God loves us and He cleared the skies (: After we set up camp and ate American beef hot-dogs, we decided to try to head towards Montreal.

Once again, we did not plan this adventure out (which is always for the best). I typed in "Montreal" into the GPS and we tried heading that direction. What is in Montreal that we should see? I still have no idea. We did see a college campus that we walked through and found a microbrewery/sports bar. The beer was delicious. It took us a very long time, however, to find that microbrewery. Downtown Montreal is very European whereas the rest of the cities we had been in were very hipster. We weren't dressed for any of their fancy restaurants or bars. No pubs existed as far as we could tell. Montreal does have an exuberant number of coffee shops however. Probably of the same caliber as Seattle.

After roaming Montreal for a few hours and parking in the most expensive parking lot in the city, we got tired and headed back. I was cold. Perhaps I was coming down with a bug or something that night because while it was in the 40s, it wasn't weather that I should have been freezing about. I wore both my jeans and my pj pants to bed with my socks and my sweatshirt with my sweater and a t-shirt on (i told you i was cold). Oh yea- and I wore my Canada lumberjack hat!!!! But halfway through the night, I took the hat off. I was freezing though.

After uncomfortably sleeping on a rock all night, the next morning was warmer (more like 60s) and beautiful. We headed back to America via a Canada-trucker-hat-and-souvenir-buying stop.