Road Trip - The Trip Begins

The drive across the country was quite relaxing and I did take sometime to be a bit of a tourist. I was most impressed with the area around Coeur d’Alene Idaho the lake and mountains were beautiful. Once you get to Montana the scenery becomes quite flat and is pretty the same.

The first night I stopped at a rest stop near Missola, Montana, the Rest Stops in the US have the right idea they are designed for someone to stop and sleep for a couple of hours instead of driving while you are tired. They have clean bathrooms, they are situated about 50-70 miles apart, well lit with plenty of parking. The second day I took a slight detour to Helena Montana and checked out the State Capitol and a statue called the Our Lady of the Rockies, which was built up on a mountain to overlook Butte, Montana and the valley. I stopped the second day just over the North Dakota border at a nice little place which was very quiet and had a nice area for me to sit and enjoy the natural beauty. Not too much happened on Day three as we progressed through North Dakota, although I did find a small winery which makes fruit wines. The Maple River Winery in Casselton, ND, make some unique wines including Apple Jalapeno. My Favorite is the Rhubarb wine tastes like Rhubarb pie. We ended day three in Minnesota near St Cloud.

On Day four we found a Factory Outlet that had in excess of 90 stores so I decided to stop and have a quick look, needless to say my quick look took about 4 hours. Found some interesting things and purchased a few things, hey what can I say my arm was twisted! I was still on schedule and if not a little behind where I wanted to be so off we went heading for St Paul/Minneapolis. When we arrived in the St Paul area their was a lot of construction so it was a little confusing and I missed my exit and kept going east when in fact I should have gone north then east. Once I was into Wisconsin I figured out I was going a different route and had to either to turn around or go another way. I chose the later. This would take me to Green Bay and then north to Sault Ste Marie. I figured out if I got close to the Ontario border I would be within 7-8 hours of Petawawa. So I drove until I reached within 20 miles of the border and decided after a short rest I was good to go ahead. I drove to the border and reentered Canada, my first stop….Tim Horton’s of course. The Americans cannot make coffee like Timmy’s does.

Drove for another little while, enjoying my Timmy’s and then called it night. On day five we had an uneventful drive the rest of the way to Petawawa and arrived around 4pm.

Grand total mileage (Kilometerage) was 4765 kms.

More to come….