We made it to Maine!

We made it to Maine! Whew.

On Tuesday, we drove from Hamburg, NY, to Cornwall, Ontario. We went through Syracuse and into the lakes district. (Did you know that New York HAD a lakes district???) We crossed the St. Lawrence Seaway at Massena, NY, into Cornwall, immediately encountering the Canadian highways. Ummm, perhaps the Canadian Stimulus Package wasn’t as large as ours…….they could use some stimulation. Quebec was even worse, as far as highways goes. Pretty much washboard city. Bob thinks we should send them some of our cones. They do road work WITHOUT ORANGE CONES. I don’t think they realize that it’s some kind of rule that you must use about 120 orange cones per project, and that the cones should extend approximately 5 miles in front of and behind all projects.

We stayed in a cheapie hotel – a Super 8. I had gotten it through hotwire. That will probably be the last time I do that, as they had requested a smoking room for me. When I told the desk clerk that there’s no way I’d asked for that, he found another room for us, but he then told me that we were the third reservation he’d had in 2 weeks where hotwire had requested a smoking room for a nonsmoking customer. The place was clean, but the hall smelled strongly of marijuana. I guess the little no-smoking icon on the door didn’t include any funny-looking cigarettes.

When we got to Montreal on Wednesday we killed a couple of hours shopping – Bob’s favorite store, Canadian Tire (!) and I found a new pair of shoes.  Then we went to L’ile Perrot, a small island between Montreal and its western suburbs, to visit friends. Had a great visit with them.

Montreal c’est magnifique! A lovely city, if you ignore all the French stuff. While I’m aware that Montreal is a French-speaking city, I kind of assumed that, since it is part of an English-speaking country, the signs would be in both languages. Au contraire. No English signs anywhere. Now, I know a few isolated French words, and I can usually figure out the signs from that (“something happening in the right lane, Bob”), but as for the information signs, forget it. My French is SO limited (there is just no good way to work “la plume de ma tante” into a sentence) that shopping was fun, too. The clerks come up, chattering away in French – then they see my confused face and switch to perfectly unaccented English. That kind of surprised me, since our friend speaks with a French accent…..all in all, Montreal is like going to France without the snotty French! I definitely want to go back on one of these trips to Maine.

The drive through New Hampshire and Vermont was really pretty. We ignored the interstates and drove a back road for a couple of hundred miles (Portland is only 300 miles from Montreal). The leaves are already beginning to turn in Vermont…..the nights are getting cold. Here, on the coast of Maine, the ocean is keeping the air a bit warmer, so the leaves aren’t changing yet. Soon, though. All the produce stands have pumpkins and late apples out. We plan to go apple picking this weekend.

Next blog will have pictures!!