Homeward bound!

Well here we are in Honey Harbour, Ontario as I start today’s blog. It’s hard to believe that we are going to be home tonight! When we left Cranbrook, B.C. on Monday morning there was no way we thought we would be pulling into our driveway in Fort Erie on Thursday night. No way!

We had very good driving weather to get through the Prairies and that really helped, but yesterday with the rain for most of the day, and even for a part of this morning, it is still unbelievable that we will be home in 4 days from B.C.

Richard has really come into his own as a RV driver! St. Stephen should be proud of his little ‘hillbilly’ friend!

We left White River, Ontario at 6:38am this morning. I was definitely NOT very happy when Richard opened our bedroom closet door, to get a tshirt to wear, and woke me up before 6am! I knew we needed to get on the road early, but it was still quite dark out at 6:38am.

Leaving White River in the dark this morning worried about hitting critters on the road.

25 minutes after we left White River it was lightening up a bit.

The first thing we saw crossing the road while it was still dark, was a red fox. We hadn’t seen much wildlife on this trip home which was good! Yesterday Richard thought he saw a wolf on the side of the road. I missed it, so I couldn’t confirm that he really did see a wolf, but he didn’t think a dog would be out wandering around the side of the road. We did see a dead deer yesterday and Richard saw someone get out of their pickup this morning to check to see that they had just hit a deer near Sudbury. I missed today’s deer incident, since I was in the bathroom. I still think it is funny when the road signs say “Moose for the next 3 km”. For real? Do you really think the moose read the road signs to know that they can only stay in the vicinity of the 3 km that the sign says they live in? I get that the road signs need to warn people there may be moose, but to say they are only for the next 3 km, is what I find hilarious! Still we are very thankful we did not encounter any moose, deer or critters trying to become Newman’s new hood ornament!

Driving from Northern Ontario to Southern Ontario today it was interesting to see the different state of the landscape. Northern Ontario still had many frozen lakes and there was snow and ice on the side of the road. As we get closer to Toronto, the grass on the side of the road was getting quite green and there is definitely no snow anywhere. It seems spring has really come early to Southern Ontario. If we were still in Fanny Bay the temperature would only be 11c and as I write this it is 26C in Fort Erie! It will be nice to be able to go out without a jacket on, which we haven’t been able to do on the Island, for most of our time there.

Ice on the side of the road up in Northern Ontario.

When we stopped for diesel fuel at the Esso station in Magnetawan, Ontario Richard was met with two guys who were circling Newman as soon as we stopped at the pump. The guys were interested in what year Newman was and hearing all about how we like Newman, etc.etc. One guy had recently retired and was trying to find an RV but was having a hard time finding one. We know that RV’s are very much in demand now given the pandemic with people wanting to stay in their own bubble, and travel in Canada, I was listening to the conversation Richard was having, as I sat in Newman and I was wondering if Richard was going to sell Newman out from under me, since the guy seemed so interested in Newman! Needless to say, we kept him, as he’s been a very good warrior on this journey home to get us as far as we’ve driven, in the short amount of time that its taken us to get here! Newman we are so proud of you! You’re a champ! As Richard is calling you now! For all the disasters and adventures we had going to the Island and on the Island, Newman was absolutely perfect coming home!

We’ve had people reach out to us and say they will miss the blog and these daily updates on our exploits. It’s been a lot of fun for me going from working a very busy, stressful job at the Bank, to writing and documenting our daily exploits - with photos, gifs and stories. I think writing the blog has really helped me ease into retirement with a daily purpose. Now I hope that when I get home every day won’t just get away from me, and I will get nothing done! But I don’t think that will happen. We’ve got a ton of work to do when we get home with a lot of stuff I’ve ordered online to fix up the house, a master bathroom gut job and Reno coming up when we are allowed to have people travel and the stay at home order is over. And of course there is the repair of the shoreline which was devastated in the storm last November that we have to fix up and the landscaping around the pool. Plus, we have to get the gardens ready for seed planting and I’ve got a mind to rip out the landscaping at the front of the house and start over there too. Lots and lots to keep us busy for days on end.

We do plan on travelling again when we can travel again, to get the roof replaced on Newman. Now that we know our second vaccine shot is August 4th, we’ll have to see what the restrictions will be in Nova Scotia for people who have been vaccinated. And of course see what St. Stephen’s schedule looks like too! So there will be more blogs in the future of our ‘Bucket List’ adventures that we want to check off. We are also planning something big for next year too, but its too soon to blog about that now. We will have to keep you all in suspense for next year!

So I wonder if you could guess how many kilometres we did on our trip since we left on November 3, 2020? I asked Richard what he thought our total kilometres driven in Newman were and he guessed within 433 km of what we have driven on this trip!

We did 6,433 miles! Newman’s odometer is in miles, as he was originally purchased by his first owners in Kentucky, USA.

We did.........

10,353 km!!!!

We have been gone 156 days, This is the 164th blog post without missing a day. We drove home in 6 days from Vancouver Island, PLUS 2 days of rest in Cranbrook. We left Fanny Bay, Vancouver Island at 8:15am on April 1st, and we left Cranbrook, B.C. at 8am on Monday April 5th and we are home at 8:24pm on Thursday April 8th.

What an unbelievably quick trip across Canada! We are both really glad we are home!! We both just said at the exact same time we feel like we are still in motion. It feels weird to sit down, but feel like my body is moving!

It also feels very strange to be at home in our house, with so much space to move around in and so much stuff! I’m sure we will have lots of time to de-clutter now we are home and we know that we really don’t need that much stuff, having lived in less than 300 square feet for 5 months!

Thank you blog readers for following along with us. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed our adventures vicariously with us! The good, the bad and the ugly! It’s been a ton of fun and now to settle down and get Newman cleaned up, the house cleaned up and relax and catch our breath!

Namaste!....or I bow to you....(I had to get one more bit of learnin’ into you!)