Long but totally uneventful drive up to Quebec, where we will have a personal tutorial about our new trailer tomorrow AM.
First night was in New York, in a community near New Paltz (Highland) and we stayed at a nice hotel that was slightly too close to a major road, called The Atlas Hotel. Quite friendly, accommodating, clean, and inexpensive. Right up the road was a diner that had lots of cars around it called the Gateway Diner. And, they served beer and wine.
Got on the road quite early this AM, stopping first at the Dunkin Donuts right across the road for a large coffee (and there might have been a pastry with cinnamon involved) and drove up quite close to the border of US/Canada, where we refueled and changed drivers.
Jack got us through customs and it was a pretty straight shot up and around Montreal and then forth to Quebec. We have been listening to Terry Pratchett (“Snuff”) the whole way so far, and we are nearly done with the story (only about a half-hour to go as of tonight).
The weather had cleared as we headed north into upper NY, even though there were enormous leftovers of snow on the cliff faces along the roadways as we went past (through?) the Catskills. We woke up to gray again this AM even though it was relatively warm — and it started raining as we neared the border and headed north and east in Canada. When we got to our hotel for tonight, it was rather cold and the wind had come up. Where the temp was in the low fifties, it had a definite “feel” of mid-forties. Chill.
Coming up the highway, we drove past the Safari Condo plant (where we were last year when we met our Blue Roomba, and where we are headed tomorrow for our training session) and went about 5 km farther along to the hotel. JUST as we were passing the place, an enormous semi passed us and totally blocked out our view of the Safari Condo lot! We hoped for a glimpse of our intended, and we got a quick view of one of the conversion vans (and possibly a fixed-roof 1743?) before we were blocked totally from seeing anything at all.
Kharma. Saving the best for the appointed day/time.
Happily, there’s a sports bar and a restaurant here in the hotel, so we don’t have to get back into the car and drive for the evening meal. Quite ready to be out of the car for a bit today.
Brought the bikes into the room with us this time — last night, in the motel situation we enjoyed in Highland, we backed the car with bikes attached right up to our room’s door, and we had no worries that anything would happen to them. Here, at the Hotel Bernières, we were encouraged to bring the bikes in rather than leave them on the car in the parking lot. Our room is an interior one on the first floor and our window does not overlook the car park.
Oddly, the sports bar here did not offer any beers made locally — and only Molsen (made in Canada) that even had the ‘feel’ of local. So we had something made in Italy that was the tastiest of the lot (they were kind enough to let us taste a couple of the brews on draught), though we sorely missed our humble DogTown Road House in Floyd and their variety of micros on tap.
9:30 AM TOMORROW MORNING we start the hands-on Roomba Tutorial. Unsure if either of us will sleep much tonight, but I hope so, because our brains have to be clear bright and early, to begin that steep climb up the learning curve to camper trailer ownership!
peregrinations 