Jeffrey Vanneste’s Personal Blog

Well, I guess the title gives away where we are for our honeymoon so far.  We have lots of pictures but every place that we get on free internet it takes forever to actually upload anything so we will be uploading them once we get back to Montreal.  We have 5 days left on our honeymoon.  2 more days in Halifax, 2 days in a Kejimkujik and 1 day in Maine.  So far the best place has been in Cape Breton Highlands.  Pretty much around every corner there is an awesome view.  Anyways, just a short post to update where we are.  Apparently we get served breakfast in our room so I’m going to prepare for that.

Tonight we are staying in Pembroke, ON. Apparently there is some soccer teams in town so all the motels/hotels are full. We ended up having to stay in a pretty nice Best Western for $120. It has a big pool but I forgot to bring swimming stuff. These guys also have awesome (fast) internet. Anyways, we drove 4 hours before pulling over at some nice lake. We couldn’t find any picnic table so we just ate at the main boat dock.

After that we made it to North Bay for supper. We passed most of the “normal” restaurants and ended up eating at some “authentic Canadian food” restaurant. Apparently Canadians eat crap. This food was some of the worst food I’ve ever had. I ordered a half rack of ribs and I had 1. 1 rib. I don’t remember what the place was called but I will be sure to never ever stop there again.

No other real problems today. Lots of construction on the road which has been slowing us down but that’s about it. Driving from Saskatoon to Montreal in 3 days will definitely be doable after this trip. Tomorrow we will be in Montreal by noon and should have internet installed by 2pm. Ya, I have my priorities straight.

So we left at 8am today (that’s 7am SK time) from Winnipeg. We made it about 3 hours before stopping at a nice picnic area on some small lake. There was a couple that decided they should go swimming at the picnic stop. Who does that?

Our next chunk of driving brought us to Thunder Bay where we stopped at a Boston Pizza to eat supper. I had the Pad Thai which was pretty gross. I’m not sure why I decided to try it at Boston Pizza. Thundery Bay was our original goal for day one. I’m really glad we didn’t try to drive that far all in one day. Back onto the highway and we started on the way to Sault Ste. Marie but there is so much highway construction going on that we had to go <60 for a long time we decided to stop for the day at Marathon, ON.

Things that I’ve noticed so far:

• Hotels/Motels cost a lot of money! I was under the impression this crap costed like $60/night, hell no. It’s like $80/night for a cheap place. Most places offer a free breakfast (aka a muffin, for $80 I should getting breakfast in bed) and maybe 50% of the places have free high speed internet. The rooms suck for the most part. We have a fancy hotel for our honeymoon in Halifax and that one better kick some ass.
• Saskatchewan has way too many of those damn white butterflies. My Thule kit and RAV are covered in them. The first 500km covered the entire front of the car in guts. Ontario has no bugs. Zero. I haven’t had to clean my windshield once.
• Audio books on tape are awesome for road trips. We are half done Harry Potter book 6.
• Podcasts provide good breaks for listening to an audio book.
• Lake Superior is amazing. We were driving along in some trees and out of no where we see this massive body of water. It looked awesome.

I uploaded some other pictures from our trip so far. You can check them out here.

Rach and I managed to pack up the RAV4 today.  We had to buy a Thule soft roof bag as well but for the most part I think we were able to take everything that we wanted (except the microwave).

Our first stop is in Moosomin, SK at the Country Squire Inn (we are just eating in the restaurant).  They have not just 1, but 2 free wifi networks for customers to connect to.  Why is it in all these small towns that I can get on the internet but if I stop in a big city it never works out.

Anyways, we plan on sleeping in Winnipeg tonight so we have another 3.5 hours of driving.

So today is my last day in Saskatoon. Ever. And by ever I mean I’ll be back in 3 months. Rach and I went out to the newly renovated Moxies last night. It looks pretty nice inside but it’s so loud now. I hate when restaurants think it’s a good idea to have a really open eating area. I like nice big booths. The menu seems to be the same so nothing too special there. I had my first ever enchilada which was pretty damn awesome.

After my parents left we decided we should probably pack some stuff up. We (Rachel) had stuff sorted so it was really just the act of boxing stuff up. I think we have too much stuff but she keeps claiming it won’t be a problem. We will find out tomorrow when we (I) pack the RAV4.

Rachel pretty much left me in charge of entertainment for the drive. I have prepped my iPod with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince audiobook, a lot of podcasts (diggnation, futures in biotech, TWIT, penny arcade (Rach hasn’t heard them yet) and DL.TV), and then about 10gb of random music. Ya it should be pretty geeky. We also have a Nintendo DS and her laptop to keep us busy.

So what is my schedule for the next few months? I will be working renotely for Point2 (the same company I’m working for right now in Saskatoon) in Montreal until the beginning of December. At this point I’ll be coming back to Saskatoon to work locally for 2 months. This is the general plan.

• Aug 15 – Dec: Montreal
• Dec – end of Jan: Saskatoon
• Feb – end of Apr: Montreal
• May – end of August: Saskatoon
• Sept – end of Nov: Montreal
• Dec – end of Jan: Saskatoon
• Feb – May: Montreal
• May: back in Saskatoon

12 hours until departure. Hopefully we can find some wifi spots on the way to Montreal.