Arriving in Montreal: The Drive

We have been so immersed in everything happening in Montreal that the drive here almost feels like a dream...a long awful dream that you are very glad to wake up from. We left on Friday, the 2nd. It was a beautiful day for a drive. We said our teary eyed good-byes to our families, buckled into the U-Haul and began driving. That is when the excitement began.

The truck began moving and Tucker, who was sitting at my feet and is our dog, freaked out, jumped on my lap and tried to climb over me to hide behind a seat or something. We all burst out laughing as Jayne and I tried to restrain him so he wouldn't end up by the driver's side. I kept him on my lap for about an hour till he calmed down. Then I put a blanket on the floor for him to curl up by my feet. He was fine for a while, but then he noticed the gap under the seat. He started wiggling his way in and we all thought it was cute...until he got stuck. That space was much smaller than he had thought. We stopped and he popped himself out. Every time I put him down there he tried to go under the seat, so I drove the whole way, 4 days, roughly 1,400 miles, with our dog on my lap.

Day 2 we drove in an ice storm through Chicago. We drove 13 hours that day. It started with snow and changed to ice around Chicago. The second half of the day was just rain. We were all pretty temperamental that day. Day 3 was about 10 hours of driving. It was 60 degrees when we woke up and we were racing the wind. We knew the storm was bringing 60 mph winds and we got an early start. Most of the day brought dense fog and rain. About an hour before we reached our last hotel, the wind caught up to us. We drove into town to find downed power lines being fixed. We could hear the gales outside throughout the night. In the morning we had another beautiful day to drive.

We hit the border about an hour or 2 into driving. We went in with nothing but our paperwork, not knowing what to expect. It was quite intimidating as we were basically interrogated off and on for 3 1/2 hours. The man helping us did at least get more friendly toward the end. Driving in Quebec was hard. All the signs are in French, which we expected. It was just incredible to see Montreal as we drove across the bridge for the first time. We had waited so long to get there and we were so close to home. It did not take long after that to get horribly lost.

Driving in Montreal was scary. Everything was covered with ice, since they had also been hit by the ice storm. Cars were parked in the lanes, people were walking in the streets, and we were right in the middle with a huge U-Haul. We finally found where we were on the map and found our way to our Montreal apartment. We were greeted by Dave Hemmerle and his kids we got everything moved into the apartment with their help and help from the Pinneys, as well. It was a long journey, that I am not looking forward to doing again. At least we will have a better idea of what to expect come November.