We departed from Emo just after 1:00 on Sunday, having accomplished a million different tasks (one of which was NOT packing the card reader for the computer – argh) before; lettuce and beans planted in the garden, house cleaned, van packed. Pictured is the van as packed. Damn, that’s a sweet packing job, if I do say so myself. You would too, if I could actually attach the camera to the computer. Room for the dog to do her crazy-ass car watching without anything falling on her, and everything has a home. Yes, I’m a little obsessed. Read on for more of day one, if you’re so inclined….
We’ve got four bottles of wine for Mom and Dad from East Dell Vineyards, and we attempted to get them marked as being in our possession before crossing the border. No dice. Note to self: keep wine receipts in the future. Further note to self: count on Canada Customs to be as useless as tits on a bull at…well, anything.
This being the first trip with the iBook and a wireless card, I’m having a ton of fun wardriving for open networks, but, sadly, when I’m wardriving, Frances is vandriving, and not nearly as interested in trying to get connected as I am. I think I’ve got her convinced to at least let me try to check email today.
The troupe made it to Turtle River State Park last night without incident. The kids’ bikes are tied on the roof; fuel economy is teh suck as a result. I’m going to make sure they ride the damn things every time we stop. Can you guess whose idea it was to bring them?
Turtle River was pretty, and really quiet; the park ranger wondered why we were coming on a Sunday evening. One more sign that the concept of tenting on a traveling trip is a withering ideal. Our site was near several RVs, mostly older couples. As we were doing dinner dishes, I glanced over at the only other “younger” (read: mid forties) couple RVing with their daughter, and in disbelief I watched them screwing around with a portable satellite dish for the next hour, trying to aim it so they could get cable in their RV. Kill…me…now. I thought I needed to unplug, but that’s insane. You can see the ridiculousness in the pic that I’ll upload when I actually have a camera card reader (moron).
The evening was otherwise uneventful, other than cooling off dramatically, probably south of 10 degrees C., and Gareth successfully – thought without contact – identifying the poison ivy scattered everywhere in the campground. Oh, and the dog sleeping in the van. Talk about roughing it. We’re off today for Glasgow, Montana, and a private campground.
