Road Trip

We have arrived in Thunder Bay...finally. We had a relatively bad trip...keeping in mind, of course, that the bar for bad trips was set quite high last summer when, six weeks pregnant, I threw up every 45 minutes for two solid days. This time, I think the trip would have been GREAT, and started off so, until we were about 45 minutes past Sudbury.

Sailing along, making great time, we came to a dead stop at a motorcycle/car accident that looked as though it had happened about 3 minutes earlier. We were about 10 cars behind the actual accident and after about 10 minutes or so 8 cars in front of us managed to get by until the police/ambulance arrived and stopped everyone. And so we sat on this highway for at least an hour, and as there was only one car in front of us, we saw quite clearly, the whole thing. We watched as they loaded what we now know was a dead body into the ambulance. Then the OPP came up to our car and said they were closing the highway for the next 4 hours and that we had to turn back.

Now, what you may not realize if you are not from the north, or any other area that can legitimately be called "the boonies", when this happens you are out of luck. There is no alternate route. No back roads that join back to the highway. The OPP does not set up a detour to keep the traffic moving. Nothing. So, unless we wanted to travel back 3 or 4 hours to join the only other highway that will take you through Timmins and Cochrane (umm, no thanks) we were stuck. So, we headed back to Sudbury which took forever as we had to travel though ANOTHER OPP blockade that was questioning all cars about what they saw in relation the accident. We assume they were trying to find witnesses or possibly there was a hit and run element to the whole thing. The accident happened around 3 pm, and we know they finally opened the highway at 11 pm, so I guess we're lucky we were among the first to find a hotel.

So, yeah, we ended up staying in Sudbury, which worked out fine as the hotel had a pool that Kieran loved and was quite nice. Except the next day our drive was 12 hours. That's 12 hours not including stops for breast feeding, diaper changes, wails of "uppy! uppy!" or just persistent baby screaming that needed attention. What a long day. We arrived here at almost 10 pm and were exhausted.

Let the vacation begin....we need it!