We are here! 8 days in, 3 days left. We are taking it easy at the house today before returning dn to the airport, and just turned on "The Half-Blood Prince to while away the afteroon. I'll start with my notes on the first leg. I won't be able to post pics until I get home, as I didn't bring the micro sim card converter and I've been using my phone.
Monday March 9
So far a smooth trip.
Of course up late with prep Saturday, so working on about 5 hrs sleep Sunday morning. The time change has been confusing as I haven't sorted out which device is showing Atlantic standard at me, Atlantic daylight time (which equals EST!) or Eastern daylight time.
I tried an experiment to see if SWA Early Bird check in gave us an advantage over online check in at the 24hour mark. I paid for EBCI Saturday evening for me and ds, and left dh and dd for 24hr. Sun am right at the mark dd and dh got B5 and B6....and ds and I got B3 and B4! So... Not worth it.
So, boarding passes printed, we are at our local Tim Horton's by 8:25. (AST I think! I didn't reset the car's clock, so I think most of the day we operated on AST...which equals EDT!) With coffee and bagels for all, we hit the highway.
Beautiful clear bright winter morning, no traffic. Playing the last of Chamber of Secrets audio book, then into Prisoner of Azkaban. The sante fe is not nearly as spacious as our old Odyssey, and we have over-packed as usual, but fortunately dh is perfectly fine navigating without a rear window!
Not quite enough sleep but lots of snacks and diversions. Google maps says 10.5 hrs. Gas stops/ pee breaks, lunch at DQ somewhere in New Brunswick. (DQ because of our vacation rule: ice cream every day.
We make the border at about 2:30 by the car's clock. Sunday afternoon and the border was...empty. Like, we were the ONLY car in sight. Which means no wait but also border guards with time on their hands.
Well, we had THE nicest border guard ever. Seriously. Pleasant, polite, asked us the basic questions but none of the complex ones (like, what's in your dog food and where is it made...we worked hard to obey the rules
as we understood them but something about crossing an international boundary has a way of making you nervous.
The drive continued pleasantly, with only a few short flurries, clear roads and little traffic. We seemed to be making good time and the kids were actually
getting along in the backseat. (I have photo evidence.) I dared to say out loud "we might even get to the hotel early".
That's pretty much when time started to drag, toll booths started to pop up every five dollars... I mean five
minutes! And then the grumpies started, and it got dark for the part where we actually needed to be able to read the signs and navigate, and we were no longer early.
Oh well. The first 9 hours went swimmingly, but the next 3 were awful. Tense, growly, whiny. Dd was in tears by the time we got into the hotel room, and swearing it wasn't worth it. Dh was talking about a staycation next year and the dog refused to potty for hours. Ds and I were trying to keep our heads down and wait it out!
We got to the hotel just before 8:30--so 12 hrs pretty much on the nose. Desk clerk p'ed me off (though it wouldn't have taken much) by putting us in the first room off the lobby between two exterior doors, the elevator and the entrance to the pool!
We sent dh off to find food, and settled in. The hotel was generally fine, though the desk clerk also told us on the way home we probably would be arriving too late to get the shuttle and would have to get a cab. So, one of my jobs is to figure out where we're staying on the way home.
Some decent local pizza for supper, a walk around the outside of the hotel for pup, and off to bed. Late again, considering the painfully eary rise for us to be at the airport for 6.