The Long Drive

We made it! Two days in the car with Abi and Darla in the back seat were relatively uneventful - thankfully. We hit the road at 3am on Wednesday. Made it all the way to Sarnia by 8am where we gassed up and Abi half awoke. She napped a little more after, I think. It's somewhat all a blurred memory of driving and more driving. I do remember she puked around 10:30am when I gave her a piece of cheese to eat. It seems the dairy did not mix well with motion. One bite and we were having to pull over to clean her up. So much for packing her favourite snacks of cheese and yogurt for the trip. Lesson learned. (She doesn't normally throw up with diary and I did have other foods.) I had packed a variety of little toys, books, lacing cards/beads, and paper with markers. The last item proved the most entertaining for her. After drawing a couple lines on a couple pieces of paper and declaring them "perfect" and done, she took to another canvas - herself. She started before I noticed, and well, they were washable markers and it kept her entertained for HOURS. By the time we reached Thunder Bay she had multiple layers of colours, many smudged and half washed away by a day in a hot car. Her face, arms, legs, and feet were all adorned. After she puked she rode in just a diaper (just in case), so her torso was also decorated. On our next stop I put on her rainbow tie-dyed dress. It seemed the most appropriate and almost camouflaged the marker on her body. It wasn't until near the end of our drive that we had to whip out the portable DVD player we had borrowed. And, really, with 15 hours on the road, I think Abi was extremely well behaved.
We made it to Thunder Bay by 6pm, much earlier than anticipated. There we had dinner and spent the night with friends in their lovely lakeside home.
We departed the next morning at 10am with a full belly thanks to our wonderful hosts (and some tasty blueberry muffins for the road). The rest of the drive was even less eventful (no puking) and still only required the DVD player at the last hour as we slowed down through Winnipeg construction. We arrived in Winnipeg at 4:30pm local time. I should add that we were "greeted" in Manitoba by a wall of water. The clouds were a welcome reprieve, but the volume of rain was excessive. Literally, we crossed the border, read the sign declaring "Welcome to Manitoba" and then hit the wall. "Welcome" indeed.

I did a lot of knitting, as I'm sure you can imagine. (And I did drive... for about 2 hours.) At first I was working on my new shawl using naturally dyed lace yarn from Waterloo Wools. It was coming along fabulously, until I hit part 3 of the pattern and realized that I'd continued part two the same as part one... in short, I'd knit 18 rows of lace wrong. Argh! I had to switch to finishing my Belated Birthday socks so that I could get them off the needles so that I can use those needles to pick up the last correctly-knit row and frog back. The socks were finished just before our arrival. Incidentally, the socks took longer than I thought. It seems I underestimate projects as often as I overestimate others.
Photos to follow eventually. Abi's growing very impatient with me... she's about to try grapefruit with Robin because she was certain it was an orange (which she loves). The verdict is... must be pretty good. I don't hear "yucky".