In December of 2019, a lot of people were talking about and thinking about a new disease caused by COVID-19, then not named. During that time, Sylas and I were unfortunately distracted by dealing with a rather significant death in our family, his mom. In the midst of dealing with her estate, COVID sent the world into a full-blown lockdown in March 2020, sending the entire process into a standstill for us. While it was a welcome reprieve from the grief and stress of dealing with an estate, it left us with a lot to do once things in the USA and Canada started opening back up.
Lucky for us, we do have amazing family members in the USA who were able to help us out with things that we could do remotely. Unfortunately, each time we tried to deal with the tangible estate items, the Canadian border closed, leaving us with travel vouchers and a final page to turn in that saga, bringing the items we were keeping to our home in Canada.
Over the last weekend, we finally had an opportunity to get down to North Carolina to see our family and finish things up. We loaded up a rental SUV (which was a nightmare to get, unsurprisingly) and embarked on our journey home on July 2nd, also our 10 year anniversary and 5 year wedding anniversary.
Sylas and I have made this drive once before, but that time we did it in two days and made the mistake of stopping in Hershey, PA at a Days Inn. This was when Sylas moved to Canada and all of his worldly belongings were in his Toyota Corolla. Honestly, I’m surprised we didn’t get robbed, but we made it.
This time, we were driving up to the Ottawa area, which means we were going through upstate New York instead of through PA and into Buffalo or Detroit. We decided that the 16 hours was completely do-able in one day and so we embarked.
We started out, of course, in NC. We’ve travelled NC several times, but we always get excited when we cross into Virginia, because it’s “new and exciting”. We stopped in Virginia for our last Bojangles lunch before we travelled north, where we found every bathroom packed or closed and ended up having to go to a Starbucks for a bathroom emergency.
From Virginia we had a decision to make – Would we go through Washington or add on 1 hour and go around and through Maryland instead? Well, the highway on the 4th of July weekend made the decision for us as we saw 5 accidents on a small stretch of I-95 and decided that was enough of that. From Maryland, we went to Pennsylvania, and from Pennsylvania to New York.
I wasn’t prepared for upstate NY and PA to be so beautiful. We saw deer, beautiful bridges, and trees on our quest for NY Pizza for dinner. We stopped at 3 separate places (don’t go to Binghamton) looking for food, getting hangrier with each passing moment, before calling ahead to a place in the middle of nowhere LaFayette, NY, called A Taste of Heaven. The owner was super nice and hilariously had a Tim Horton’s apron on as he made our pizza.
The sun started cresting as we were traveling through the Appalachians on our way to the Canadian border and we stopped, in the middle of the road (don’t do that, be safe kids!) to capture this breathtaking view.
As the sun finished setting, we were off again and hit the Canadian border at 10PM. Just a few questions at border control, no trouble at all, and we were back home! We arrived at Ottawa at midnight. We slept and finished off our trip with a stop at Dumpling? Dumpling! in Nepean before heading back to Pembroke.
All in all, while emotionally and physically taxing, it ended up being an amazing trip together to spend our 10 year Anniversary. ALSO, HAPPY BIRTHDAY SYLAS since the day of this posting is officially your 33rd. Can’t wait for so many more together!
We’ll be back with you in two weeks and hope you enjoyed this little look into our life.
Rainbow River Alpacas 