Moving back east

Back in December 2003, we packed three cats, an English Setter and a gecko into our Mazda Protege 5 and drove all the way from Nova Scotia to British Columbia. Now we're going almost all the way back. Because we're NUTS.

Dirty car in northern Ontario!

Standing up and lookin' around.

Julius gets a little freedom while Mashka tries to ignore him.

Self-portrait of girl and well-behaved dog.

Some of the Mazda prisoners. There is a gecko in the box under Mashka!

Swift Current Comfort Inn. We never washed the mud off the car. It just got rained off at some point! This was the nicest Comfort Inn of all the ones we patronized. The one in Thunder Bay was revolting.

Someplace in Saskatchewan.

Mashka the free-range cat lords it over prisoners Zoe and Julius.

Gordon walks Tara somewhere up in the BC Rockies (Roger's Pass, I think!)

I'm getting just a teeeensy bit sick of being in this car!

I think I've told most people now that we are moving back east, but only as far as Gatineau, Quebec this time. I have been cleaning out a bunch of stuff in the house, and I just found my mileage record from our move here in December 2003. It's in kilometres. For you Americans, there are 0.62 km in a mile.

On Saturday, December 13th, we left Prospect Village, NS (and I cried until we crossed the border to New Brunswick.)

Our odometer read 31, 362 km when we started.

Sunday, Dec 14, it read 32,097 in Edmunston, NB
Monday, Dec 15, it read 32,828 in Ottawa, ON.
Tuesday, Dec 16, it read 33,611 in Sault Ste. Marie, ON.

That day there was a blizzard, so after driving almost 100 km, we turned around retraced the 100 km back to Sault Ste. Marie and took the rest of the day off.

Wednesday, Dec 17, the odometer read 33,806 when we left Sault Ste. Marie again.
Thursday, Dec 18, it read 34,503 when we left Thunder Bay, ON.
Friday, Dec 19 it read 35,275 when we left Winnipeg, MN.
Saturday, Dec 20, it read 36,069 when we left Swift Current, SK.
Sunday, Dec 21, it read 36,849 when we left Golden, BC.

And that day, we arrived at the Sutton Place Hotel in Vancouver, where the final reading on our odometer was 37, 580 km. We drove 6,218 kilometres (3,864 miles), including the redundant 200 km in Sault Ste. Marie, and it took us nine days to cross the country from NS to BC!

If you subtract a day for the blizzard, and the redundant 200 km, we averaged about 750 km a day. And now we're doing it all again. Don't tell the pets!