The move: Canada to California

Alright guys, I’m back with the internet and I’m ready to blog again!

But where do I even start? It’s so difficult to jump right back to where I left off but I guess that is what the plan will be. Keep checking back each week day as this will be my plan – to continue blogging Monday through Friday, beginning with the adventurous road trip from Waterloo Ontario Canada, to sunny Northern California.

If you’ve been following me on twitter and instagram these next few posts may be repetitive for you, but if not — keep on reading.

We estimated our drive to be 40 hours, by the calculations of google maps. What we didn’t know was that it was going to take closer to 60 hours to do the drive, due to the fact we were towing a 17″ u-haul with a trailer on the back, where my car was. We did the drive in 3.5 days rather than the 5-7 days we were initially going for. As you can imagine, we were driving non-stop on the second and third days/nights, swapping seats and getting sleep in the passenger seat.

We said our goodbye’s to the Waterloo apartment that served us many good times and years at that place.

Our plan was to avoid the winter weather altogether since U-Hauls are known for having bald tires and getting trapped in the snow. Instead of taking the i-80 across the USA, which crosses over some wintery states, we opted for the more southerly route i-40 which took us from Michigan, Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, to Arizona and finally California. 

We aren’t too far from the Michigan boarder crossing, and since it was open 24 hours, we made it in there at 4:00am. Clearly we left Ontario late in the evening. I have to say, it’s pretty intimidating having your whole life packed up in a truck and having the boarder crossing guards decide whether or not to let you have an American visa for a few years. Right then and there they decide whether to turn you around, or let you into their country. When we arrived the boarder crossing was pretty much empty due to the hour we arrived at, so it didn’t take too long for us to have everything done there. Quite honestly, my knees were trembling while I was waiting for them to go through the process with us standing there in front of them. I couldn’t get my legs to stop shaking. The guys working the night shift were making a few funny jokes to us, and broke the ice a little bit. Perhaps he saw a terrified look on my face and decided to take action.

Once leaving the boarder, we thought everything would go smoothly from here. However, the boarder crossing was the only thing that went smoothly throughout the drive. When you look back on it nothing went terribly wrong but at the time we were down in our spirits. Close to 22 hours of being in the vehicle and losing just HOURS of precious driving time (sleeping at rest stops and going to  Walmart to get a sim card for our phones took up way too much time) we  ended up calling it a night when we arrived to Indiana and arrived at the Clarion Hotel in Terre Haute around 9pm the first night.

Tons of sleep later we woke up, ate a huge breakfast in the lobby. Scott and I took turns eating solo due to the fact we had Alfie and didn’t think the dog-friendly hotel would enjoy dogs being in the eating areas of their hotel. We were absolutely famished in the morning, and the woman in the kitchen made a funny comment to me when she saw my plate filled to the brim now empty, saying I was small but could pack away the food. Sure can missus. I was starved b’y. Come back on Wednesday and I’ll fill you in on the details of day two.