Date: November 15, 2005 - Kilometers Traveled: 840 Weather: Freezing rain and snow

Montreal. Ottawa. Two decent sized cities were conquered today! We drove about five hours to Montreal and then drove through it. It is a complicated place to drive through. Add freezing rain and lunch rush hour to the mix and it gets very difficult!! Nevertheless, with Lorie’s expert navigation and map reading we made it though.

Quebec was different…it’s the little differences that surprised me. The language was the obvious thing. I was surprised that all of the people in Quebec that we encountered spoke English when asked. And they didn’t mind doing it. That’s good! I have quite a bit more respect for Quebecers now!

The freezing rain and snow was a constant until about 100 kilometers past the Ontario – Quebec border, then it turned to rain. I don’t think we could have designed a more horrible day – weather wise!! But we made it and in one piece! We saw two cars off the road just inside the Ontario border - one looked pretty bad.

We drove around Ottawa a little and took a few pictures of some parliament buildings. It just wasn’t a great day for sightseeing, with the poor weather and all. Plus we just had travel on our minds, so we didn’t stay long.

Just west of Ottawa is Kanata. We stopped there for a bite of food and a quick look at the Corel centre – home of the Ottawa Senators. We toyed with the idea of staying for the night and going to an NHL game, but in the end travel efficiency won out. We pressed on to Pembroke. It was about 90 minutes of driving through pure hell, with the rain, and wet snow, and the traffic was enormous! Apparently a lot of people drive to work in Ottawa and live in Pembroke…quite a commute if you ask me!!

We hope to put a good few kilometers of Ontario behind us tomorrow.

Oh, by the way, I checked the weather in Inuvik today…the temperature was -30…holy crap!!