Here it is at the end of day seven and we are now fully immersed into the providence of Quebec.  It seems that everywhere we went in Ontario there was always an English sign followed by one in French.  Now that we are in Quebec the English signs seemed to have all but disappeared?  When we checked into the hotel for the night close to Montreal we did have English speaking front desk person. That was a relief since we spent almost 4 hours going the 100 or so miles we drove today. Half of that time was trying to … Continue reading On the Road — Parlez vous français?

We spent a good bit of today at the National Art Museum here in Canada’s capital Ottawa.  In some ways the building was more impressive than the art it contained. I would say about one-third of the exhibits were for modern art which is really not so much my taste.  I picked out my favorite one in that area and I called it “Big Black”.  It was about a 12 foot square mural of solid black; nothing else!  They seem to have pictures just like that in about every modern art exhibit I have been to. But they did have … Continue reading On The Road – Day 6 — Here's to the Arts

As expected today was an exciting time. We spent most of the day around the Parliament complex. Here are some pictures of that. We also toured much of the area around the complex and went to the Museum of Currency. It was also a very beautiful day here in Ottawa, sunny and in the 70s. I forgot to take a hat along with me so now I have a sun burned bald head! Gotta remember the hat for tomorrow or I can expect some peeling scalp later in the week. The brochure provided at the places we visited gave us a somewhat … Continue reading On The Road – Day 5 — My Canada Adventure

Here is another post on my experiences in our current trek through eastern Canada. I know I have only been in Canada for four days now but I am ready to come to at least one conclusion. That conclusion is that Canada is not famous for food.  Maybe they just take the “eat to live” mentality pretty seriously here. We went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner last night and that, along with most of my previous meals here, was the basis for this observation. When we sat down we were given the usual salsa and chips but the salsa was really … Continue reading On the Road — Some Initial Conclusions…

Last night since we were on the road most of the day we ended up staying at a small motel without internet. It was clean and cheap so I guess I should be grateful and I am. We made the last trek through the pine trees this morning and into Ottawa. My first impression was that there was a lot of traffic for 9:30 on a Wednesday morning.  After that soaked in I started noticing quite a few older building in the downtown area. Since this is the capital of Canada I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. We went to the … Continue reading On The Road – Hello Ottawa….

I am now sitting in a hotel room a few miles east of Ste St Marie Michigan. We will head through there and up into Canada in the morning. We drove across upper Wisconsin and Michigan today. It was as it has been for the many time I have been here, all pine trees with not much in between. In some ways that is an appropriate way to start this trip which is intended to be a relaxing one. Waiting for my dear wife to get ready to go across the way to the local Pizza Hut for dinner gives … Continue reading On The Road — A Couple of miles…

America can carry herself and get along in pretty fair shape, but when she stops and picks up the whole world and puts it on her shoulders she just can’t “get it done.” – Will Rogers March 15, 1933 Wow, it is amazing that Will wrote these words almost eighty years ago. They couldn’t be more true today.  The Republicans want to continuously talk about wasteful government spending but they seldom talk about reducing our military budgets. We spend many many times more per citizen than any other country in the world on our war machine! Why is that? I’m just a simple … Continue reading Policemen of the World…

One of the rites of retirement is being able to take a vacation pretty much whenever you want.  Well, my wife and I want! We will soon be heading out for our Canada and New England trip. This one could take up to a month of our time. That is another privilege of retirement, we can take as long as needed.  We have a house sitter who will take care of our animals and such as long as we are gone. We plan on going into Canada via Wisconsin and then traveling the interior to Ottawa. Then up the St. Lawrence seaway to Nova Scotia … Continue reading The Rites of Retirement….

It’s Done… (but it’s never really done) I finally completed the merging of five of my six blogs to this site! I hope you like what you find here. Don’t forget to bookmark this new blog and remove any of my old ones (I will not be closing them but they will no longer be updated).  This will make my life a little simpler and make it easier for you to see all of what I have to offer in the blog world. I have also purchased one of the premium themes (Tapestry) to make your browsing a little more … Continue reading It's Done