Michèle et Denis

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Saturday, April 16, 2011

When we lived in Cold Lake we meet our friend's brother, Alan.
A man who loves life and loves to have a good time, always doing mischief. A good man.
We were invited to his wedding, but we said no because we were not going to be in Ontario, but in the Maritimes this summer.
With the change of plans, we are in the Trenton area at the time of his marriage. So we went!
Congratulation to both of you, Al and Lori!

Al, Lori with Al's family.

We are with our friends from Cold Lake, Claudette and Sean.

Beautiful wedding, great evening. Thanks to both of you, Lori and Al.

We did not stay very late at the wedding. We will be leaving early the next morning to drive to Cold Lake, Alberta.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

On our way to Cold Lake for our "move" to Belleville, Ontario.

First, let me explain a little bit about why this is taking place.
Last year when Michele retired from the military, she is entitles to one finale move paid by the military. This is valid for up to two years after her retirement. After almost a year, we decided to establish our "residence" in Belleville, Ontario.
This does not mean we will stop our travels, just that we will be paying taxes in Ontario!!!

We started some of the paperwork in Ontario, like driver's licenses, banking, etc.
One of the things we have to do is to get back to Cold Lake and start the procedures to have our "stuff" moved from Alberta to Ontario.

Our trip to Cold Lake, Alberta to get the move started...

We decide to travel through the United States for the savings in time and money, gas is $0.30 per liter cheaper compare to Canada!
Between Toronto and Windsor, Michele does some of the driving and guess what, snow starts to fall.

Americain customs between Windsor and Detroit. Nothing to say other than custom officers are always right!

Detroit, the city of automobiles... and tires?

We spent the night in a small town west of Milwaukee. North of Chicago!

Monday, April 18, 2011

Day two of our trip to Cold Lake.
What is this white stuff on our car?

Lots of windmills in North Dakota.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

We got back in Canada at North Portal, Saskatchewan with no problems.
This photo is for our youngest son, Benoit. Benoit spent 3 months in Weyburn with Katimavik back in 2006-2007.

We got to our friend's place, Claudette and Sean, later that day.
Thanks for taking us in for a few days...

Wednesday, April 20 to Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Hummm! I was wondering how to write the following days without boring you with too many details.
Here is what I have.

I will start with the business side.
First thing Wednesday morning, we went on base to make sure our paperwork was started, sure enough, it was not! Somehow a few hours later everything fell in place and we could start the paperwork. This is our first time using the "Relocation" system/people and it was very easy for us since our move is very simple. We have no furniture to move. Our stuff is all packed in 3 boxes.
The rest of the day is spent with little appointments here and there to get documents or other things to make our transition to Ontario easier.

On to the social side now!
With Easter Weekend coming up, it will not be easy to visit everybody we want to visit. We will try hard, but I am sure we will not be able to visit them all, sorry to those we did not get to visit.

I grouped all the days together (20 to the 26) just to make it flow better since there was not really anything "extraordinary" to talk about, just life.

Here we go!
One of the first things we did was to confirm how many boxes we had in Sean and Claudette's basement. Turns out we only have 3 blue Rubbermaid boxes and a few other small boxes. We were surprised because we were sure we had more than that. Sure enough, this is all we have other than what is in the motorhome.

We are lucky because where we used to work is having a Sports Day on Thursday. What a chance to see many of our old co-workers, sorry no photos, we forgot our camera! After a good lunch, we took a drive-by to our old neighborhood and had a look at our old place.

One last look at the airplanes on the way out of the base.
Who knows when will be the next time we come back to Cold Lake!

Our friends, Nathalie, André and Kabrea (Frédéric's girlfriend) invited us to celebrate Frédéric's birthday with them.
WOW!
This bottle of wine is the same age as Frédéric (here he is with Kabrea), 20 years old.

Charlie is on Nathalie's shoulder, sorry Nathalie, but somehow we have no photo of you !!!

Me and André tasting some/many scotch during the evening.
As my brother used to say: "It looks worse then it is!".

Thank you, Nathalie and André, for the great evening and making this evening like we just left a week ago.
We are sure our path will cross again someday!

We could not come to Cold Lake and not visit our friends Randy and Robbyn.
It turns out Ben and Zeta came too for a little while.
It was great to see you all my friends.

Sean and Claudette invited us for the Easter dinner with the whole family...

The gang after a great meal.

Thanks to the L family (no last name, just to keep it private) for a great Easter dinner.

We managed to see Paul and Jacky, I worked with Paul and somewhere along the way he became a friend.
It was great to see both of you again!

A "close up" of me!

Sean is getting ready to bring back home his 5th wheel.
To see this 5th wheel coming home made me want to go back to our motorhome right now!

The day before left Cold Lake, we went and visited family, Candide and Dan from St-Paul
Always a pleasure to visit you two!

Our last supper is at BP with a few friends. I cannot believe we forgot to take photos. Darn!

To all our friends in Cold Lake, we say goodbye and hope to meet again.
To all our friends we did not have time to visit, we are sorry we could not see you, but who knows what life has in store for us, we probably will meet again.

A very special thank you to Sean and Claudette to have taken us in their home for so many days and having to put up with our quirks, THANK YOU!

Tomorrow, we are back on the road and heading back to Belleville, Ontario.

Wednesday, April 27 to Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Our trip back to Belleville, Ontario.
After we got (almost) everything done in Cold Lake, we hit the road back to Belleville but at a slower pace this time.

Nothing very special about this trip. Here is a medley of photos and small stories about our "trip back".

Leaving Cold Lake, we have this nice fog (rare in Cold Lake) to start our trip back.
It does not last long, an hour later it is gone!

With all the flooding happening in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, we are pretty lucky to have only this little stretch of "wet" road from flooding.

In our fulltiming life, one of the little things we miss is a bath, before you say anything, we do use the shower in the motorhome. We loved to take a bath with a good book and read for a few ... hours while soaking in the bath! Let me tell you that we will/did get rooms with "jacuzzi's".

Where ever you see a big Canadian flag, chances are it is a truck stop.
I like it!

In Northern Ontario, most of the lakes are still frozen solid.

Why should we talk about Wawa in particular?
There is a little bit of a story here. Here it goes.
Once and only once, I call ahead to make a reservation for a room in a hotel during the whole trip.
The web site showed some very nice photos... I booked a room for the following night in Wawa.

As we arrived in Wawa, a road check by the OPP is in progress. The officer asks a few questions, when he finds out we are moving from Alberta to Ontario he says " Why? There is no work here in Ontario!". Here we go explaining our "situation"...

Once downtown Wawa, I could not remember the name of the hotel I made a reservation last night! Thankfully the cellphone has the number in its little brain. I call back the hotel and they confirm the name. Lakeview Hotel!
The outside is a little "rundown", we have doubts.

What a surprise! The lobby is just like the web page, very nice!

And the room, WOW! And cheap!

We have seen very few wild animals so far.
I believe this is a wolf!

Our only moose.

I always find it impressive where some of our roads have to go through.
After the "flatness" of the prairies, I love the "Rocks" of Northern Ontario.

Cool tenants!

Our last night on the road is in Parry Sound, close to our friends we made while in Florida.
Michele and Keith, sorry Isabelle but we have no photos of you :-(
A heartfelt thank you to both of you, Keith and Isabelle for the great meal and evening together, I felt like we just left yesterday!

Ah! Traffic on the 400/401!

When we got to Frankford, close to Belleville, our motorhome was waiting for us...

Got everything going, Propane, water, etc.
Everything works!
So nice to get back home!

How about a small conclusion/comment about the whole trip out west and back?
Here it is...

From Belleville to Cold Lake, via the US.
After calculating everything, the only advantage to go by the US is time-saving. With a speed of over 120 Km/H, you can save a lot of time over 2000 km. Even with the price of gas being $0.30 cheaper in the US, I only save a little over $25.00 but drove an extra 165 km to get to Cold Lake. The roads and interstates are just plain beautiful, we could learn something from the Americans...

Our time in Cold Lake.
I already talked about the friends we met so I will skip that part.
When we arrived in Cold Lake, I did not get that feeling of "I'm coming home". Don't get me wrong, we loved Cold Lake the time we were there, but this is not the place we want to be other than visiting. Only our opinion!

Travelling back to Belleville, via Canada.
Shorter in kilometer than the US. Our roads are mostly OK. Some people may say this is because freeze and thaw effect on our roads, well so does the roads in North Dakota, Idaho, etc. Ontario is very slow to cross with a speed of 90 Km/H for hundreds of kilometer with nothing but trees!

Now the reverse side of the coin!
The Prairies with this BIG blue sky all around you, then a valley opens up in front of you and you cross this big river, WOW! Remembering the importance of the rivers for the "coureurs des bois" and the development of Western Canada!
Ontario, with its beautiful vistas, driving highways 11 and 17 where you come around a turn and see beautifully lake Superior or when you see the engineering marvel of cutting a mountain to make way for the highway. The colour of the rockface as you drive by, just plain beautiful.
I prefer to go through Canada!

Only my opinion!

Until next time.

Life is good...