new to old.

Trees are cozy in PA.

Trail bike ride in Hebron, CT:

They're onto us!!

NH: almost ski season!!

Hat head + bed head = Bhat head

Adorable moss in NH.

Cooking, part two.

Cooking, part one.

Every girl needs a forklift

Last night we had planned to drive from Portland Me right onto Philly PA by the time we realized the two were 8 hours away it was getting dark. Only hoping to go about half that, we immediately found a Starbucks and proceeded to drink coffee and work on finding a place to stay. Campgrounds are hard to come by in the winter and hostels in the surrounding area were all over our $25 personal price limit. It was at about this time I started thinking back onto a list I had made before we started the trip of people I knew on our planned rout.
A friend of the family Judy, lives near Hartford CT right in the middle of our rout to Philly. Perfect. I called her out of the blue and she was more than happy to oblige, we were given an awesome guest bedroom in her basement art studio in exchange for white wine and good conversation. We spent most of the morning milling about her fantastic house, drinking coffee and looking at all of her neat tchotchkes. We took a mid-morning bike ride on a path Judy had told us about, returned briefly to help unload groceries then we took off for Philly.
Parking was a disaster, but we found hummus and ying ling. We'll sleep tonight and explore tomorrow.

U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

Vermont and then New Hampshire after Canada were pretty. We got smart and searched for winter camping and found several potential places in the region and headed towards White Mountain National Forest. It was getting chilly, so we bought firewood on the way in and found Waterville Campground about in the middle of the forest; of course we were the only campers and the camp hosts were nowhere to be found. We had put sweet potatoes under the hood to cook when we left Montreal, but need to tweak our cooking location because three or four hours on the engine didn't cut it and had to put them on the fire. It was super windy and hard to get the fire going, but totally worth it because it got pretty darn cold - maybe about 20 deg - and anything we spilled froze on contact. Yay for double sleeping bags and snow pants. Boo for having to pee at 4:30am! Saw neither moose nor bear. We got up this am and went in search of the river we heard nearby last night. As we left we discovered our campground was near a ski town and grabbed brunch on the way out - the first meal on the trip we didn't make! Sleeping in a hat gives you a trendy dirty hipster hairstyle that was necessary to tone down in the rearview mirror prior to Sunday Brunch.

On down to Portland, the backroads were the way to go, with better views and small cabin towns and craft fairs (?!) everywhere. Portland seems like a great town, but we're staying in Hebron, CT tonight - 4 hrs down the road. Photos aren't uploading, so wait on that. Philly and Shanna tomorrow, then picking up turkeys from the turkey farm and on to Fairfax, VA!

Also, we saw a hobo today.

Hello Vermont!

Both of us were actually relieved today when we decided to just get back into the states, we both thought we'd spend too much money if we stayed in Canada another 24 hours.
after two trips through boarder patrol we decided we really dislike the psycho-analysis done by the guards, it makes us uneasy....
It's really cold, Erin thinks I should just suck it up and throw on some long underwear.

accotement mou

Canada has adapted a horrible, horrible U.S. tradition and taken it to a whole new level: the Strip Mall. Oh. My. God. They're HUGE. There are whole oceans of strip malls that have multiple highway exits, and they contain about half the same crap stores you find in the U.S. Though, for fun, we've been driving slowly past each store until we find open wifi, then sitting in the parked car while we look up hostels and make dinner.

Last night we stayed at the Backpacker's Inn Hostel in Ottawa, Ontario. For $25, it was about as cheap as we could find, and kind of awesome. It was a 3-floor house downtown that must have slept 30 or so - there were eight in our room. I'm getting used to sleeping on any available couch/bed/tree root, and that thin bunkbed mattress was amazing! We made french toast in the morning with some of our bigger bread pieces that crumbled in the car crap tornado.

Ottawa seems pretty cool but we really couldn't stay long, especially when they charge for parking in five minute increments. We went running around town and took a shortcut running up a ton of stairs along a set of locks. It was laundry day, so I put on my last clean clothing remnants, including shorts over leggings and no bra and we killed two hours playing sudoku in a tiny laundromat. Next up, the National Gallery of Canada, which was way bigger than we expected and we got super lost in all the rooms and left with bugged-out eyes from art overload.

Then on the road again! We decided on Montreal, and halfway there, after checking out yet another misleading campground sign, did our strip mall internet thing and found another hostel. This is where we discover important differences between provinces: primarily, language! What the hell? We don't speak French, and Quebec is FRENCH. We practiced (butchered) all the signs we saw on the way here, and figured out enough to get around. Our hostel is a 2-flat squashed between two others on a narrow street that reminds me of Philly or Boston. Beer is way cheaper (what a relief!) and gas seems to be getting cheaper - 1.07/liter. This city is freakin huge; we'll have to see what's actually here and report back.

nord sud est ouest

Car vomit.

I crapped my pants?!

Not so much.

The strawberry for Canadian Tire. Still not sure what they do, but I bet it includes tires.

Canada is just a big expensive United States.....

We woke up to this:

We drove 640 km. you do the math, we.. I mean, Erin did.

We saw a lot of this...

there was some weather...
it got pretty bad actually... Like the beer, gas wasn't cheap...

We went shopping in a Costco type place called Loblaws (which we pronounced low blows) and set up camp in the car.
In all honesty, we probably ate one of the best meals of the trip so far.
Salad: mixed greens with herbs, avocado, cucumber, heirloom tomatoes, feta, and tuna.
tonight we might stay in a Jail turned Hostel, we'll let ya know how that goes with no reservation.