Maine

Right, Our trip to Maine. Our lovely friend Japan Andrew was home for Christmas and since his home is in Maine and therefore decently close to us, we decided to take him up on his invitation to go down and see him. It was somewhat unfortunate because his visit to the States was almost completely overlapping with Dylan's family's visit here. But they were understanding and entertained themselves for the day and a half we were gone. Dylan worked until midnight on the night of the 25/26th, so we got a few hours of sleep and left here around 3am on the 27th. Drove peacefully through lovely Quebec for a few hours, until we got pulled over for speeding in Ayer's Cliff, a tiny town near-ish to the Vermont boarder. The police officer didn't speak much English and didn't seem overlyimpressed with us when he first came up, but when he came back and I answered a few of his questions in french his english really seemed to improve. It was magical! Considering we were maybe going 12 km over the limit, he just gave us a warning and told us to "drive prudently."

Crossed over the boarder no prob once we told him we were visiting our friend Andrew in Maine (this seemed to reassure the guard greatly that we didn't have any ill intents, I'm guessing that it was since nothing involving Andrew could possibly be malicious in the slightest). So we went on our way and drove through Vermont and got into New Hampshire. Around then, we decided we were bored of this whole driving thing and though we'd take a break in a snowbank for about 4 hrs that involved taking an hour-long nap (we brought along some blankets for just such an event) and then spend some time with the local park ranger in his truck getting to know him and his heater. Did I mention that this trip had us heading straight into a pretty big north-eastern snow storm? After a spur of the moment, brief party on the side of the road with the park ranger, a state trooper and a couple guys with a tow truck, we figured we had had enough fun for one morning and continued on our way.



We eventually got to Maine without further incident. Spent the evening catching up with Andrew, plotting future adventures with him, meeting some of his friends (one of whom we got into a fairly interesting conversation with about the differences between canadians and americans), and having his adorable mother try and feed us until we burst.



After an (at this point) amazing 5 hour sleep, we got up around 6am, showered, ate some breakfast, spent a few last minutes with Andrew, took the lunch that Andrew's mom had gotten up to make us, and were on our way back up to Canada. This time, despite it not being the fastest route according to the GPS, we stuck to the nice, clear interstate and made it back just fine. Apparently the GPS didn't know that it was the middle of the winter and that the smaller highways don't always get the same number of snow plows frequenting them. The boarder guard had a few questions as to why our car had B.C. plates since we'd said we were living in Montreal but I think our story about the banana bread Andrew's mom had packed us really won him over. I think as we were turning onto our street, I realized that I had my keys in my coat pocket and had therefore failed yet again to leave any keys with Dylan's family. Oops.