Last fall we took our annual September vacation this time later in the month from the 20th to the 24th to avoid the Labor Day weekend BIW family day outing. This year we decided to go North of the Border again into Canada to the countries capital Ottawa!
We set out Friday Morning September 20th getting on the road nice and early. The route from home to the AirBnB in Cantley, Quebec measured 389 miles or about 7.5 hours of driving if we were traffic and obstruction free.
The route we chose took us across Maine to Newry where we took rte 26 through Grafton Notch State Park into New Hampshire. We stopped in Errol, New Hampshire at LL Cote's to top off the tank and use the bathroom. We had stopped here earlier in the year and got Wesley an ice cream cone, he remember so even though it was nine in the morning we got him an Ice Cream.
We continued north west through Dixville Notch eventually crossing into Canaan, Vermont. We were only in Vermont for a couple miles when we crossed over into Quebec. We stopped in Coaticook to exchange our money at the CIBC: Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. I have a profile in their system that the branch in Woodstock, New Brunswick created from our stops there.
After getting some of that sweet, sweet Canadian coin we went to the Tim Hortons to get Wesley his brown doughnut, my sour cream, and Katie's iced coffee. We passed through Ayer's Cliff passing the rest stop that we had stopped at back in 2017 during our Vermont Vacation.
We merged onto our first expressway of the day on Autorun 55 and for the first time felt like we were finally covering some ground on our travels. We pulled off in Richelieu, Quebec to hit a rest area for a bathroom, but it was closed so we used the restroom at the Petro Canada, and got some Canadian style snacks.
We continued west bound towards Montreal where the traffic thickened for the first time. When routing this trip you have two options at this point for traveling to Ottawa, either stay on Autorun 15 to 50 and travel across Quebec to Gatineau or cut down into Ontario to 417 to Ottawa.
As much as I keep referring to this trip as our Ottawa Adventure our Airbnb was in Cantley, Quebec. Also Ottawa, Ontario and Gatineau, Quebec are just across the river from each other and as we would experience it was two different worlds.
For the drive over we decided to cut down into Ontario onto 417. The drive was beautiful, as we got out of Montreal the traffic cleared and we were able to make great time. About two and a half hours later we exited to top off the tank and find a restroom to use. We stopped in Carlsbad Springs at a Petro-Canada and right next door was roadside stand selling burgers and hand cut fries, seemed like as good a place as any to grab a bite to eat.
The food at The Country Grill was amazing! My burger was spot on and the poutine with local potatoes and local cheese curds and homemade gravy was sensational! The owners were wicked nice too. They saw our Maine registration plates and asked us about our drive and what we were doing. They also gave us a baggy full of US pennies that they had collected along the way and had no use for. Canada stopped minting pennies in 2012 and they round to the nearest nickel. So if something cost $2.02 and you give them a fiver expect to get $3 back, but if it costs $2.03 expect to get $2.95 back.
Across the street is an Amazon distribution center, the size of the building is massive beyond belief!
We continued into Ottawa and once we got into the city I can't recall and issues we have getting through. We crossed over into Gatineau the fourth largest city in Quebec. On the way to our Airbnb in Cantley we stopped at an IGA to stock up on supplies for breakfast and snacks for the next few days.
Our Airbnb is on the grounds of horse stables. It's beautiful really! We are staying in and old barn that was converted into a private residence with it's own entrance. You walk in and to the left the hall leads to a room with a queen bed and two lofts with twin beds. To the right the hall leads to the living room / dining room, then you walk up a half flight of stairs where to the left is the kitchen and bathroom and to the right is another half flight of stairs to a landing with a washer and dryer. From there another few stairs up leads to a full size bed with windows overlooking the back pasture.
Once Kate and Wesley were all set for the night I headed back towards Ottawa and St. Anthony's Hall for some C*4 wrestling!!! It has long been a goal of mine to go to a wrestling show in another country. The past few years we've been to Canada it hasn't lined up that there was a show going on that I could go to until this day. C*4 is one of, if not the, biggest wrestling promotions in Canada and they put on fantastic shows. So to finally go to check that box and have it be a C*4 show as well, fantastic! I wrote all about it on blog The Wrestling Insomniac if you'd like to read about it here.
I woke up Saturday morning and with an odd feeling. I picked my head up and looking down towards the foot of the bed and on the landing where the washer and dryer were I saw two old ladies standing there. I would describe them as wearing their Sunday best late 1800's or early 1900's dresses with large hats that covered their faces and hand bags on their arms.
It was unsettling to say the least! I ripped off my CPAP mask and put on my glasses looking again and they weren't there. A few moments later I heard someone moving around and called out, it was Kate. I asked her if she was just on the landing and she said no. I told Kate about the old ladie, it freaked her out. Freaked me out too.
After an awesome breakfast we headed out for the day and our first stop was a place we thought Wesley would love, he did. Valley View Little Animal Farm in Nepean, Ontario is about 50 minutes from our place. They said they had a train ride, I would refer to it more of a tractor pulling cards with bench seats. It was cool though as it wound through the fields and crops of the farm. They also had a petting zoo, farm museum, very large playground area, a small corn maze, robot chickens and more.
We were there for a couple hours, at the end of the day though Wesley loved it and that's all that matters. We left there heading to downtown Ottawa and the Byward Market. It is an open air style market with plenty of buildings as well, a large section is closed to just foot traffic. The first incarnation of the market started in 1827 with expansions going forward until the fifth incarnation in 1926.
It was cool, but it wasn't quite what we expected. We were hoping / thinking it would be more like the market we went to Halifax. We did go to the House of Cheese were I got an amazing aged Quebec cheddar!
I got this cool looking seasoned fried potato on a stick that was really good, I can't recall what Kate had, and we got Wesley McDonald's. He likes the classics.
They had they "train" ride around the market that Wesley wanted to go on so I took him. On the ride I saw where the Ottawa sign was that we got some cool pictures at. After we walked up to the capital district area.
We check out Rideau Canal, Major's Hill Park, East Block, Centennial Flame, Parliament of Canada, Confederation Park with the National War Memorial and other statues and monuments.
We got a really nice photo of us in front of the Parliament of Canada. In the background of our photo you can see protesters gathered in front of the Capital Building. I really think the National War Memorial is an amazing site. Originally dedicated in 1939 by King George IV it stands 70 feet tall, 26 feet wide and 52 feet long. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was added in 2000 and we did witness the changing of the ceremonial guard sentries.
For dinner we got pizza at Papa Pizza Cantley just down the road from the room. It's become a tradition from our honeymoon that when we go away for more than one night we get pizza one of them. It was decent pizza.
Sunday morning I was awoken again by Dorothy and Cynthia, in their same Sunday best on the landing. I wasn't as freaked out, but still pretty majorly freaked out.
Sunday we decided that we just had to go to Ikea. Neither one of us had ever been to one before and we joking said we should do it as we passed it coming into the city on Friday, and again on Saturday returning from Valley View Animal Farm. Holy cow is the building huge!
They have this kids area called Smaland a kids play area where you can dump your child for up to 60 minutes free of charge! We signed up Wesley and had to wait half hour before he could go in. We checked out the showroom floor and by the time we were done Wesley went into Smaland.
This let Kate and I check out the rest of the store. We did end up buying a few things, I got a cork board for work, we got a new shower curtain, and I bought a package of Daim bars. A Daim bar is a Swedish toffee candy bar similar to that of a Heath or far superior Skor bar. I really enjoy Daim bars and I have ordered them on Amazon in the past, this is the first time I have ever seen them in a store.
We finished shopping, picked up Wesley and headed to the cafe to have some of Ikea's famous Swedish Meatballs, honestly they were really good. I also got a piece of Daim cake, I enjoyed that!
We left Ikea and headed to the St-Albert fromagerie or cheese shop in the town of St-Albert about an hour from the Ikea. Yes we like our cheese and touring cheese making factories. This has a self guided tour and they specialize in cheese curd, these are the curds that were used on the poutine we had at the at Country Grill on Friday.
After our tour we got and order of poutine and fried cheese curds. The poutine was good, it was better on Friday, but the fried cheese curds were DYNOMITE! We picked up a few things in the gift shoppe area including a small portion of their extra aged cheddar, it was very good.
We headed back towards Ottawa and exited the expressway to take a scenic drive that was recommended to us. The road essentially came to and end at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum. We all went inside and as they close at 5 pm and it was just after 4 pm there was no admission charge, but we left a donation.
Wesley thought it was cool, but after half hour he and Kate went outside to the playground. I on the other hand absolutely loved it!! So many great planes from years on by including all the major wars. I really geeked out for the spitfire.
The space portion was smaller, Canada isn't really known for their Space Program, the first Canadian in Space wasn't until 1984 and the second in 1992, both aboard US Shuttles. It was a really cool museum.
We continued on our scenic drive along the Ottawa River. We parked at the National Gallery of Canada and walked up to the scenic overlook with the Samuel de Champlain Statue. It overlooks the Inter-provincial Alexandra Bridge, which took two years to build and was opened in 1901, as well as the Ottawa River and Gatineau, Quebec.
We had an uneventful night back at the room, I received no morning visit from my guests.
Monday September 23rd was our last full day of vacation and also the only day where rain was in the forecast so we planned to spend a good chunk of the day at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec.
We arrived just before the museum opened at 9:30 am and we didn't leave until after 4 pm. It was awesome! The museum has multiple floors according to their description it covers the 20,000 years of known human history in Canada. Starting from the ground floor and working forward in time to present day on the top floor. It was really fascinating to Kate and I how much Canada's history is so similar to the United States history as far as the New World was colonized, land taken from the natives or first nations people, the expansion of the country to the west. We absolutely loved it!
We ate lunch at the cafeteria before going to the Canadian Children's Museum which is inside the Museum of History and is included with the admission price. This was pretty much your standard children's museum and Wesley loved it. His favorite was parts was a boat with a crane for loading and unload cargo and a decorated Pakistani bus.
During our travels in both Quebec and Ontario we noticed that there are some tensions between Canadians and French-Canadians. I know very little french, but I would always try before speaking English if I was in Quebec and the people I dealt with seemed to respect that. At the children's museum I asked the clerk if she knew if there was an arcade or something age appropriate for our son. She said she wasn't aware of an arcade in Gatineau. I then asked about Ottawa and she responded, "I don't know I don't go to Ottawa." She was dead serious! I could throw a rock from the Museum and hit Ottawa and she doesn't go there?!?
We had a tremendous time at the museum and were shocked that we spent the day there. We got Wesley McDonald's again for dinner, this time in Gatineau.
We packed up what we could that night so we could depart as early as we could the next morning. That night Dorthy and Cynthia returned and scared the crap out of me. It was very early morning when I felt a presence, I looked down and they were back on the landing. After a moment I looked again and this time there were at the top of the stairs. I closed my eyes very, very tight. I looked again and they were at the foot of my bed!!
I closed my eyes and now started to say various forms of no over and over. No, nope, no thank you, nope, and ect. I was took scared to look again and I just laid there until I heard Kate moving around and called out to her. Once she responded I got out of that bed so fast! I'm getting shivers thinking about it.
After breakfast we cleaned up and packed up the van for the ride home. I decided to take the route back that went through Quebec to Montreal and we also decided to cross back into the United States at Coburn Gore in Maine and not take the same route back through Vermont and New Hampshire. That felt so long on the way here.
The drive home was going well until we hit Montreal and thick traffic. Kate gave me bad directions and we missed our exit and ended up on the wrong road. Now as we are in Canada we have no cell service however, I had downloaded a large section of Google maps so I could do offline mapping.
Once I was able to pull over I was able to map us, we just had to cross country a short trek and meet up with Autorun 55 a further up and we'd made the correct turn. It only added half hour to the drive.
We stopped in Richelieu, Quebec again for lunch, we wanted to try that the St-Hubert chicken place that we had seen the first time we stopped there on Friday. We had seen several other locations during our drive and we thought it was a fast food type restaurant, it was not.
This chain was founded in 1951 on St-Hubert St in Montreal and is a casual dining restaurant that is very popular in Quebec, Eastern Ontario and Western New Brunswick. The food was really good, and the service was great.
We stopped one last time to use the restroom and grab a few final snacks we can only get in Canada. The stretch of road on 212, the last half hour drive heading to Maine was pretty barren, just lots of trees and long stretches of road.
The drive home through Coburn Gore was so much nicer. If we go back to Ontario or that region of Quebec again we will go through Coburn Gore.
It was an absolutely tremendous vacation, the drive was great, the museums were excellent, our accommodations were haunted but nice, and I got to go to pro wrestling in another country. Can't really ask for a better vacation!
Until Next Time!
