Setting out from Whistler on Thursday morning, there was a feeling of euphoria all round. The only disturbing part was that we were missing our back-left hind leg. Toaster wasn’t able to join this leg of the tour. Effectively, we were somewhat limping.
Rolling into Vancouver…. ah man… and Toast is hanging out the window, filming, and chanting “we’re not in Kansas anymore!” Although embarrassing, we refrain from suppressing these outbursts, as they help promote afternoon Toast-napping, which is the one time the rest of us get to relax. As familiar sights and coastal rain stream by our windows the bittersweet emotion of the impending end of our Canadian tour is palpable. 
Back on the road and bound for British Columbia we soon hit some areas on the highway that are sporting a pretty decent coating of snow. It’s at about this time that we feel some fairly savage jolting happening behind us and Dave is forced to jump out and have words with Dola, who is desperately trying to jump off her trailer and go for a roll in her powdery-passion. She needs further convincing, and the whole team ends up having to jump out and make sure she fully understands the ramifications of removing herself from the trailer. When we finally do, a pouting Dola is until we hit Revelstoke.
Toaster time meant an 8:30am departure from Calgary. Tips was freakin’ the living daylights out of us by insisting we were faced with an 11-hr drive ahead of us. Luckily this readjusted quickly as we set out at a decent pace.
As anyone who has seen them can attest, the beautiful Rockies are without a doubt one of the great natural wonders of the world. Dola was explaining to them her role as a manmade wonder as we pulled into Banff, Canada’s first National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Rolling in to Calgary that evening for yes – you guessed it – another post-10 p.m. arrival, we crawled into the restaurant for what we had come accustomed to: another late night dinner… The mood after arriving in Cow-Town was a little subdued. It probably had something to do with our previous 2am arrival and early next-morning start in Regina, but I also believe we were all strangely overcome with the feeling that we were on the homeward-run, and a return to ‘reality’ was imminent.
Unbeknownst to me, since I was practically sleepwalking when I entered the hotel at 2:30 a.m. in the morning, I missed a truly exciting moment when we were informed that the only available room for the boys at the Days Inn Regina was the Spiderman room. I had wondered why Mich had continued bursting out in spontaneous fits of laughter well after we had FINALLY gotten ourselves to bed that night.
Winnipeg gets a bad rap for its weather. And too right. It’s freakin’ cold and freakin’ windy. But the people are sincerely NICE. REALLY nice. When we roll in that evening, the fabulous staff at the Fairmont are practically bending over backwards to help ensure Dola is taken care of. We’re feeling pretty warm and fuzzy at this point. That is until Michelle breaks to us some somewhat disturbing news… Just as we had convinced Madonna’s agent to stop their tour from following us, we find out that we now have a new celebrity stalker… Celine Dion.
After driving for three hours following our departure from Thunder Bay, we debated on attempting to truck on to Kenora before stopping for lunch, but with everyone feeling a little peckish, we decided to descend upon Dryden for this integral part of our daily routine - food. Randomly choosing a convenient roadside Husky House Diner, no longer had we been seated and Toast plugged in his laptop than Michelle had already realized – from reading the back on the menu – that we were in fact inside Canada’s very first and original Husky diner…. an icon in its self.
Rocking into Thunder Bay was another evening event – dark, and leaving us little opportunity to really suss out the town. Tips was also having a field day getting us to the hotel. Dave was having none of it, and turned her off to look at a map. Poor Tips is as delirious as us at all the driving it takes to get across this massive country! We can only assume Thunder Bay wasn’t properly mapped out for GPS, as at one point, Tips literally told us to drive onto some train tracks. We’ll let her off – it’s been a tough ride, and she has gotten us this far after-all, with only a couple of fairly minor detours.
Heading into the long-haul to Thunder Bay from the Soo, we fired up the team to engage in some good ol’ fashioned conversation. Fancy that. I have to say – when one of us laughs, it’s like a virus… We all catch it, and it doesn’t go away. I am going to have to call these guys every day once the tour ends, because I sure will miss these outbursts/sessions. We laugh so hard my abs hurt!
The only downer in team dynamic on this trip is that everyone keeps stealing my lines and passing them off as their own. It’s like I have to patent everything before it comes out of my mouth. Dave is particularly talented at this skill, and innocently tries to blame it on the fact that he’s in the front driving and can’t hear me say it first. I guess I’m just a producer of content for people. I mean, who really wants to hear an Australian accent, anyhow? We know that On Star doesn’t…
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