Going Dark

So we've had virtually no access to the Internet in the last couple of weeks.  Don't worry, I'm fine, no obvious psychological damage so far, it was touch and go there for a while but I pulled through.

When we left Boston and Cape Cod, we travelled north to Adirondack Park in upstate New York.  With over 2000 miles of hiking and bike trails and 3000 lakes spread across 2.3 million (!) acres of mountains and forest, it seemed like the perfect place to put our newly bought bikes through their paces.

The whole park is basically a mobile black spot though and no amount of technology was going to help.  This wouldn't have been a problem, as we planned to get out into the great outdoors anyway, except that it decided to rain solidly, and heavily, for about 3 days straight.  We only found out about the Adirondacks recently and weren't expecting to have to be armed with wet/cold weather gear just yet anyway, so we were fairly unprepared for the apparent monsoon and freezing temperatures we found up there.  As a result we stayed holed up in the RV the majority of the time and really didn't get to see the best of this stunning area.

I guess you can't complain too much when your back garden looks like this in the morning:

It would have been nice to see more of the park than the 50 square feet we happened to land on though.  As the rain turned to snow, we both evidently had simultaneous visions of sliding back down the mountain in a 30ft bobsled, so we packed up quicker than ever before and got the hell out of there, enjoying the view of the Hudson river racing towards New York City on the way back down.

The Adirondacks are about as far north as you can get in New York before crossing the border into Canada, so we thought we may as well carry on northward and visit Montreal.

As we descended the mountains, we drove through the worst storm I've seen in a long while.  Imagine trying to drive a massive billboard through hurricane-speed crosswinds and you'll get the idea.  I assured myself that the weather would improve once we reached the lower land of Montreal, but unfortunately it carried on lashing it down for a good few days.

Crossing the border gave me some brief respite from trying to keep the RV on the road and was quite an interesting experience.  As we approached the barriers, the list of restricted items read like an inventory of the inside of our motorhome, including enough alcohol to keep George Best and Lindsay Lohan busy for about a week (what a party that would be), so I got ready to put on the blagging performance of my life as I handed our passports over.

We struck up a conversation with the border guard and I think he ended up being distracted by trying to conceal how utterly mental he thought we were for attempting this trip.  So we got through with minimal incriminating questions asked.  Bienvenue au Canada!

We were in Montreal at least a day before it stopped raining long enough for us to venture outside.  Still no Internet access; I had planned to do some research before we entered Canada and get us on a cheap mobile data plan but obviously couldn't do that up in the mountains.

When it finally stopped raining, we jumped on the subway and headed for the city centre.  When we got out, the sky was clear and sunny and the temperature had increased about 10 degrees, leading me to wonder just how long we'd been down there.

I've been to Montreal once before but I was there to DJ, so it was an entirely different kind of trip and my memory of it is slightly fuzzy!  So it was good to get the chance to visit again.  We only really scratched the surface this time as well though, missing landmarks like the Olympic Stadium.  The old town is very picturesque, if a little pretentious and we were already getting an impression of how ridiculously expensive Canada is compared to the USA.

We hung out with the locals for a while but conversation wasn't their strong point:

We soon got on the road again and made our way towards Ottawa, where I am currently typing this in 40 degree heat using the free wifi they kindly provide in the city.

And I think my eyebrows are sunburnt.  All in all a strange week!