The Journey Pt 1 - Farewell America

On May 30th, D and I set out on our journey from Texas to New Brunswick with our fuzzy companion (Nova) in tow. I was so, so sad to leave the amazing city of Austin and all of my amazing friends there, but excited to start the next chapter of my life.

Here was our planned route with each stop shown with a marker.


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This was taken approximately 5 seconds before we began our journey.


We headed off for our our first destination, which was Memphis, TN. The minute we pulled onto I-35 in Austin, the check engine light came on in D's van. Clearly this was not the best start to our journey, and I took it as a sign that we were meant to stay in Austin. In my already anxious state, the check engine light triggered a compulsive need to ask D "Is the light still on?" approximately every 60 seconds. In addition to my nerves, we also had Nova shaking with fear over the horror of being trapped in a loud moving vehicle. You can imagine how delightful it was to be in the van for the first hour or so of the journey. Fortunately, I had to pee after only one hour and D took this opportunity to give the van a once over. Apparently the gas cap was not on well enough and this was what caused the check engine light. Phew!

While my fears were alleviated, I could not say the same for Nova, who REFUSED to lie down on the very comfy bed we made her between the two seats of the van. At one point she was so tired that she was sleeping sitting up.


After night 1 in Memphis, we headed to our next destination - Toledo, OH. In Ohio we hit some crazy rain. Below is a picture of the wall of rain that was approaching us. First we thought the rain walls we saw in the distance were funnel clouds, probably because we watch too much Storm Chasers.


My favorite picture from the whole trip, well maybe just from the American portion of the trip, was this GIANT Jesus, who definitely beats the giant Jesus near the Vancouver airport.

I may have gotten one of the last pictures of giant jesus (aka Touchdown Jesus) because he was struck by lightning a few days later!

As we approached Toledo, I started thinking about how close it was to Detroit, aka the scariest city in the country. So, I decided to google Toledo on my Blackberry and began to read horror stories about how horrible Toledo and all of Ohio were for crime. There were several REALLY BAD areas identified on various forums, so I looked up where our hotel was to see if it fell in any of these areas. Fortunately it was north of the city and past all the bad stuff. The only problem with that was that we had to drive through one of the really bad areas, which caused D to be very nervous about all of the very expensive tools crammed into our van and u-haul trailer. Arriving at our hotel, which I insisted was safe (look a Toys 'R' US! look an Applebees!), Darryl became even more nervous since it backed on to an abandoned mall. Even though the hotel was already paid for, I offered to try to find a better one further from the scary part of the city. Finally we compromised and just changed our room so that we could see our van and uhaul out of the room window. Of course all was fine and we woke up the next morning eager to be on Canadian soil again.