Our Epic Trip back to Canada

We had everything packed on Sunday night and were ready to load the car on Monday morning. We picked up coffee at McDs on the island then went to the post office. It was open before 8:30 - yay! There was one parcel for me but the two other pieces of mail that I had been waiting for weren't there. The postal worker said I could call the post office later in the week and we could arrange forwarding any items that came in.

We left SPI at 8:30am and made it to Buffalo TX by about 6:30pm. In Buffalo, we ate at a barbeque place near the hotel (so we could walk there). There was only one other couple dining at the restaurant. The next morning, only cold cereal (no milk), yogurt cups, coffee, and juice were available. Nothing that was prepared by a hotel staffer. 

As we progressed northward, we sensed that more people were getting the message to keep a social distance. We stopped in Sikeston MO for dinner after a very long day of driving through the rest of TX, across Arkansas and into Missouri. Rather than go out again for dinner we remembered that we had a bunch of tamales that had been frozen solid when we left SPI the day before. I had wrapped them up with a solid lump of ice. Almost all the ice was still frozen and the tamales were still cold so we popped them in the microwave and ate them in our room. The dining room was roped off. The next morning we could serve ourselves breakfast but again, had to eat it in our rooms. 

Wednesday, we made for Marshall MI. Dining rooms in Illinois were closed so we ordered our salads at Subway (excellent by the way) and ate them in the car. Instead of taking the loop around Indianapolis, we decided to trust the GPS and whistled right through downtown on I-70 then zoomed northward on I-465 then I-69. We were too tired at Marshall to wait for good food to be prepared for pickup (Applebee's) so we ordered a pizza at the new Domino's in town and I went and picked it up at the drive thru. 

Some places are not accepting cash - only credit or debit.

We stopped to fill the tank and pick up milk, cream, bread, and cheese before crossing into Canada. We were asked if we had any COVID-19 symptoms, told to self-isolate for 14 days, and were given this piece of paper:

We were surprised that it just said to avoid places near others if you become ill - highly inadequate instruction IMHO.

We grabbed burgers at an ON Route at Ingersoll. All the tables had been removed - no eating in. I was pleasantly surprised at how good the Burger King Bacon and Cheese burger was.  We wolfed them down in the car and continued eastward. We had planned on taking the 401 through Toronto as we knew the traffic was WAY down. We then learned about an accident that had a couple of eastbound lanes closed ijn the city so we decided to take the 407 after all. We got home by 2:30pm.

Now we have quarantined ourselves. Kind friends did grocery shopping for us and left the items on the front porch. We exchanged a couple of words through the storm door. Other neighbours delivered our mail and checked to see if we needed anything. We had lots in the freezer, too, so are in pretty good shape for the next few days. I will be looking into shopping online and either having the goods delivered or picking them up. 

I am still recovering from driving 3200km in 3.75 days and still haven't fully unpacked. All the laundry is done, though. Since I'm confined for the next 12 days, I have plenty of time to get things in order.

I miss my stitching friends. I have downloaded the Hangouts app so we hope to have a group video chat sometime soon.

We are sad to have our holiday shortened by a month and be missing the warm weather and wonderful, spring bird migration. That being said, I am very grateful our travel medical insurance provider made us get our butts in gear when they threatened to cut off our coverage. I'm also grateful our government ordered us to come home quickly. It is unsettling to not know from one day to the next if regular services will be available. As we drove northward, there were more and more restrictions.  Thank goodness we didn't have any symptoms or that would have been a whole other issue to deal with. For now, we are staying put, riding out the rest of our quarantine, and lining up things we can do around the house in the meantime.

I haven't done a lot of stitching. I've spent a lot of time on the phone - mostly on hold - trying to figure out how to access some accounts online. Today I spent over 2 hours on hold with Bell Canada and got disconnected before talking to a representative. Argh!!! Our landlline doesn't work yet even though I put in an order on Wednesday to be reactivated. The TV worked when we got here on Thursday and the Internet service seems to have sorted itself out. We only get telemarketing calls anyway so I'm really not that worried about the phone still not working. If I'm up in the middle of the night, I'll call Bell then.

Did I mention it's really good to be home?