Petty Annoyances on a Near-perfect Trip

Well - we're back in Lockeport after our 25 day trip to Ottawa to meet our new granddaughter, Ava, and our new great-niece, Alexis.

The return drive was a 2 day enjoyment of late Canadian winter scenery under almost perfect driving conditions. The sky was bright blue, absolutely no clouds, no wind, dry roads and almost no traffic. We left Ottawa about 5:50AM(EDT) on Monday and drove until 6:45PM(ADT) when we stopped in Amherst. Today we left Amherst at 7:00AM and even with a grocery stop in Liverpool were home by 11:30AM - same driving conditions as yesterday. In all, it was probably just about the nicest 1646km drive we have had.

As usual, I have a list. This one is petty annoyances during an otherwise lovely trip.

- the smell and sound of bubble gum
- about 1400km of very dirty snowbanks
- motels that don't have Vacancy/No Vacancy signs (most of the chains I now have observed) necessitating standing in line to find out there is No Vacancy
- non-smoking rooms with corridors that reek of smoke
- key cards that don't work
- no Wi-Fi
- only sport on TV - basketball
- forgetting things in Ottawa, including things we specifically bought there because we couldn't find them here
- insanely long lines at Tim Horton's (long enough we didn't wait)

Anyway, we're safely home, already went to the library and the bank, finally received our energy grant money from the government, Wayne is barbequing dinner, all is well.