loose change

21 august 2025

beginning our annals from a king sized bed in the tallest hotel in ottawa! **this luxurious lodging is sponsored by my dad. thank you dad!** what a day it’s been. here are the numbers:

miles: 438

tanks: 2

tolls: 4

states: 3 (MA, NH, VT)

provinces: 2 (QC, ONT)

max speed: 78mph

noise from canoe: 12 decibels

and here is the soundtrack:

opening for steinbeck – john craigie

sound & color – alabama shakes

cosmo’s factory – CCR

lost at last vol. 1 – langhorne slim

podcast # 930 – the moth radio hour

all in all it was a seamless day and a phenomenal debut for sam’s new car (legal name is still in debate but will be revealed soon). for those of you not privy to the current venture, here’s what’s happening: sam and i are driving across the country again except this time we’re doing it with our newly acquired canoe (legal name donna jean) and this time we’re in international waters! last year, after the singular worst highway and motel experience of our respective lives, we were inspired to never visit ohio again. so now we find ourselves in the gorgeous capital city of ontario.

today’s highlights included an inconspicuously beautiful rest stop in vermont at maplefields gas station in winooski, vermont. i highly recommend to any devoted readers who are passing through. we also listened to some amazing music and stories–the star of the day being opening for steinbeck by john craigie. a true prophet of our times. we’re excited to run more of his live albums on the trip! and the day was not without scintillating conversation and moments of reflection. time passes slowly when you’re lost in a dream!

todays lowlight is that we arrived to the marriott to find the oversized parking full. because of sweet donna jean, the car is nearly seven feet tall and in a city with parking garages that just won’t do. sam figured out the parking while i learned to navigate a luggage cart and after some moments of undue stress (fueled by hunger) we were generously saved by a bellman named eugene, who pulled out all the stops to find us parking. the whole scene had me pretty frazzled and unable to consider dinner options so we walked to a restaurant that ended up being inside of a hilton two blocks away. kind of failing at sightseeing but we’re saving it all up for tomorrow mornings riverside run!

as for the rest of tomorrow, we are bound for the UP! geez louise am i excited to get in touch with my yooper roots again. ISO meat pasties and great lakes. destination #1 is drummond island, michigan, a place so near and dear to my heart! i’ve not had the privilege of seeing it for at least ten years. i’ve been tearing up for weeks at the prospect of returning and it’s such a gift to return with sam in hand! safe bet that i’ll be crying on the ferry over.

anyway updates to follow now we retire for the evening! day one is done.

22 august 2025

good morning! writing from the front seat of the rav4 (the name on the table at present is ~serge~) on our way to sault ste. marie, ONT. we set ourselves majorly up for success this morning with a 7a alarm into a 3.2 mile run through the capital neighborhood! i got to set the course so i put us on a bridge loop. sights seen: the federal and supreme court building, canadian parliament, the us embassy, the national gallery, the alexandra bridge, the portage bridge, and the canadian museum of history. ottawa is for runners let me tell you! we passed through some gorgeous parks and had a fabulous time trotting across both bridges. we took a quick breather on a massive adirondack chair overlooking the river and were back to the hotel by 815! after a cold shower and an iced coffee i feel like a new woman.

sam lost his tim horton’s virginity this morning. delightful experience except it felt like the entire city of ottawa was in this 800 sq. foot coffee shop. my large coffee cost 1.66 CAD which shakes out to 1.19 USD. canada is kicking ohio’s teeth in as far as a road trip is concerned!

i’m loving my stats format from yesterday so i suspect i’ll be finishing and uploading this entry in the hotel tonight. we’re hearing no noise from the canoe today & spirits are high–sammy on aux today running his brown’s canyon bluegrass playlist and i’ve documented all i can from this morning. our first stop today is pine point beach to stretch the legs & plunge in the ottawa river (which we just ran across this morning!). then we’ll toss a frisbee at sunset park on lake nipissing and from there head to our final destination where i’ll report on all aforementioned! ttyl xo

we back! closing scene report from a queen sized bed in sault ste marie; our hotel overlooks saint marys river & the soo locks so naturally i will be hitting a sault ste. marie boardwalk run tomorrow am! we pulled in late after a Jam Packed Day On The Road to a thunderstorm rolling in. before i get into it here are the stats:

miles: 504

tanks: 2

provinces: 1 (ONT)

fellow Canoe Laden Vehicles seen on road: 26+

and the tuneage:

slow train coming – bob dylan

maggot brain – funkadelic

monovision – ray lamontagne

moth podcasts #740 & #810

capricorn in retrograde…just kidding… live in portland – john craigie

late for the sky – jackson browne

ryder’s aug comprehensive spotify playlist

the vibe was Hot in the car this morning as we left ottawa and only continued to augment upon reaching pine point beach. we are fully buying in to the slow train, long ride mentality what with our oversized vessel and we pulled up to pine point with no expectations! famously a great method to practice in new experiences as you increase your chances of being blown away. sam grabbed the only spindrift we happened to bring from newton and we bathed in the warmish-coolish waters of the ottawa river, which you are not going to believe is actually a river:

we hit a quick stretch on some these warm rocks (pictured above) and shimmied outta there just in time to see a 5 year old with a metal detector heading out with her dad. i took the wheel after this and we breezed to our next stop at sunset park. if we had had expectations for the place we may have been let down. which is a less polite way to say that it just couldn’t hold a flame to sweet pine point beach! nonetheless we indulged in frisbee and then donned our baseball gloves for a little bit of catch. had a very interesting encounter with these canada geese:

sam can’t believe i’m including this picture as a standalone feature but i have to be honest and say that i was truly fascinated by these birds.

from sunset park we had five hours to drive to our destination so i hopped back in shotgun while sammy took over. as a spanish speaker he is constantly commenting on all of the french road signs in this country and gets a chuckle every time a new speed limit drops like this: 70 KM/H DEBUT. as if they’re ~debuting~ a new speed. i found us an iconic spot for dinner at the North Channel Pizza and Feastery where we grabbed a pizza that tasted exactly like the birthday parties of my youth (in the best possible way) and we shared our first ever bites of poutine. good couple of First Time Played’s today for real! i was enraptured by poutine. so simple and so elegantly inelegant. twice a gentleman asked if we wanted vinegar to go with it so naturally after he walked away from our table i said “sir could we possibly get some vinegar for the poutine” and…wow. a canadian delicacy.

we finished eating and sam consolidated all of the dishes as he usually does at restaurants and they offered him a job on the spot. some other highlights from today include: the ice cold lemon water from the hotel lobby post-run this morning, the second live john craigie album we played today, and being cozed up in this bed while rain pelts the windows and wind whistles through the cracks. today’s lowlight was twenty three minutes of standstill traffic to realize we’d just missed a pretty gnarly car accident by maybe three quarters of a mile. surely the feeling evoked by passing a car accident is universal. i think about my mortality every time! a good backhanded reminder to be so thankful for our safety as we pass through these many foreign lands.

a big week of camping lies ahead! next friday we will reacquaint ourselves with The Amenities and i will hopefully have thrived to tell you all the tale of our week in the northern midwest. until then xoxoxxo! thank you for reading i’m happy to have written ttyl