On the road... Friday

Well, the Huffintastic Cross-Country Adventure is over, and boy, what a ride! A 6-day ride, to be exact. Since there is very little to do over 6 days, once the necessary "look, a cow!" and "hay!" conversations have been exhausted, I had time to keep a journal and email back and forth with a few people.

Friday, we left directly from work - it was a great feeling just to jump in the truck and go...until we got stuck in the post-work traffic, but s'okay.

From my travel journal:

We drove past Petawawa at about 8, passing by Black Bear beach and campground. I hadn't thought about that place in a long time.

Between first and second year university, I went camping with Christine, a fun and adventurous girl who had just moved from Petawawa, and tall, gorgeous-with-long-blonde-hair Heather. We went camping at Black Bear campground on the weekend after Canada day, right beside the base.

We hung out on the beach during the day, and teased Adam for being so white that it hurt our eyes when he took off his shirt.

At night, we'd mix drinks and sit around the fire.

Entire Chicken Johnny, back when he was just Johnny, sat up with me one night in the landromat, trading his guitar back and forth.

Bottle-boob Jim would stare morosely at the bottom of his 2L coke bottle, and mourn the fact that he was down to only 3 "bottle boobs", which is what we all started calling the five bumps on the bottom of plastic bottles. He wandered off at some point, and was found in the adjoining campsite, passed out on a picnic table, on the other side of a skunk. We let him be.

And Mike and I climbed over a barbed-wire fence and all the way to the top of the Petawawa water tower, and sat there till the sun came up.

The water tower wasn't visible from the highway, but I kept craning my neck as we drove by, just in case.

We arrived in North Bay at about 10:30, checked into the Dolphin Motel (no dolphins in the bathtub, alas), and crossed the parking lot to the dubiously-named "Alkazar", which was apparently "a fun place to hang out with friends". Ok, we thought. We'll bite. Well, I've never gone out on the town in North Bay before, but I really hope that North Bay-ers would consider it a sketchy place. There were pool tables and horse races showing, with a bookie all set up in the corner, taking bets. Luckily, the game was on, and the bartender made me a fantastic Fuzzy Navel (I think?) that was mostly vodka and peach schnapps.

After one drink, we staggered back across the parking lot, Chris killed a spider for me, and we went to bed.