Marilyne’s grandma all way on the left (she’s 68 in this pic). Marilyne’s all the way on the right.

Gooooood morning GBD!  Soooo…yeah.  Nothing got posted yesterday.  That’s because I have neither facts nor brainteasers.  I’m all out.  But I know some of you are DYING to know the answers, so I’ll have to come up with something eventually.

In the meantime, lookit!  MarilyneL is going to tell us about her awesome roadtrip from last year.  This post is about how the trip came about, so enjoy!  And tune in next week for more!  Thanks Marilyne!

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Hello GBD!  As I have mentioned quite a few times in the comments, last summer, along with my sister Véronique, we spent 3 weeks on the roads of America!  So this is how it all began…

I’ve had this fixation with Vancouver for the last 3-4 years now…the city, the coming Games,…ok, Smallville…hehe.  Still, I absolutely wanted to go.  So, back in 2006, when I was 16, I wanted to spend the summer in Vancouver.  Unfortunately, my parents did not want me to go at all (”I was too young”) and thought I would struggle too much in a complete English immersion.  Maybe because they don’t speak a word of English…hehe.  I was obviously sad, but the great news was that my grandmother, who loves to travel, was looking for a 4th person to go to Eastern Europe along with her and her 2 sisters.

I was like, “ME ME ME!!”  Alright…”MOI MOI MOI!!”    And my mom agreed right away!  :O  So I spent 2 weeks traveling around Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary and Slovakia….yeah, that was a good compromise.    Of course, that trip was amazing and I discovered my passion for traveling and languages! 

Back to America now.    And 2 years later: 2008.

So, there is this cool summer program in Canada called Explore that allows you to go somewhere in Canada for 5 weeks, improve your second language skills in universities or colleges, and visit the places where you are located.  So, I applied in February for a college near Vancouver (you had to be 19+ for Vancouver): Victoria and Banff.

I was also looking for someone to come with me if I was not chosen and a place to stay/work, etc.  I did not find any.  However, after a few months, I came back from work (Timmy’s  ), and my sister said she had found someone to go with me….HERSELF.  Haha.  At first, we thought we could work in Vancouver in a pharmacy (she is a pharmacist), and then travel on weekends…but then we realized we would not be able to go very far each time, and she was free from work for only 3 weeks.  So, instead we concluded that we had to forget about working and do a road trip instead!  Haha.  Her car was a 2006 Mazda 6 Sport, rented, and her mileage was really low so we could do a lot of kilometers.  Ha ha!

We came up with a pretty organized plan of things to do so that we wasted as little time as possible and saw as much as we could.  CAA (AAA) gave us a detailed plan with maps and useful information, such as working areas, no services for 50 miles, etc.  Moreover, we had a GPS…our lovely friend GPS without whom I don’t think we could have done this.

So we were two sisters, 24 and 18 from Québec, with a car and the need for adventure!  Time allowed: 25 days.  Main itinerary: Nicolet-San Francisco-Vancouver-Nicolet: a huge triangle!

First of all, oil change – the first out of 3, and also a huge clean up of the car.  It had to shine! 

I will start telling the story in the next blog because it will be too long.  Consider this the trailer…hehe!

See ya in the car!
MarilyneL