When getting there isn't half the fun

A symbol for road construction?

Sometimes driving from one end of a road to the other is a bit more complicated than it sounds, particularly if you live nowhere near either end.  When I initially decided to embark on this road trip, I had planned to fly into Maine, rent a car and drive from Fort Kent to Key West.  This plan changed drastically when I actually priced renting that car.  For a two-week rental, picking up in Bangor and dropping off in Key West, it would cost nearly $3,000.

That's not a rental, that's a down payment on a new car.

So I decided to drive from Michigan.  1,028 miles through Ontario, upstate New York, Vermont, and Quebec.  Not being a long-haul trucker, I split this drive in two.  The first day was twelve hours of driving, mostly through Ontario.  I do not recommend driving 12 hours on your own.  It's really difficult after about hour nine, especially when you lose the daylight.

Yes, I could have made it easier on myself and just stayed in Canada that first night, especially since I was heading through Quebec the next day.  But another of my "quests" overruled common sense.  I'm collecting the Hampton Inn key cards that say, Welcome to *name of state*.  I didn't have one from Vermont.  Which is why after 11 hours of driving, I found myself in pitch blackness on the two-lane roads of upstate New York, being literally rained on by thousands of bugs.  No, I'm not exaggerating.  The cloud of bugs was so thick that it sounded like rain as they committed suicide on the front of my VUE.

That first day was about the wildlife.  From the snail I saw outside the Currency Exchange in Windsor, to the kamikaze bugs in New York State, I marked the miles by the fauna I saw.  I even called out a greeting to Champy, the Loch Ness-type monster that's rumored to live in Lake Champlain.

I cannot overstate the feeling of gratitude that swept over me as I pulled into the parking lot at the Hampton Inn Burlington (which is actually in Colchester.  Go figure.).  12 hours of driving is something I'm going to try very hard to avoid in my future.