Chapter 22
End of the trip: Driving back to Ontario
Saturday, July 2
After spending a few restful days with my parents, it was time to head back west to Ottawa. We had beautiful, sunny weather the whole way - starting in Bathurst, along the remote Road to Resources highway across northern New Brunswick, into the Gaspe Region, and on the busy Autoroute 20 corridor along the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec.
We stopped briefly at Francois' place in Montreal on the way back: we had forgotten a pillowcase there two weeks before. Later on, that bit of delay proved quite fortunate, for precisely at the moment we drove past runway 24 at Pierre Eliott Trudeau airport, we beheld a Canadian Air Force Airbus A310 coming in for landing. I knew immediately who was on this plane, since we had seen and heard news of it all day. William and Kate, on their Royal tour of Canada, were scheduled to arrive in Montreal during the afternoon, and we happened to drive underneath their landing path at precisely the right time.
Less than two hours later we were back in Ottawa. It was the end of a highly-varied road trip -- hip urban centers, hazy summer days, boundless wilderness, beautiful sea-coast scenery, fine dining, and a lot of rain, wind, and cold.
As a final flourish, here's a three-minute video montage of our Atlantic adventure, played to the music of Great Big Sea:
Video Montage, Overland to the Rock - Click on video to start