Day 6 landed in Vancouver

Day 6 on the road and we finally reached our destination, Vancouver BC. Washington State was excellent, especially the scenery in the Columbia River Gorge. Layla rocked the Phatmobile and drove us through Seattle. We crossed the border into Canada and arrived in Surrey, BC just in time for dinner. We actually didn't get any photos of MoJo on Day 6 simply because he hung out with Tyra upon arrival and spent most of his time in the backyard. More pics to follow. It was a good day on the road, with plenty of sunshine and good weather.

Layla Terry MoJo ROAD TRIP day 5

All I can say about Montana is one word: W O W !!!! I wanted to stop in Butte Montana for some reason, and it did not disappoint. They have a dog park there that offers free practice tennis balls. Imagine that! MoJo got 5 or 6 new practice balls. We passed the Bear Tooth Mountain Range and our trip odometer passed 2000 miles. Still following the Yellowstone River, we passed the home of Brutus the Grizzly Bear, a famous movie and TV star, http://www.grizzlyencounter.com/. Continental divide at 6393 elevation and 2188 miles. In the afternoon Layla drove through rainy misty mountain passes and brought us straight to C'Oeur D'Alene, a popular IronMan venue. We went to a funky Thai restaurant with pink and blue lights. Food was not bad. (photos to follow)

MoJo's Road Trip Day 4

Today we drove through half of North Dakota, and entered the State of Montana. Up here they let you drive 75mph, so you can cover a lot of ground in one day. Most of the way we were following the trail of Lewis and Clark along the Yellowstone River. It's surely beautiful country and very unique in itself. In North Dakota we passed Painted Canyon, National Grasslands, and Salem Sue, the World's Largest Holstein Cow. We entered Mountain Time Zone at mile 1609, entered Montana State at mile 1704 and I forgot to say we crossed The Great Divide yesterday at mile 1426. When we reached Glendive, MT it was almost a blizzard and by the time we went a bit further south, the sun was shining and it had warmed up. Billings Montana is a nice and friendly city. Tomorrow we are shooting for C'oeur D'Alene, Idaho. MoJo has become the best road tripping dog ever!

MoJo's GRAND ROAD TRIP ADVENTURE

This morning I woke up in Duluth MN, tonight I fell asleep somewhere in North Dakota. Every morning I wake up my two best girls at about 6:30am. I love this trip because we all get to sleep in the same room, Terry calls it a Hotel. I've never stayed in a hotel. Each morning I pee and poop then get in the car to sleep for about four hours. Then I get to go out and run around for awhile. I cannot wait to get back in the car because I just know that we are going someplace really exciting! It's taking a long time to get there. Today the most exciting thing I saw was a giant wind turbine. It was pretty boring driving through Northern Minnesota. Layla got all excited about this place called Leech Lake. Why would anyone want to swim in a lake full of leeches? I'm really tired now from all that riding, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere else but in the big red Phat Machine with my two favorite girls! Tomorrow, Montana--maybe I'll get to smell some horses...yeehaw!

THE DAY OF THE EXPLODING DEER

Last night I dreamed we were on a road trip laughing our heads off--that's weird. Today we crossed into Soo Michigan, from Soo Ontario. We drove through Hiawatha National Forest, Ottawa National Forest and the Bad River Native Reservation. We also passed through Strongs Corners (the Black Bear Capital of Michigan), Champion MI (the horse pulling capital OF THE WORLD), and at mile 766 saw an EXPLODING DEER right before our eyes. That's right. An oncoming tractor trailer hit a deer dead on, no pun intended. The animal exploded and almost broke in two pieces. Any closer, we may have had a deer's head through our windshield, or our car would have been at least covered in blood. Layla not only stops for deer, SHE BEEPS HER HORN AT THEM as well. All in all on that stretch of road we ran into (not literally) 13 (lucky number) deer. My daughter and I both avoided some good ones, and Well, you sure don't see that every day! To expose ourselves to a bit of the area culture, we tuned in to a local country music station. It was more entertaining that we ever could have imagined. We brought a GPS with us thinking it would make navigation a BREEZE, however, the lady in the GPS box had other ideas. We wanted to name her Linda or Suzy or something like that, but it just didn't fit. We finally ended up calling her THE BITCH because she is constantly telling us what to do, has totally lied to us about the best route to take and has actually tried to murder us by trying to send us the wrong way down a one way street. So we finally BROKE DOWN in Ironwood Michigan and bought a Rand McNally Road Atlas, because we sure can't trust THE BITCH! It looks like other travellers could not trust their bitches either because the road atlases were sold out at the first two stores we passed. MoJo had fun and lots of sun today, with plenty of ball chasing thrown in. To end the day, we stayed at an indoor water park in Minnesota. GREAT DAY!

UP THE SOO !

Left Ottawa early in the am, our goal to reach THE SOO. We drove ten hours and in that time passed through many different forms of weather, including pea soup fog at Deep River and Chalk River. At any rate we actually ran from bad weather to good weather, with dark angry clouds at our back and blue sky, sun and fluffy clouds in front. We passed the town of Cobden past the Brent Meteor Crater, then went by Mattawa, home of Big Joe Mufferaw and Johnnie Chinook (they tell it like it is in the history books). At Petawawa, we gassed up at a pump that had to be from the 70's and still works fine. Past the hometown of Dr. Roberta Bondar (Blind River, Ontario) the first Canadian astronaut woman to go into outer space. Finally reached THE SOO after 10 short hours on the road. What a wonderful day!

Leaving the ADK

It's Saturday and we decided to take an extra day before we leave.  There's no point in being stressed out on a road trip.  MoJo is having a nap and I am packing and cleaning.  I was so excited, I couldn't sleep last night.

Canadian Border Crossing

Left the ADK today and crossed into Canada.  There's something new in Fort Covington NY.  Have you ever seen a DRIVE THROUGH SMOKE HOUSE?  It sure looks like a fun place from the outside, almost like a 1950's hot dog stand, complete with patio lanterns all around.  This is the place to go get yer smokes if you don't want to step out of your car.  You just drive on through and get yer smokes.  At the border, I picked the very slowest lane out of three.  The border crossing guard was Cheshire Cat in a bullet proof vest.  He tried to trick me up with 15 questions, but I kept my confidence and answered every question correctly, apparently, because he let me through, finally, after perusing my dog's rabies certificate thoroughly.  He must have read every word on the sheet of paper before he finally handed it back to me.
On to Granny's house, where MoJo leaped out of the car and knew just where to go.  Granny had a piece of cheese for him, of course.  He had his picture taken with Granny, then off we went to Canada's capital, Ottawa.  The entire trip we had rain, buckets of rain, fog, pea soup fog (in Canada), and even some sort of sleet stuff.  We certainly are in ROAD MODE because neither rain, nor fog, nor sleet can stop us.  We be ridin' in a big PHAT red machine.