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  • Crossing Canada
    111
    Day 6

    Day 5 - Driving to Thunder Bay

    May 7 in Canada ⋅ ☁️ 5 °C

    After a distinctly cold and uncomfortable night in Donnie Dodges belly, we decided to take the morning easy: we did sun salutations towards the sun and had lunch on the beach, before re-packing Donnie and heading out to Thunder bay.

    Before heading out, we got in touch with Barb; a friend of a friend who could potentially house us in the area. She told us she'd be happy to, but she recommended we don't rush the drive because it is a beautiful one- and boy was she right! The next 7 hours were filled with winding roads that went uphill and downhill; cliffs towered to our right and Lake Superior dazzled to our left. We stopped to get a picture with the world's largest goose🦆 but mostly did the 480km drive in one fell swoop.

    Barb turned out to be a delight, and brought so much excited energy to our trip. We pulled out the maps and showed her our route, and ended the night watching an episode of 'Midsummer Murders' as we fell asleep on her comfy couches. Thanks Barb!!

    -Hillis    Read more

  • Crossing Canada
    1
    111
    Day 4

    Day 4- Driving to Pancake Bay

    May 5 in Canada ⋅ ☁️ 8 °C

    After yet another delicious meal we packed up and said goodbye to Barb, Curtis, Randy, Nancy and beautiful Manitoulin Island.
    We drove 4 and a half hours to the 'city' of Sault St Marie and the vibes were seriously off. Maybe because it was a Sunday, maybe because it wasnt pedestrian friendly as we were expecting, maybe its just a weird place but we stocked up on groceries and got the hell outta there.
    It was another hour to Pancake Bay where we had a campsite booked for the night. We squealed when we saw our first glimpse of Lake Superior- Ontario is GAWGUS you guys.
    We set up camp (I.e moved all our crap from the back seat to the front and laying out our foam thats about as thick as a tissue), Hillis made us some dinner and we spent the final moments of sunlight drinking local beers at Pancake Bay and reading Mary Oliver to each other.
    Campfire, cups of tea, then bed.

    -Ellie    Read more

  • Crossing Canada
    121142
    Day 3

    Day 3 - Manitoulin Island

    May 4 in Canada ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C

    We started our day with a hearty breakfast with our new friends and ventured out into the island. Within minutes the fog cleared and it was like we had travelled to a different manitoulin! Our two hikes for the day were:
    - A short trail that led to a roaring waterfall called 'bridal veil falls' (we ended the hike with an almond mocha fudge root beer float that blew our minds!).
    - Next, the cup and saucer trail! It was a short 2 hour hike, but we made it an adventure by taking the the 'adventure trail' which was a lot of climbing through rocks and boy did it make the view all that much better. From the viewpoint we could see the north and east side of the island all the way to the mainland and we sat up there for as long as we could.

    Once we had soaked it all in we returned back to our lovely hosts who had prepared a delicious dinner of pulled pork, mashed potatoes and Caesar salad! Randy even treated us to a ride on his ATV which was a real thrill and something we never would have done if we hadn't met them. We even saw 2 groups of 3 deer (they didnt enjoy the sound of the ATV!) We ended the day watching the hockey which was a good game, but disappointing as the toronto maple leafs lost in overtime. I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow 😊😊.    Read more

  • Crossing Canada
    34
    Day 2–3

    Day 2- Manitoulin Island

    May 3 in Canada ⋅ ☁️ 9 °C

    Ok buckle up, because day 2 was a day of miracles. It started completely unassumimgly; we were up and packed in time for the 8:30 ferry to Manatoulin Island. We bought ourselves breakfast and got to chatting to the couple sitting next to us, Barb and Curtis ... 2 hour ferry ride later and theyve invited us to stay at their friends house during our time on the Island! After quite a cold and stiff night in the tent we didnt need much convincing and gratefully accepted.

    We spent the first few hours on the Island visiting the Ojibwe Cultural centre (shoutout Darlene for the tour and examples of Indigenous crafts!)- I dragged Hillis for a small walk in the rain and he stuck it out for as long as he could (10 minutues) before driving us to visit our home for the night.

    After seeing deer and porcupine crossing the road (!!) on our journey we arrived at Randy and Nancy's place to see the lovely side house they had made up for us. We spent the rest of the day getting to know our lovely hosts, hearing stories of their adventures in Canada and getting recommendations for our next day on the Island.

    We cant believe our luck at meeting such warm and generous people- biggest shoutout ever to our new friends Barb, Curtis, Nancy and Randy!!! (photos to follow tomorrow of the whole gang together)
    - Ellie    Read more

  • Crossing Canada
    122212114
    Day 1

    Day 1 - Bruce Peninsula

    May 2 in Canada ⋅ ☁️ 10 °C

    Hello hello to everyone near and far! Here's your one stop shop for everything Hillis and Ellie for the next four months. Here goes:

    We awoke to a lovely sunny Toronto bidding us farewell and with giddy and nervous energy we packed the rest of our things and headed up the 400 north. Our first stop ended up being Timmy's, which did not disappoint. As we began our drive up to Bruce Peninsula National Park, we popped in a CD we picked up from the Toronto Island Bridge Boutique called 'Q Magazine's Essential Drive'
    It turned out to be the perfect starting music: a cool collection of alternative rock that felt like the kind of music our dads would have played in the car when we were young.
    We made a couple stops along the way: -Walmart for a charger and groceries
    -a dodge dealer to check if they had a spare spare tire (ours is a little old, and we don't know if it will hold up if we have to use it)
    -a junkyard who said they had a spare in alright condition (turned out to be in even worse condition than ours)

    By 14:30 we arrived at the park and began setting up camp. We did it as fast as we could so we could fit in a walk around the lake and to the bay before dark. And we are so grateful we did: it was one of the most beautiful walks I've ever been on. We walked the perimeter of Cyprus lake which was through lovely woodland area literally right on the shore. Then on our way to the bay we saw some crazy rocks that had these really distinct holes in them (does anyone know what this is???). We arrived at the grotto during golden hour and holy cow, the water was soooo beautiful and transparent. Georgian bay really giving Greece a run for it's money! The naturally occuring overhang was also pretty amazing and we sat on the beach wishing it was hotter and we could jump into the water. We made our way back to our campsite and the water on Cyprus lake was like glass. We watched the sun go down and paint the sky a ray of reds.

    We chose beauty over practicality because then we had to make dinner (luckily it was just salad) and a fire in the dark (lesson learnt!). We ended the day feeling excited for manitoulin and grateful that something we had worked so hard for was finally a reality (and, a little cold!).

    -Hillis    Read more

  • Clearing the Crap!
    2
    Day 14

    The Crap has been officialy Cleared!

    March 2 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 8 °C

    We did it! Hooray!!! We emptied and consolidated the 5 metroself storage units into just one! Task complete ✅.

    We began our final day of clearing with a home visit, as mum had filled the house with stuff to go through. She was diligent with this material and was working outside of work hours to complete her sorting.

    We made our final drop off at the repeat boutique/world relief donation centre who have truly been lifesavers this entire trip. Volunteers who have been going through and sorting everything we donate to make sure it goes to the right place and the right people. Thank you Repeat Boutique!

    We then brought the things we wanted to keep to the storage units and on the last day mum forgot the keys!!! So we got postponed a bit because mum had to drive back to the house to go get them; I did a yoga and got warmed up while I waited.

    We were able to fit almost everything from 2011 (which was the unit we originally thought we would keep) into 2033 in this first hour and then went out for lunch to our favourite local mexican slow cooked meat spot called 'La Birria Loca' (google translate tells us this means 'the crazy beer', but they don't serve beer, so if anyone can translate it better, please do!).

    After lunch we began our game of Tetris: we had to basically fit everything from every unit in to 2033. We took it slow and smart and after an hour and a half we had god damn done the thing.

    The first image is 2033 completed.
    The rest is our victory lap through the beautifully empty 2011, 1054, 1064 and 1038. So with this post, I declare our project a massive success! We were able to complete double what we expected: we brought her units down from 8, to only 2! As of yesterday she is now saving somewhere close to a full $1000 a month on storage units, and no longer has to complete the gargantuan task of going through her own shit 🙃.

    We arrived back at Evanston today. Mum will be here another week before she flies back to Greece, and I'm flying back to Toronto on Monday. Thank you all for following our progress and sending your support through great comments and lovely personal messages. We really appreciated everyone who reached out to us and allowed us to vent to them. We love you all very much!

    And with that, we have cleared the crap, and the penguins have been found.

    Keep your eyes peeled for my Canadian adventure in May, coming to a findpenguins app near you!

    Love,
    H & H    Read more

  • Clearing the Crap!
    3
    2121
    Day 12

    All that's left is trash...

    February 29 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 1 °C

    Today is the penultimate day of clearing the units!

    We started by going through the final boxes that we thought might have things to donate and we found some real treats (see owl, old rusty sheep shears, Motorola phone and letter above).

    The rest, was decidedly, trash. We have accumulated so much trash during this process: empty boxes, bags full of papers, old medicine and even some bits of food. Most of it was not smelly, but it still had to be put somewhere and it sure as hell wasn't going back into the units!

    We are lucky that grandma Anne has dumpsters in her building that get emptied on Thursday and Monday mornings and so we filled them up on Wednesday night and then refilled them up in the evening today with the trash from both the Wheaton units and the downers grove units.

    With the trash emptied we were able to successfully close the downers grove account and she will finally be able to stop paying the $190 a month she has been paying for 10 years! Hooray!

    Tomorrow we shuffle things around and try and fit it all into 2033, so we can reduce the number of units from 6 to 2 in Wheaton. Wish us luck on our final day of this exciting adventure!

    Love,
    H & H    Read more

  • Clearing the Crap!
    32
    Day 11

    The day we saw the back of 2033

    February 28 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 -4 °C

    Well, today was actually a good day moodwise. We managed to keep our morale high throughout the day, and I put it down to water intake, which was more purposefull today and regulated.

    Our goal today was to keep sorting through unit 2033 and by golly we did exactly that. We also dealt with our massive pile of trash that was building up in unit 1054. Basically, most of what is in 2033 has been labelled 'desk, misc, to sort' with some also adding ' not screened' which makes us think it was just tossed in there. The majority of these boxes are filled with papers: magazines, opened envelopes, guides, advice, printed webpages, invitations, and requests to join their insurance or banking institution as a member. It's so fatiguing go through this shit that should have been thrown away years ago.

    Nevertheless we were able to fill two car loads with materials for donations, so we filled the car ready for a drop off tonight.

    The temperature has also been super erratic: yesterday it was 26; today it got down to -6. So we had a 30 degree drop in a matter of 24 hours which seems so fucked.

    Tomorrow we want to have fully donated everything that can be donated from 2033 so that we can dedicate Friday (our final day) to shuffling stuff around so that everything we still have kept can fit in just one unit.

    Love,
    H & H    Read more

  • Clearing the Crap!
    Day 11

    Jeez its been a while.

    February 28 in the United States ⋅ 🌬 7 °C

    Hey squad, sorry for the radio silence, it's been a rough first two days back and I seriously have taken very few pictures for y'all.

    Yesterday (Monday) we cleared out the 2nd downers grove unit, and made a mountain of trash which we kept in the empty 1st one. We tried to put it in grandma Anne's skip by her apartment but we basically filled the entire thing, and decided we should keep some trash for when they empty it on thursday.
    But with the 2nd downers grove unit done, we basically had finished everything we thought we'd get done by the end of the two weeks.

    So with a few more days of work left we, of course, decided to add more to our workload.

    Today we began tackling unit 2033 which is the unit she has had the longest and is the mega full one we thought we wouldn't even get to. And let me tell you, it is mega full.
    Unfortunately it's much less satisfying to go through as most of it is full of old shit, and almost 2/3 of what we have gone through so far is trash, so we are not filling the car with stuff to donate nearly as fast as last week. In fact we have now almost filled a separate unit with a pile of trash bags that we are not sure how we are gonna get rid of.

    The work is getting really fatiguing at this point, but we only have three more days, so we are gonna push through and deal with this shit the best way we know how: by venting to eachother, taking breaks every hour and treating ourselves to delicious lunches.

    Love,
    H & H    Read more

  • Clearing the Crap!
    1
    Day 7

    Mister is alive!!

    February 24 in the United States ⋅ ☁️ -1 °C

    Dear readers,

    I am happy to inform you that mister has not been put down today! The vet said his condition had significantly increased since she last saw him and yes, he will still have bad days, but that he is not in the condition she usually finds cats when they are put down. So he will hopefully still be around when I return to Toronto on the 4th of May! YAYY! kelli you can stop crying in the gym now 😂😂.

    Today we went to half priced books to sell the two boxes we had accumulated over the course of our clearing. As much as it was nice to get some money for them, they had a very obvious tactic with which to still turn a profit: they told us it would take 10-15 minutes to process the books and price them, and that we were free to browse in the meantime...
    So of course we ended up buying 4 books which were double the amount we got from the sale! However they were still very cheap, and I had been looking for a road atlas for months and was happy to spend 4 dollars on one. Their travel section was extensive and it was hard not to buy 2 or 3 guidebooks that looked like they might have info I could use in my travels!

    Next, we headed to a gallery space in which Stephanie and her studio partner Amber had pieces being exhibited! Their pieces speak for themselves and Stephanie's adaptation of hers -post the horrible fire that wreaked havoc on her studio- is a testament to her artistic ingenuity and ability to find wonder in the worst of things.

    We will be driving back tomorrow after dinner and getting started on our clearing at 10am sharp on Monday morning.

    Thanks for keeping up with the H's!

    Love,
    H & H    Read more

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