I packed until about 3:30 while he slept - he is the driver in the family and we needed him alert - and then booked a hotel room and had a nap. And at about 8am, we got into the car for the 9-hour drive.
Somehow - and truly, I am not making this up, I don't know how it happened - Toffee made it into the car. I honestly did not invite him. He must have been able to smell the socks I'd just cast on.
Pete loves to drive and he has driven a lot of places, but he's never been as far north as Sault Ste. Marie. Neither have I - I've been a little past Bruce Mines, and even that was a long time ago. So we both enjoyed the view as the day progressed.
As did Toffee.
It was a beautiful day for a drive, not least because being inside the car spells Air Conditioned Comfort and it's hard to top that on a hot summer day (unless you're in a cool lake, but let's not think about that.) Also, how else do you see amazing cross sections of the Canadian Shield? The ones up in this direction are so much more striking than the ones we see on our way to the cottage - they had to make much bigger cutaways into the rock for the highway, I guess.
Meanwhile, Toffee was very patient and watched me instead of the view. That rabbit really loves his socks.
I let him knit for a bit,
and gazed out the window,
and gazed at Toffee gazing at me,
(gotta say: it's pretty nice to travel with somebody who loves socks as much as I do)
And soon we were in the Soo to do what we went for.
When it was time to go on Monday morning I breathed a wistful goodbye to Muio's,
and to Mrs. B's pizza shop,
and got in the car. For the return trip, we decided to cut through Michigan and then stop an hour or so back into Ontario because astonishingly Pete's life is not mostly vacation and he had to work (just a little.)
It was probably very wrong of me but I didn't think Toffee would do well going through Customs, so I made him hide in the very back of the car, and he didn't get to see the Mackinac Bridge. It's impressive.
For this part of the trip, I decided to get going on the second sock.
It's surprising how much more knitting you can do on a car trip when your cell phone's roaming charges are higher than in your own country, and the sending and receiving of endless e-mails is not a top priority.
Also surprising: how much less interesting it is to knit without Toffee. In a way there's less pressure because you're not being stared down, but in another way: dull. Thankfully we stopped to get gas and bought some Starburst candy, which helped the time pass.
Tuesday morning it was off again home, a short hop of only about two hours which is just about enough to get most of a sock leg nicely on to its heel.
And here I am, back in Toronto only a little the worse for wear, with two socks at the point of Gusset. I might be obsessive and try to finish them before the end of Sunday. What do you think?
Tomorrow I have a very different sock story to tell and I hope you'll come back to hear it, if only to find out why all that driving was worth doing.
See you then!
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