Originally, I had asked for 2 weeks off, but at this point, it didn't look like it was possible for me to get home by next Monday since I still have to go to Boston, which is a couple of days away at the rate I'm travelling. Sure I could hit the nearest interstate and make it there today, but that wouldn't be a roadtrip, not to me at least. What made it take even longer was I decided to head north, away from Boston, to the capitol of Ontario, Ottawa.
But first thing's first, I needed to clean up and use the bathroom. I stopped at the Provincial Park in Brighton, and the attendant let me in for free when I asked if I could enter just to use the bathroom. This park was humongeous- it looks like it was it's own little island. The campground had warm water showers.
I saw the first set of cross-country bicyclists coming out of the park when I exited the park. Now, I'm still heading east into Kingston. In Kingston, I exchanged my last $100 US for $150 Canadian. Kingston is a very nice, little Canadian city. At the end of Highway 2 is a ferry, which is free and runs about every 30 minutes. When I arrived, the ferry was just leaving the dock.
At 5:00 pm, Ottawa's city limits were up ahead. I stopped at Shell to fill up because I was almost completely out. Then I crossed the street to a tiny mall which had a Wal-mart, and went to eat at the indoor McDonald's. I even found a pair of boxers for $5 Canadian, now that I've worn them, I can see whey they were so cheap.
Nothing eventful happened, except at one intersection somewhere in the city. As I approached the light, the light turned green, but for some reason the lady in the cross traffic started crossing the street. So I took my foot of the accelerator and put it on top of the brakes to be ready to stop. When I saw her pause and turn her head and knew I was coming, I accelerated again. Then as I passed her, a guy on the side walk yelled, "You prick!" I stuck the bird at him, which I don't usually do. I suppose the lady was crossing only halfway and waiting for traffic to clear before continuing, and I believe I did everything correctly short of stopping in intersection. I'm trying to improve as a person and not let things like that enrage me. Whether I stopped or not or someone feels I'm at fault, the good thing is no one was hurt.
Basically, I just drove through the city to find a way to get to Motreal. But I saw a sign along the way which caught my eye- a casino. So I needed to make reworked the direction I would leave the city to head towards Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It turns out the casino is just north of the Ottawa, at the border of Ontario and Quebec.
Casino de Hull is fairly large, but I did not play since all the blackjack tables had continuous shufflers. I like to think of continuous shuffle blackjack as sucker blackjack since right now there is really no way to count the cards, and the built casino odds will eventually put the casino ahead. The continuous shuffle machines here were much smaller than the shuffle master found in US casinos which uses 4 decks. Also, the roulette tables only have single 0's, which is much better than the double 0's found in almost all, if not all, US casinos outside of Atlantic City, New Jersey. Well, I don't think I will ever be playing blackjack in Hull anytime in the near future.
The legal gambling age is 18 and this was the first casino in a long, long time which did not card me. There is really sometime wrong with a law which allows kids in high school to gamble. Many kids aren't even responsible enough for life, and they give them the priviledge to gamble their money away. At least make it 19, and let the kids get out of high school first.
Because the official language in Quebec is French, the dealers read out the cards in French at the casino. Right accross the street in Ottawa, the official language is English.
I stayed at a park east of Hull on highway 148. This was another large park along a lake with a fairly nice camping facility, but the misquitoes are bad. The bathroom had water and showers.
