Day 1 – Thursday, July 1, 2004 – Home to Morrisburg, ON.

Have you ever been bathed by the light at the end of a rainbow?

We had not either, until tonight!

We had no trouble getting into Canada.  In fact, some of the US Customs agents could take  Human Resources lessons from the Canadians.  We had a young, very attractive, and VERY pleasant Immigration agent, who welcomed us with multiple Canada flag magnets, to celebrate July 1, Canada Day.  The only short coming was that she wanted to get a full itinerary of our proposed trip, and would have been happy to discuss the merits and wonders of Montreal at some length.  We wanted to continue our long drive.

We decided to take the 407 northern by pass around Toronto.  The 407 was a dream.  New pavement and little traffic.  Somebody has to tell them that they need to finish the road and connect it to the 401 east of Toronto, however.  As it is, it dumps into a 2-lane country road.  Oh well, a little getting in touch with nature never hurt anyone.

We finally got back on the 401 south of Whitby, with only a little over 200 miles still to go.  Ontario is WIDE.

It was in this stretch, east of Toronto that the rainbow first appeared.  It was wonderfully sunny, but the pavement increasingly was becoming very wet.  We were wondering if the Canadians had developed a new highway construction technique – water the pavement so that it will grow – but finally concluded that somewhere in the beautiful blue sky was a serious rain cloud.  We never did really see it, but we certainly saw its results.

The rainbow started with just a little piece, 20 miles or so ahead of us and a little to the left.  We think it was moving east as we were driving east, but we were going faster, so it gradually got closer.  When we were about 5 miles away, we could see the whole arc of the rainbow.  It was gorgeous, but we had not seen anything yet.

We’ve decided rainbows are fairly wide – a good mile or more.  We decided that because we actually started driving through the left end of the rainbow, but could see more ahead, and a little behind.  What was most wonderful was the light all around us.  The road, cars, and the very air were bathed in color.  We never saw any pot of gold, but driving through a rainbow was a golden (and pink and blue and red and ….) experience.  Even the traffic on the 401 (aka the Ontario race track) slowed to well below the speed limit!

We finally got east of the rain and back into the sun, which was setting behind us.  It was not quite 8 p.m.  We only had about 100 more miles to go.  We finally got to the Morrisburg exit, turned south toward the St. Lawrence River, and found our motel, the Macintosh Inn (allegedly, the Macintosh apple was discovered/developed very near the site of the Inn).  Nothing great, but we were not planning on staying long – only a place to sleep.  While unpacking the car, we were attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes, each of which was looking for an evening snack.  We grabbed the minimum nighttime supplies, and make a dash for it.

After a little cleaning up, we went to bed.