Ottawa
Part 1
From May 17-20, 2023, Elyse and I made a weekend trip to Ottawa, i.e. the capital of Canada. At four days in length, this trip was longer than our standard weekend trips, but shorter than the full-week trips that I tend to do about once a year. It was actually the same length as my trip to Toronto in 1999, and about half the length of my 2019 trip to Toronto. The idea for this trip came when I learned last year that the Sam and Muffy puppets from Today’s Special would be on display at the Canadian Museum of History in nearby Gatineau as part of a larger exhibit about children’s television in Canada that would run for a year. Nina Keogh posted about it in August on Facebook, and my first reaction upon seeing this was, “Looks like we’re going to Ottawa!” Thus it became a certain format of trip where there is one thing that we really want to do, but can’t justify the cost and time commitment of the adventure all on its own, so we find other things to do in the same area and build a trip around it. We do this a lot with single-day outings, but it’s much less common for us to do this for a multiday trip. But this is what we did, and it produced a fairly elegant result.
With the decision to go to Ottawa made, it was then just a matter of figuring out when it would fit my schedule to go, and then making all of the necessary arrangements. I knew that I wanted to do it within the existing vacation year at work (our vacation year runs July 1 to June 30) because those vacation days were already selected, and thus they were locked in. After that was a new vacation year that had not been picked yet, so nothing was guaranteed. I settled on May 17-20 because May 17 was a date that I had already picked back in June within the current vacation year with the intention of having a three-day weekend. Then I had an extra vacation day left over from when I had COVID back in December 2021. In that instance, rather than getting the sick time that I took when I was out for COVID back as administrative leave as per the policy in effect at that time, they instead returned the vacation day that I took for the Atlantic City trip in January 2022 and changed that into COVID administrative leave. Rather than go through the bureaucracy to try to recover the sick hours, which I already had a lot of, I ultimately opted to keep the vacation day, since I could use that for anything. Then I ultimately used that extra vacation day for Ottawa in order to extend my original three-day weekend out to a four-day weekend. The idea there was that if I was driving nine hours each way, I didn’t only want one full day on site. Adding that returned vacation day would allow for a second full day on site, which would balance out site days and travel days. Therefore, the fourth day of the trip was brought to us courtesy of the Ronies. Funny how that all works out.
We got a little bit later of a start than I might have liked, hitting the road just before noon. Our route would take us up I-270 to Frederick, where the road changes to US 15. We took 15 up to Harrisburg, where we took Pennsylvania Route 581 to get to I-81. We then took I-81 through Pennsylvania and New York all the way up to its northern terminus at the Thousand Islands Bridge, where the road continues into Canada as Ontario Highway 137. That took us to the 401, which we took to the 416, and took that to the Queensway in Ottawa (this is also part of the Trans-Canada Highway, which was a first for me). We then went up Kent Street to our hotel, the Ottawa Marriott.
For the trip up, owing to our later start, I wanted to keep things as close to “all business” as possible. The drive was about nine hours before factoring in anything like stops or traffic or customs. Stops could easily stretch that out to 11 or twelve hours, and then we would end up arriving in Ottawa in the wee hours of the morning, which I didn’t want.
The first planned stop was in the Frederick area, for Sheetz. The idea was to gas up the car and also get something to eat. We went to the location in Walkersville, which surprised Elyse, because it was a little bit off of the highway compared to other Sheetz locations in Frederick, but I chose Walkersville specifically because they were the only Sheetz with a car wash. The way I figured, I was taking the new HR-V on its first trip to Canada, so I wanted it to look its best, and that meant washing off that thick layer of springtime pollen that it had been wearing. Under normal circumstances, with all of the trees around, trying to keep the pollen off during the spring is an exercise in futility, so I don’t bother with it until spring is over. But this was a special occasion, and I wanted to make sure that the new HR-V was putting its best foot (wheel?) forward when going to a new country. Therefore, that pollen absolutely had to go.
Leaving Sheetz, we took some back roads to return to US 15, and then we were making forward progress again. When we were almost to Pennsylvania, I had a realization about something that had been bothering me. When I was packing up at the house before we left, I had a sneaking feeling that I was forgetting something. Clothing? Check. Computer? Check. Camera equipment? Check. Elyse’s luggage? Check. Passports? Check. Woomy and David? Check. I couldn’t think of what I had forgotten, so we hit the road. I knew that it wasn’t the drone, since I had left that at home on purpose, which saved me from having to deal with licensing and operational regulations for flying drones in Canada. Then I realized it: I had forgotten my CPAP machine. That was a first, because I’m usually really good about taking it with me on trips. It’s just another piece that goes with me along with all of my camera stuff. Funny thing is that I even placed the bag for it somewhere prominent the night before so that I would see it in order to remember to pack it, and I still managed to forget it. Unfortunately, being more than an hour away from the house, we were much too far downrange to go back for it without messing up the entire trip, so I would just have to do without. I wasn’t too worried about it, though, because ever since I had the weight loss surgery and lost about 180 pounds, the need for it has diminished (i.e. I probably don’t need it anymore), though I have not yet had a new sleep study to formally determine whether or not I actually still need it. Not having it for three nights was something of a concern, but there was nothing that I could do about it, so… onward.
Approaching the Harrisburg area, traffic continued to be in our favor, with light traffic moving at full speed. There was nothing more that you could really ask for there. In Harrisburg, we joined up with Interstate 81, which would be our route for the next 350 miles, i.e. the majority of our 543-mile ride up to Ottawa. The goal was to clear as much distance as possible in as little time as possible by limiting stops. Elyse wanted to go to a Pilot or Flying J truck stop at some point on our trip, so I looked up Flying J locations on our route. I found one just north of Harrisburg, and I also found one in New Milford. I said that we would stop at the New Milford location, because (A) that would make a good place to stop for gas and the restroom, and (B) that would space the stops out fairly well and give us a good intermediate goal. As it would happen, though, we ended up having to stop at the first Flying J location anyway, because Elyse had a restroom emergency that she needed to deal with. So I suppose that worked out for her, because now we would have to stop at both locations.
One thing that I noticed at the Flying J near Harrisburg was the bathroom sinks. Note the faucets. These are not sensor-operated. The user has full control over the water flow, and it gives you the same level of water pressure that you would get at home. I appreciated that, because I suspect that no one truly likes those sensor-operated sinks, where you have to put your hands under the faucet, and then hope that the (often very weak) flow of water stays on long enough for you to finish so that you don’t have to play games with it in order to get more water to get the rest of the soap off of your hands.
Finishing up here, we continued on our northward trajectory, going through the I-78 split, past Hazleton, through Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, and up as far as New Milford. That ride was fairly uneventful, as we traveled through a lot of mountains and past several work zones. In New Milford, we made a stop at the other Flying J that I had located on the map, which seemed to be a pretty reasonable place to make a gas and bathroom stop, as we had been driving for a little over two hours and 150 miles since our last stop. The Flying J was pretty standard for that brand, but we did find something unusual in their little lounge area.
That’s one way to mount a cord, I suppose. Not a good way, but it is a way.
And then we were back on the road. We soon crossed into New York State, where we saw the classic “I Love New York” slogan and corresponding logo plastered on everything. I had always considered that particular symbol as representing New York City specifically, so I was surprised find it so prominently used upstate. As it turns out, that slogan and logo was always intended to represent the entire state, and not just NYC.
Elyse and I also noticed the difference in signage in New York, specifically what I call “behavioral” signage. I’ve noticed that northeastern states seem to recognize that their drivers are terrible, but how they attempt to counter that varies. New Jersey tends to do it by controlling movements, like those jughandles that the state is famous for, where all turns must be made from the right lane. Pennsylvania likes to nag you about behaviors and remind you of how you’re supposed to drive. New York, however, loves to threaten the loss of one’s driver’s license on signage. Three text violations, and you lose your license. Two work zone speeding violations, you lose your license. Mind you, you really shouldn’t do either of these things in the first place, but the threats of loss of license on the signage are a bit much. I prefer the way that Maryland does it, stating the prohibition and leaving it at that. Though to New York’s credit, they do provide plenty of places to pull off on the freeway, with full rest areas as well as parking areas without restroom facilities. These are all marked as “TEXT STOP” on the signage along with their other purposes, which I found useful.
Another thing that I noticed about New York signage was that whenever the speed limit went down to 55 on the freeway, the sign read “STATE SPEED LIMIT” rather than the usual kind of speed limit sign. As I understand it, the default speed limit on roads in the state of New York is 55, i.e. absent any other sort of posted speed limit, the speed limit is 55. Therefore, this sign indicates that the road is following the default state speed. This was not the first time that I had noticed this kind of signage, but this was the first time driving past it with the new HR-V, which can read speed limit signs and display it on the dashboard. While it is very good at recognizing and displaying the usual American-style speed limit signs, it was less successful in recognizing those New York “STATE SPEED LIMIT” signs, as those signs with the unconventional wording did not consistently register on my dashboard, and I had more misses than hits with those. I couldn’t help but think that with cars’ incorporating more and more smart tech in them, and drivers’ increasingly relying on that technology as they drive, that the standardization of signage becomes more important than ever since both humans and machines are reading them, and as such, those “STATE SPEED LIMIT” signs need to go in favor of standard MUTCD-specified speed limit signage.
This trip also contained a roadgeek goal for me: I was finally going to complete I-81 on this trip. I have been familiar with Interstate 81 since 1992, with my being more familiar with some sections than others. I did the southernmost parts of the road in 1992 and then again last year, and then I travel the section between Roanoke and Harrisburg on a somewhat regular basis. The route to Ottawa took me up I-81 all the way to its northern terminus, and so once we got past Cortland, which was the furthest extent of our travels on our 2018 trip, I was in new territory. I-81 north of Cortland looks a lot like the rest of I-81: very rural, fairly straight, and not a whole lot to see, peppered by the occasional small town, while skirting the big cities along its route. Seriously, I-81 goes around almost every major city along its route. The one exception is Syracuse. It takes on a more urban character through Syracuse, and the city skyline is quite visible as you go through the city.
Syracuse is also where we stopped for a meal, heading to the Destiny USA shopping mall. We weren’t able to properly check out this very large facility due to time considerations, as we still had three hours to go and it was already after 7 PM (the mall closed at 8 PM), but we got to see enough to get a decent feel for it. The sense that I got was that the mall was large, fairly generic, and it appeared to be doing fairly well. Based on the architecture, it appeared to date from the nineties (doing research later, my suspicions were correct: the mall was completed in 1990).
We first stopped at the Carhartt store, where Elyse looked at clothing while I chatted with a member of the sales staff. You want to talk about a way to feel old: the person I was chatting with was in college, but then as our conversation progressed, she mentioned how old her mother was, and her mother was younger than me as well. Yikes. I recognize that I’m in my forties now, but parents of people who are in college are supposed to be older than me, aren’t they? Right? After the Carhartt store, we headed up to the food court, which was your typical mall food court. After looking at all of the various options there, we got Taco Bell.
The Carhartt store at Destiny USA.
Elyse photographs a small piece of candy on the floor.
Food court at Destiny USA. The nineties vibe is quite evident.
Sign at Chicken Now, one of the restaurants in the food court. I found this sign about sauce to be quite obnoxious, because it just screams “cheap”.
My opinion about Chicken Now’s choice to charge for sauces is twofold. First of all, for customers that bought a meal from the establishment, just give the customer as many sauces as they want. Those things cost so little, and it only takes a few extra sauce packets to make a customer happy and position them to give the establishment some repeat business. I don’t like patronizing businesses that want to nickel and dime me over every single thing. Then the other part of that opinion, holding the 50-cent price constant, leads me to think, if you’re charging for sauce, why are you limiting sauce purchases to people who have bought a meal and to that end, requiring proof of purchase? By attaching a price to the sauces, you are making them a separate item for sale, and I should be able to buy a handful of them on their own and be rung up for them. These two policies also set the location’s employees up for a lot of unnecessary arguments, and it’s just not worth it. I definitely was turned off by this sauce policy, and I took my dollars elsewhere.
Center atrium at Destiny USA.
Selfie while waiting for Elyse outside of one of the stores.
Leaving the mall, we got back on I-81, and resumed our journey. As we continued northward, we got a not-so-subtle reminder of how close we were to Canada, as we passed a reassurance marker for I-81 with “TO” signage for the 401 in Ontario on it.
Our next stop was Watertown. This was our “last stop before the border” stop, seeing it as our final opportunity to get gas at US prices before crossing into Canada. Gas is generally more expensive in Canada, plus I didn’t want to do the math to convert CAD per liter to USD per gallon. But before we filled up the car, we went to the Walmart because it was right there, so that we could get a few odds and ends. There, Elyse got to see how the New York five-cent bottle deposit worked, and we got a chance to walk around a bit.
The Walmart in Watertown was a typical mid 2000s conversion Supercenter, i.e. a store that began as a non-Supercenter Walmart and was later expanded to the Supercenter format. However, I was surprised to see a second, outer vestibule on this building. Presumably, the large doors are kept open during warmer months, and they’re closed during the colder months, with customers’ being directed through those side doors during those times.
The bottle recycling machines.
Elyse places a bottle inside the machine for recycling and gets a voucher for five cents.
We were quite surprised to find ourselves being mooned by a mannequin butt. Not a whole mannequin. Just a butt.
In the toy department, we were surprised to see the Lego sets secured behind locked doors with a call button in order to summon an employee to get one out of the case. This was by no means the first time that we have seen merchandise locked in cases like this, presumably to prevent theft, but this was the first time that we had seen it done with Lego products. Previously, we had only seen such treatments in the clothing and electronics departments, and never in toys.
“Property of Walmart” sticker on the pin pad, which was a first for us as well. Is theft of these devices so big of a thing that they need to be stickered like this? Also, why would I go to the trouble of calling them in order to arrange for its return for their benefit? Considering how they did me, screw them. If I found one of those devices running around loose in the wild, rest assured that I would make sure that it ended up in a landfill somewhere, by putting it in a random public trash can and then burying it under other trash to make absolutely sure that it is not noticed and therefore gets collected and taken away with the trash.
The men’s restroom, meanwhile, was surprisingly clean and well-kept for a Walmart store.
Finishing up at Walmart, we started looking for gas. I ended up going to a Mobil station on the other side of I-81 from Walmart, because it had the cheapest gas. Across the street was a Price Chopper grocery store, which Elyse wanted to go to. I vetoed that idea because of time considerations, suggesting that we might be able to do that on the return trip, time permitting.
And soon enough, we got to the Thousand Islands, where we would cross into Canada. The Thousand Islands Bridge is a two-lane toll bridge, and they were doing maintenance work on it that evening, which took one lane out of commission. Therefore, they were alternating traffic on the same lane. So we had to wait before we could pay our toll and continue.
The toll booth at the Thousand Islands Bridge. Once traffic cleared for us to proceed, each vehicle had to individually stop and speak with the toll collector, who verified method of payment (E-ZPass in our case) before raising the gate to allow us through to cross the bridge.
After we crossed the bridge, it wasn’t long before we reached the duty-free store. That was exactly what you would expect for a duty-free store, with big sections for fragrances and liquor, along with candy and various other trinkets. One thing that I was surprised to learn was that the employees at the duty-free store on the US side had to go through US customs every day when they were going home from work, even though they never actually left the US. They said that it wasn’t a big deal, and that the customs employees all knew them, but it still seems like a bother to me.
So much liquor at the duty-free store.
The restroom at the duty-free store was functional enough, even if it looked a little grungy in spots.
What was going on with the undersides of those urinals?
And then we crossed into Canada. The lady at the border crossing was nice, but seemed quite bored. We handed her our passports, and then she asked the usual questions, i.e. why are you coming, how long are you staying, are you bringing anything in beyond your clothes, are you taking everything that you are bringing into Canada back with you, and do you have any alcohol or tobacco with you. After that, she handed our passports back to us, and we continued on our way, taking what was now Ontario Highway 137 a short distance to the 401.
While we were driving up 137, I got to do something that I had been looking forward to doing: changing the speedometer from US to metric, i.e. from miles per hour to kilometers per hour, and using it in a real-life situation. The new HR-V has both a digital speedometer and an analog speedometer, and they operate simultaneously, with the digital speedometer’s being in the center of the dash, and the analog one’s being to the right. I tend to focus more on the digital speedometer, as I am more used to using a digital speedometer now than I ever was, considering that Mom’s Scion only had a digital speedometer, and the trains at work only have a digital speedometer. The analog speedometer on the new HR-V is always in miles per hour with no metric numbers on it, but the digital speedometer can be changed to metric and back as desired. This was such a luxury compared to our drive to Toronto in 2019. Recall that back then, with the original HR-V, I didn’t have a digital speedometer, and while I tried, I couldn’t make myself pay attention to the smaller metric numbers on the speedometer over the larger US numbers. What I ultimately did in that instance was to forget the speedometer entirely, and just keep up with traffic. That strategy of keeping up with traffic wouldn’t work here, since the road was largely empty, i.e. there was not enough traffic to do that. But with the digital speedometer’s being switched over to metric, it was no problem. Just go the speed, set the cruise control, and go. Additionally, the HR-V’s system that reads speed limit signs still worked in Canada, with the little icon’s reading “MAX” with Canadian signs instead of the “LIMIT” wording used for American signs.
The HR-V’s speed limit icon for Canadian signs in a photo taken the following day, displaying “MAX” instead of “LIMIT”.
The combination of all of this made driving in Canada feel exactly like driving in the States, as I was able to respond to all of the road signs and all of the usual indications that the car gave me in exactly the same way, and not have to convert one for the other or force myself to look at different numbers. I consider not having to do any extra thinking to be a very safe thing.
While driving on the 401, I had to take some evasive action. We were traveling in the left lane, and I spotted some furry little animal in our path. It was a bit larger than a rabbit, but it wasn’t as large as a deer. I didn’t know whether it would cause damage to my car if I were to hit it, and I didn’t want to find out. Since there was no one else around me, I did a quick swerve to the right and avoided it successfully. That critter may have been stupid enough to sit in the middle of the 401 at night, but at least it would live to see another day, and we continued on our way without stopping.
We briefly dipped into the ONroute travel plaza near Mallorytown so that Elyse could get something out of the back of the car, but other than that, we proceeded nonstop to Ottawa, taking the 401 to the 416 to the Queensway. Elyse remarked on a few occasions that we were driving through the middle of nowhere, referencing what Google Maps was showing us on the car’s touchscreen. We also managed to find Ottawa’s news and commentary station, CFRA, which lives at AM 580. However, we listened to it on an HD Radio subchannel of CJMJ, at 100.3 FM. Considering how much Elyse loves listening to WTOP at home, it figures that we would find the Ottawa equivalent of WTOP as soon as we got into Canada.
We also entertained ourselves with Google Assistant. We decided to ask Google the classic “Are we there yet?” question just to see what she would say. “OK Google, are we there yet?” She initially responded with the amount of time until we reached our destination. So we said, “OK Google, are we there yet?” a second time. She simply responded “No,” for any subsequent inquiries until something changed. We did this to her repeatedly. It amused us thoroughly.
Arriving in Ottawa, our exit off of the Queensway put us on Kent Street, which took us through a neighborhood. It certainly wasn’t what I had expected for a first look at Ottawa. Then once we passed Gloucester Street, it was all high-rises, which was more along the lines of what I had expected to see. Getting to our hotel just before 12:30 AM, I was initially confused by the traffic pattern around the hotel, as I was unclear about where the entrance was. I ended up making a left onto Queen Street and into what appeared to be a driveway to the hotel. As it would turn out, I was at the main entrance, which did not face the street, but I had gone in the wrong way. I also had no idea where I was supposed to park. I got myself turned around and then figured out how to get in the proper way. But regardless of how awkward it might have been, we had arrived.
The HR-V is parked at the entrance the the Ottawa Marriott. After nine hours of driving, we had finally made it.
The button panel on one of the hotel elevators, with access to all 29 floors. Unlike the Chelsea in Toronto, I appreciated that the same elevators served all of the floors, rather than the weird split block design that the Chelsea uses, where different banks of elevators serve different levels of the hotel.
After we got checked in and brought our luggage up, we got directions to the parking garage. As things would turn out, it was right next to where we had initially come in when we went in the wrong way, but that wasn’t apparent right away. We then headed out to JJ’s Market, which was a little 24-hour convenience store that we had spotted on the way in. There, Elyse got something to eat, and we both got drinks.
Elyse smiles for a photo with a tiny bottle of Coke Zero at JJ’s Market.
This was also my first time paying for something in Canada with my phone, so this was a test to make sure that everything worked properly, despite my letting my bank know that Elyse and I would be traveling to Canada with our cards. The first tap, I was told that the transaction ultimately didn’t go through, so we ran it a second time, which did go through. I would find out later when reviewing my bank records from the trip that the first attempt actually did go through, so I had to complete a chargeback with the bank for that one. I’m not faulting the store for that, though, because mistakes happen, and computers sometimes have glitches, but at the same time, those mistakes and glitches with the merchant’s equipment were not going to be at my expense.
Coming back to the hotel, we found the garage entrance, and then I found a good spot for the HR-V to spend the night. I was content with that, so we headed up. On the way to our room, I took note of the fire alarm pull stations.
This is a classic Edwards pull station, with both English and French on it. As it would turn out, Edwards was the brand of fire alarm that Elyse and I would see most frequently in the Ottawa area. Toronto has a heavier concentration of Mircom equipment, but apparently, Edwards rules in Ottawa.
As is typical for Canada, the hotel had a two-stage system, with instructions posted beneath all of the pull stations. In these two-stage systems, an intermittent tone means to stand by and prepare to evacuate, while a continuous tone means to evacuate immediately.
And then it was time for bed. We would have a big day tomorrow.