Spidermans balls part 1 and smuggling 2 1/2 bananas

I have done a lot of crazy overnight driving in my life....
Back in Germany and Holland, I used to leave UK at teatime on a Sunday and arrive back at camp in the early hours of Monday morning, like many squaddies of the time. Once I actually crashed my car just outside Calais at about 3am and drove back to Germany with a busted radiator and no lights, handing my car to a mate who dropped it off to the Puget garage to get repaired as I went away on a 3 week exercise. It was fixed when I got back (I crashed that car a lot and the garage knew me well)
When I was travelling I escaped the 2011 Townsville hurricane by driving 2600km to Melbourne in a rental car and me and the buffter drove thousands of miles across Australia a few months later. I also did most of Te 50 states of the US, driving, sometimes doing 12 hour days to fit in as many places as I could. I like driving.

So when Sierra and Andy - mates from Winnipeg circa 2011, who moved to the Ottawa valley, told us of their wedding - we only had one thing to organize -How we would drive the 2000km in 48 hours to get to their wedding and then return in time for work 6 1/2 days later.

We are currently 26 hours into the journey and have driver 18 of the last 24 hours to reach our location - Sudbury Ontario.

I worked yesterday, the Wednesday and we had originally hoped to get off work early to leave by 4pm. But work was a nightmare - crazy jobs that took all day, so we were happy to get away by 5pm.  heading South East, in Pats car (My work car cant be taken outside province and pat and Erika lent us their car while they are in Asia) we managed to make the US/Canada Warroad border by early evening and then continued to drive through the night.

Buffy me and Hannah shared driving, with Buffy taking the main brunt of it until midnight. Then I took over and drove till dawn, taking a 2 hour rest in a a little place called Sidnaw, where we slept in the car as dark warm night slowly turned into early hot sunny morning.
We had a little bit of sleep before continuing on our first family rattrap. But not much. We did stop a couple of times to let Hannah destroy roadside America, but the rest of the day was spent mostly driving the spit of land that runs between Lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron (The one no one remembers) To get miles under our belts and on our way to the destination. We broke the back of the journey, travelling 17 of the 21 hour journey in lust 24 hours, arriving in Sudbury, fuelled by a couple of breakfast bagels and some cheap red bull imitation juice. The main thing is that Hannah was loving it. Throwing toys across the car, visibly ordering us to switch the interior lights on and off and taking good sleeps while we drove her Hannesty (Hannah majesty) to the destination.

Where we snoozed

Quiet roads at 5am

Mooooon

Baby stop just after 7

Sorry Pat, we will clean it!

As I said we are now in Sudbury, having crossed part of the USA  in about 10 hours, even with what I will call - 'A Buffy adventure diversion', where she decided to take an alternative route through the Hawaitha forest, down dirt tracks that horses would turn back from, apparently to allow Hannah a few more minutes sleep, but that actual woke her up because of the trees and undergrowth we had to drive through. An adventure, she called it - she was not wrong!

Lake Superior Sunrise

Not the way we were planning to drive

We finally made it out back to normal roads and crossed the border back to Canada with 2 1/2 illegal bananas.
(I stopped in a small US supermarket early that morning and bought 3 bananas, for Hannah to eat. Total cost 47c)
By the time we crossed the border she had consumed half of one.
When crossing the border between Canada and USA you are not allowed to transport fruit and veg (Even if said fruit has already travelled from Costa Rica, Australia or wherever)
I will now get banned from crossing to USA forever and probably thrown out of Canada for admitting my criminal wrongdoings)

We finally arrived at our hotel here in Sudbury in time for a couple of beers in the local tavern, a huge fish and chip dinner and a really early night (after typing all of this on the tablet). Its been a long 27 hours, but well worth it and a great little adventure to start a weeks road trip away from the humdrum of home...

The next day was easy - just a 4 and 1/2 hour journey further east to a small town called Eganville. We had booked an AirBnb here for a couple of nights for the wedding tomorrow. We arrived in the mid afternoon and really liked the place straight away. A lovely modern apartment with a huge deck overlooking the river. Really comfortable and just a short drive to Andy and Sierras place....
it also had a big red elephant on the deck that Hannah loved..

So after settling in and meeting our hosts, we piled back into the car and made our way into the beautiful countryside to Sierra and Andy's lovely rustic home, where they were throwing a Barbecue for everyone to get to know one another. We realized just how far away from the big city we were when we passed their neighbour on the way.. driving his horse and cart. It was very quaint and a lot of fun to see.

i mistakenly thought we would be one of the few people from Winnipeg, but since Andy's family were also from Winnipeg, it seemed like a good weekend to go breaking in to houses--- in Winnipeg...... Because all of Winnipeg was here! Nearly everyone we met, knew Winnipeg so well, we might as well have met in the forks! We even met a lady who lived on the street behind Buffy's mum and dads house! It was a fun evening though - playing in the garden with the piles of kids and dogs that were there, enjoying some good food and chatting to some nice people, with a couple of cold beers. Just what I like doing.  Hannah had brought her favourite 'Spiderman ball' to play with and as well as this she loved hitting herself on the head with a croquet ball and chasing me and Buffy around the garden into the Poison Ivy!

All too soon though, Hannah was ready for sleep (so was I) and we headed back to Eganville and a real good rest in a comfortable bed.

Me,Hannah and Spidermans ball.

She loves that ball

testing out the beer cooler for size

We slept soundly that night, safe in the knowledge that all was well in the world.
Climate change was being dealt with. Nasty people are locked away and the winner of the lottery will definitely Deere his or her luck, use the money for good and the definitely not waste it on drags and hookers. Mostly though, Hannah slept well well, dreaming about the long journey we had taken and her memories were filled with joy and excitement about her spider man ball.

She loves that ball.

But we weren't prepared for the horror that awaited the next morning. We woke up early, to enjoy the beautiful weather and to play with the blue ball, decorated with spidermans persona on the deck of our lovely holiday home. But you cannot imagine the terror, the pain and the heartache we awoke to when we discovers that the ball - THE BALL - was nowhere to be seen. It had vanished. Gone. Disappeared. Never to be seen again. How would Hannah cope? What would happen? Did we call the police? did we call Spiderman himself?

To be continued........