Thursday (October 13th) was a rainy, kind of dreary day. A friend and colleague came down from Toronto to meet with me. We are working on a new endeavor together(not quite ready to share yet) and took the opportunity to meet in person for the first time and be in the same space while we worked.
I think we had anticipated being together for about three or four hours, but it was actually over seven! I picked her up at the train station about 10am and dropped her off about 5:15pm.
All this in preface to the fact that I was due to head back to central VT for the last day or two of my stay there. I had been waffling, trying to decide between waiting until Friday morning to drive back the approximately 8 1/2 hours necessary to cover the distance, or start back on Thursday, even if that meant breaking the trip along the way with a night in a hotel.
The Thursday plan had made sense when I thought that my friend and I would be wrapping up early-to-mid afternoon, so I had put everything in the car to be ready to leave. However, I still had my hotel room in Hamilton until the next morning, so I could have just gone back there and stayed.
But that's not me. I thought about it, sitting in the train station parking lot, and said to myself "Why not just start now? I'm in the car, the weather is ok (kind of cloudy, but fine), and I can make great progress today so that when I get back to VT I will have Friday afternoon and evening and Saturday morning before going back home. If I wait to leave until tomorrow, I will end up spending almost all of the day driving."
So set off I did. I did start seeing it cloud up, and then it started - intermittently - raining, but still fine. A couple of hours into the drive, I stopped to fill up my car, and then headed back out. Listening to a book, with occasional musical breaks when I needed something a little different, I kept driving. An hour went by, than another, then another. By now it was pretty dark, and the rain showers (or downpours) were more frequent. The winds were a little stronger and leaves were falling and covering the road, making it more difficult to see.
In my post earlier this week I described the basic route I took to get from VT to ON. In case you don't remember, it crosses part of VT, then upstate NY, not far from the southern edge of Lake Ontario, and then around the edge of the the lake to Hamilton. What might not be obvious from this little description is that this route is definitely NOT through a well-populated area. It's also not really highway most of the time. On state routes, yes, but mostly just two-lane roads that wind through forests and tiny little towns (often called hamlets on the signs).
And my mind had apparently blocked that out completely when I set out. By the time I started thinking that it might be time to stop, there was absolutely no place to stop. I just kept driving and driving and driving. It's not like I couldn't find places that were open, it's that I couldn't find any sign of places at all. Not businesses. No gas stations. No restaurants. No hotels or motels. Just winding roads, hills up and down, trees everywhere, and occasional glimpses of water (at least until it got really dark) or houses, most of them already dark and asleep.
Night driving used to be my favorite, and I still really enjoy it ... but I do find it a little more difficult nowadays, depending on visibility. I can tell you that on a rainy, windy, foggy night through areas with no streetlights, no moon, shiny roads where they weren't leaf-covered, visibility was not the best!
By 10pm I knew that I wasn't going to find a place to stop, and figured that with luck I would be back at my VT place by about 1am. Not horrible, I'm pretty much always up until then anyway, and I had enough fuel to make it without having to stop again. So I kept driving.
Now I should tell you that about 12 of the last 15 miles of this drive are over a (quite small) mountain road. It's a simple two lane road, full of curves (many of which are switchback curves with 15 mph posted speed limits). Another thing I should tell you is that as I approached the spot where the road started climbing the rain started falling more heavily. Because I was, at this time, pretty much the only vehicle on the road, the fallen leaves were coating the road more and more. And the final thing I will say is that for every foot of elevation gained, the fog got heavier and heavier.
I slowed to a virtual crawl, especially on the curves. It was impossible to see where the edges of the road were. My headlights lost enough of their effectiveness in the rain and fog that sometimes I actually had to come to a stop before being able to determine how to proceed. On the plus side, I finally reached the top and then, in starting to descend, could see the fog lifting a tiny little bit at a time.
Don't worry, all turned out well. I made it back to my VT temporary home, although almost an hour later than I had expected. That last 15 miles took me a little over an hour. And, as I like to do every day, I learned something. Pay attention not only to the route but to what's along the route. When I leave for Canada from home, I usually take a different route than I did in leaving and returning to central VT. I will keep that in mind next time!
This is the last post for the first half of October. Next comes a river cruise from Budapest, Hungary to Regenburg, Germany with friends celebrating their 20th anniversary. We leave Saturday evening (10/22) - so stay tuned!
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