Ottawa
Part 4
Saturday, May 20 was the last day of our trip, and the main event of the day would be the drive home. That was nine hours on the road, but I love these little road trips, because you get to see a lot of things that you would pass right over if you flew. The day started out well enough, with my getting dressed and heading down for breakfast. Once again, I got the All-Canadian Breakfast from the restaurant downstairs, this time with poached eggs.
The All-Canadian Breakfast. It wasn’t a bad meal, though it was a bit more food than I could handle at once (I never finished it any of the three mornings), but it still was a good value all the same.
The poached eggs that came with my breakfast.
Those poached eggs were good, and it was my first time having “real” poached eggs. Previously, all of my “poached” eggs were from a little plastic thing that you put in the microwave and then nuked for about a minute or so. This was the proper way, breaking the eggs and then dropping them into swirling boiling water. No microwaves involved. I resolved to learn how to do these at home, and I actually did it a few months later.
Returning from breakfast, I got Elyse going, and we got packed up.
Woomy checks out True North Bear up in the room. True North Bear looks like he’s being a good sport about Woomy’s inspection, but is still not entirely sure what to make of it.
The view from room 1833. The window in our room opened up just a tiny bit, which was just enough for me to reach out with my phone and grab some photos without having to shoot through glass. I was acutely aware that I was holding my phone out of a narrow opening 18 stories above the street with only one hand, and so I took great pains to ensure that nothing would cause me to drop it.
Finishing up in the room, I got the car loaded up, and then we were on the road. Before leaving the Ottawa area, though, we had a few things that we wanted to see. So we headed over the river once more, and we were back in Gatineau. Elyse had wanted to visit a few retail spots after seeing them from the bus the day before, so we took care of them. Considering that it was just before noon when we finally left the hotel, I wanted to keep things moving fairly quickly, though I also wanted to see these retail spots.
Our first stop in Gatineau was Réno-Dépôt. Don’t let the name fool you: while it sounds like the Quebec equivalent of Home Depot, and while the logo strongly resembles that of Home Depot, its lineage actually travels through Lowe’s, as its parent company, Rona, had been acquired by Lowe’s in 2016 and then divested in 2022. As such, the interior of the store strongly resembles that of a Lowe’s, though utilizing Réno-Dépôt’s teal and yellow color palette rather than the gray and blue that Lowe’s typically uses. Home Depot, meanwhile, also has Canadian locations, some in the same cities that Réno-Dépôt operates, Gatineau included (Home Depot was across Boulevard Maloney from the Walmart that we visited earlier).
The exterior of Réno-Dépôt, looking a lot like a blue Home Depot at first glance.
Main aisle at Réno-Dépôt, looking more or less like a Lowe’s of a different color, plus French.
Cleaning supplies aisle.
Elyse holds up a “Scrunge” sponge that we found.
Canadian packaging for Scotties facial tissue.
Ontario and Quebec-style exit signs on display at Réno-Dépôt. Ontario uses the green “running man” icon for exit signs, while Quebec uses text-based exit signs that say “SORTIE”.
Elyse holds up a box containing a Quebec-style sign by Emergi-Lite. She wanted to get one, but I demurred, as we really had no use for such a thing.
Lumber aisle at Réno-Dépôt, identical to what one would find at a Lowe’s, but with Réno-Dépôt’s teal and yellow color palette.
Front action alley.
As we left Réno-Dépôt, I spotted this sign on a nearby Holiday Inn. I found it curious that in French, it was branded as Hôtel Holiday Inn. I initially wondered why they did it that way, since my understanding had always been that “inn” already meant “hotel”, and figured that this was some ham-handed attempt to Frenchify the name in order to satisfy requirements under the Charter of the French Language (i.e. the law establishing French as the official language of Quebec). Then I ran “Holiday Inn” through Google Translate, and it came back with “Hôtel Holiday Inn”. So there you go: it is the proper French translation, even if it still seems weird.
Our next item of business was to visit a Canadian Tire store. I had always understood Canadian Tire to be the Canadian equivalent of Walmart, but as it turns out, that’s not entirely accurate. Canadian Tire focuses primarily on hardlines, and has a large automotive service area. There is no significant clothing department, and no large grocery department. The presentation reminded me most of Big Lots, though on a larger scale than a typical Big Lots store.
Canadian Tire store on Boulevard de la Carrière.
One of the main aisles at Canadian Tire.
Sporting goods section at Canadian Tire, with an entire aisle just for hockey equipment.
Elyse tries on one of the big hockey gloves.
Party City-branded party supply section.
Elyse smiles for a photo at the balloon counter.
“Private” and “No Smoking” signs in French.
Elyse holds up a plastic “SORTIE” sign. This came home with us, because while I couldn’t justify a full-on commercial grade sign, this was much more reasonable.
Elyse holds up a Scrub Daddy sponge, showing off the Canadian packaging.
Elyse tries on a hat near the front of the store.
The front end at Canadian Tire. Having no other experience with Canadian Tire, I was not sure whether these glass partitions are standard Canadian Tire fixtures, or if these were pandemic-era measures that had not yet been removed.
Leaving Canadian Tire, we went to La Pataterie Hulloise, which was a place that sold burgers, fries, hot dogs, and so on (“pataterie” means a restaurant that specializes in serving french fries). Elyse got something to eat here, so she would be good on food for a while. Once again, ordering in Quebec was a challenge, but I managed to get a small order of mozzarella sticks from them, aka “Bátonnets de fromage”. I’m not going to lie: I used Google Translate with my phone camera to figure out what was what on the menu, and then pointed at what I wanted.
The thing that I remember most about the place was watching an employee put together a large order of poutine in a to-go container. First some fries went in. Then a layer of brown gravy. Then the cheese curds. Then more brown gravy. Then more fries. Then more brown gravy. Then more cheese curds. Then even more brown gravy. That styrofoam to-go container was full to the gills, and I’m sure that somebody enjoyed it thoroughly.
Quebec-style exit sign at La Pataterie Hulloise.
Sign in the restroom at La Pataterie Hulloise, which translates to, “Cleanliness promotes health. All employees must wash their hands before leaving the bathroom.”
Funny thing – that bathroom sign helped me finally understand a reference from an old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon that we had watched on home video a long time ago. In the story arc called “The Treasure of Monte Zoom“, Boris and Natasha are in search of the aforementioned treasure, located beneath Lake Salle de Bain. They ultimately drained the lake by pulling the plug at its bottom. Now, all of a sudden, “Salle de Bain” as the name of the lake made sense, since the name was essentially “Lake Bathroom”, and so pulling the plug and therefore opening the drain went right along with that. Previously, I had given no thought to the name, thinking that they had to come up with something, and “Salle de Bain” was as good as any. Thank you, La Pataterie Hulloise, for helping me understand that reference.
Then before we left Gatineau, we stopped at an intersection near La Pataterie Hulloise so that Elyse could get photos of a nearby four-way stop with the Quebec-style signage.
Elyse poses for a photo and gets a selfie with the Quebec-style four-way stop at Boulevard Montclair and Rue Berri.
That intersection would be our last stop in the Ottawa area. Elyse could have easily spent all day here again, but we still had a nine-hour drive ahead of us, plus I had work the following day. Considering that it was already 2:30 in the afternoon, we were already looking at a midnight arrival time at the house, assuming that we nonstopped it (which I knew full well wasn’t going to happen). Any extra stops en route would push that midnight estimate even further back.
As we went back through Ottawa after leaving Gatineau, I noticed a high-rise building with an unusual structure on its roof. I took this photo as a reference so that I could research it later. Imagine my surprise later when I learned that this was the Ottawa Marriott, i.e. the hotel where we had stayed for the past three nights.
The trip back to the border was pretty uneventful. We took the Queensway to the 416 to the 401, and thankfully, we didn’t have to dodge any furry little critters this time. We also confirmed what Google showed us on the car’s display on the way in three days prior, that we were driving through a lot of empty space, as there was nothing but fields all around us for much of the length.
Just before we got to Ontario Highway 137, Elyse wanted to stop at a Walmart store in Brockville that she had spotted. This was a reasonable enough pit stop for gas at a nearby Mobil station, though I didn’t necessarily want to do it because we were so close to other stops that we had planned to do, and I didn’t want to make an additional stop in Canada until we reached the duty-free shop. But the Walmart was rather unique in its design, so I couldn’t get too salty about it (but rest assured, I was indeed salty about it).
The exterior of the store reminded me of my ex-store in Waynesboro, Virginia because of the vertical columns that break up the wall in between the two entrances. However, I’ve never seen a store with the Walmart logo over each of the entrances like this rather than just a single logo in the middle.
The signage package at this location was unlike anything that I had seen before, with lighted signs hanging from the ceiling, and different department signage.
The price signs, seen here in the back action alley, were also unlike anything that I had seen before. The red and yellow is typical for Canadian Walmart stores, but I’ve never seen them without some sort of header on them. Compare to the price signs at the Walmart that we visited in Gatineau, which had headers above the numbers.
The fire alarms, meanwhile, were Mircom with regular strobes.
What I found strange about this location, though, was the amount of plastic up in the ceiling. A large portion of the store had plastic spread out in the ceiling. Was there some sort of roof issue going on? I never found out.
Elyse holds up a one-liter bottle of Pepsi Zero Sugar with the bilingual labeling.
Elyse holds up a sign that says, “Check out with me!”
After getting a little bit of gas (just enough to get me comfortably back to Watertown), we were off again. One of the stops that I had wanted to make on the way out was the 1000 Islands Tower, however, owing to the rainy weather on this particular day as well as the late hour that we were going by, we skipped it. Something for next time, I suppose.
Getting ready to go over the Thousand Islands Bridge again and back to the States. I was surprised that even without alternating traffic, we still had to wait, because even with E-ZPass, we still had to speak to the toll collector, solely to confirm with them that we were via our E-ZPass.
Before leaving Canada, we stopped in at the duty-free store at the Thousand Islands, and got a number of different items. In my experience, the Canadian duty-free stores are much better than the American ones, and I suspect that a lot of it is because they are independently owned, while the American ones are largely owned by a single company.
Exterior of the Thousand Islands duty-free store.
Moose in a mountie uniform at the store’s entrance.
The biggest star of the show here, believe it or not, was the restroom. This was the nicest restroom that I had seen in quite some time. So very well done.
And, of course, the duty-free store was the only place where we saw the big graphic cigarette warnings and plain packaging. Normally, retail displays of tobacco products are banned (i.e. cigarettes must be kept out of sight), but duty-free stores are exempt from this requirement.
Cigars contained the warnings as well, and, like cigarettes, were also in plain packaging.
Bilingual Edwards pull station at the duty-free store.
Selfies while trying on a Canadian maple leaf shirt. Yes, I ultimately bought this.
I also found out that unlike the American duty-free store, the employees of the Canadian duty-free store didn’t have to go through customs every day when leaving work. They could simply turn left out of the property and go home.
Then before we left Canada, I got photos of the first southbound reassurance marker for I-81, which is on Ontario Highway 137, but past the point of no return for entry into the States.
Interstate 81 sign with “TO” banner above it immediately after leaving the duty-free store’s parking lot, and just before a second parking lot.
A final bilingual stop sign before leaving Canada.
The first southbound reassurance shield for I-81, with a Canadian-style no-stopping sign above it.
My last photos in Canada on this trip were of the HR-V, stopped about 400 feet short of the border.
Then we went through US customs, and we were back in the States, traveling southbound on I-81. We made another stop in Watertown in order to get gas, as well as to visit that Price Chopper store that Elyse spotted on the way up.
Price Chopper in Watertown.
On the whole, I considered Price Chopper to be a pretty forgettable store, with nothing particularly noteworthy about it. That was disappointing, because I was hoping to find something unique there. On our visit, Elyse got some seafood salad, while I got various sugar-free sports beverages in order to stay hydrated on the way home. When Elyse tried the seafood salad in the car, she discovered that it had no seasoning whatsoever. Of that, she remarked, “White people don’t know how to season things!” Okay, then.
And, of course, one thing about returning to the States is remembering that you are back in your home country, and therefore the prices once again directly correspond with what will come out of your bank account when you pay for stuff, with no conversion from Canadian dollars to US dollars.
Continuing our southward journey, when we cleared exit 11 in Cortland, I had achieved a longtime goal of mine: I had at last traveled on every single mile of I-81 in both directions – “clinched” in roadgeek terminology. I-81 is the longest Interstate highway that I have competed to date, much longer than the other two-digit interstates that I have completed (I-66, I-68, I-83, and I-97). I’m pretty proud of that accomplishment. Next Interstate that I want to complete is I-64, which I should have the opportunity to do in a few years.
After Cortland, we stopped at the Whitney Point rest area, i.e. the rest area with the foam toilets that we stopped at on our 2018 trip, so that Elyse could address a restroom need.
Foam toilet at the Whitney Point rest area. I was surprised to discover that the foam does not continuously run. There is an auto-flush sensor on the wall that detects your presence in the stall, and only when the sensor is tripped does the foam dispense. It then dispenses foam continuously until it detects that the stall is unoccupied.
Then once we crossed into Pennsylvania, we dipped into the rest area and state welcome center in Great Bend so that Elyse could address another restroom need.
While I was waiting, I photographed the main atrium.
Snacks in the vending machine.
Finishing up here, we made some serious progress, since I didn’t want to stop again for a while (in other words, I want to get home some time tonight). When I’m doing these long road trips, I want the passenger to remain active in conversation with me so that I can remain engaged – especially once it gets dark. If not that, then I want to listen to a podcast. Elyse, however, felt a tad overtaxed mentally, and wanted the quiet. I don’t want to get sleepy behind the wheel out of boredom, so I can’t have complete quiet in the car on these long nighttime drives. So silence was not an option. The choices were either talking or a podcast. Or maybe the radio. For a while, Elyse inadvertently chose conversation, arguing with me over talking vs. using the radio. Whatever – it kept me engaged, even if it was not a subject that I wanted to engage in. On the radio, meanwhile, all that we could find that wasn’t music was right-wing talk radio, and none of us wanted to hear that. Ultimately, after a long enough time arguing over what to listen to, I put on an episode of TechStuff, i.e. we’re listening to a podcast whether you like it or not, and that was the end of that.
Our next stop was at a Sheetz in Dunmore, just north of Scranton. There, I needed to feed myself, and take a much-needed break from driving.
At the Dunmore Sheetz, the door for the only stall in the men’s restroom was off of its hinges and lying on the floor. I had no idea why, but there it was. Elyse, meanwhile, just went on in and used it all the same, because who needs a door.
Then it was 164 miles to our next stop. After so many stops in the northern part of our route, I was really losing patience for stops, so I was determined to make some major progress before stopping again. We continued on through the rest of I-81, and past the Harrisburg area. I had originally intended for our next and last stop to be in Dillsburg, where a Sheetz is located directly off of US 15, but Elyse wanted to do the Gettysburg location for some reason, which is near US 15, but slightly off route, so, sure, whatever. There, I filled up the car one more time.
The first pump that I stopped at was displaying a boot screen of some sort, so clearly, I couldn’t fill up there (but the other pumps were fine).
And from there, it was just another 60 miles and we were home, arriving right around 3:00 AM. I absolutely loved visiting Ottawa and Gatineau, and I would love to go again in the future for a longer stay.