Saturday dawned and we go to work on the last items to pack and clean. Thanks again to neighborhood friends!
One task was to pack the fence panels. The dogs were put out on drop-chains, and the fencing disassembled and stacked on the trailer. This took awhile: 35 panels needed to be disassembled, and the bottoms were embedded in five years of dirt and grass.
Another task was to meet the passenger dog. We were transporting Luke from L’Amable to Dryden Ontario, as a favour for a local musher in L’Amable.
We finished clean-up and finished packing. We had left trailer hook-up for the last day, and discovered the Subaru’s trailer harness was broken (the little wiring that makes the trailer lights go blinkey when the Subaru’s do). After some deliberation, we hard-wired the trailer to the Subaru. The other trailers were fine – the dog box trailer (towed by the Tundra), and the fence panels (towed by the U-Haul).
The new owners of the house also helped. There was a fair amount of stuff we did not take with us – some older furniture, a futon, and various crates and boxes. They graciously allowed us to leave that stuff, plus some trash, for them to take care of. Other than that, the house was spiffy clean and ready for move-in.
Our planned departure was 2:30 pm, and we managed to roll away at 3:45 pm. Not bad, considering all that needed to be done on this last day. We had planned a relatively short 8-hour travel day, to a fellow musher’s house (Jakob Betker) in Cochrane, Ontario (near Timmins). We picked up Brittany on the way in Bracebridge where she had been staying. Sarah, Rosie and Nicole arrived Saturday morning. Everyone was psyched!
The trip was smooth, but driving was a little slower than anticipated due to winding roads from L’Amable to Bracebridge. The Tundra only goes around 150 miles on a tank of gas, so stops for gassing up were frequent. We had hoped to be in Cochrane by 10:30pm, but didn’t get there until around 1:30 am. We had left around an hour later than planned, but arrived close to three hours later than planned. This would continue during the trip: longer stops than planned for dogs (food and pee breaks), more stops for gas, and also some issues that occurred during later days.
An absolute HUGE thanks to Jakob & Chantel, as they stayed up for us and even chauffeured us around at 1:30am. The uHaul wasn’t going to fit in their driveway, so Jakob met the Uhaul at the old Iroquois Fall Welcome Centre and drove Brittany and Nicole back to their house. They graciously let us sleep in their beautiful home, and even welcomed Spike and Myra to stay in the house in crates. Ilana slept in the Subaru with Floppy, Moose, and Maude, as we didn’t have enough crates and they had a gorgeous cat.
Day 1 was, overall, a success. Everyone was happy and energetic, and dogs were healthy and enthusiastic. The vehicles were running fine. We got to sleep that night, and planned to leave by around 8:30 on Sunday.
[This is Post 3 of 11]