My Road Trip with Bob Dylan

William and I just got back from our March Break road trip.  I thought the road trip would be about checking out the universities.  Turns out I was wrong - it was about Bob Dylan.  


We had a lot of fun.  Our road trip went like this ...


We drove four hours the first evening and listened to a couple of Bob Dylan albums.


The next day there were huge Vs of Canada Geese flying overhead migrating north.  I wanted a picture of them so asked William to take one while I was in the washroom at the gas station.  I came back and he told me he had not been able to get a good photo of the Canada Geese, but he did get an awesome photo of a seagull eating garbage.  Impressive!  (by the way, here's his best photo of a seagull minus the garbage - I knew you would appreciate that).

I did manage to get a photo (of sorts) of the Canada Geese.  I couldn't get over how many birds there were flying together in long strings across the sky.

We drove for about five hours (listening to Bob Dylan for much of the drive) to Sherbrooke, a small city in the Eastern Townships of Quebec.   It is such a pretty city with lots of red brick buildings, a few rushing rivers going through the downtown, 

and plenty of gorgeous clapboard houses painted in an array of pastel colours.  

Do you like my rubber-necking-while-driving skills?

Bishop's University is an older university with a mix of old and new red buildings amongst groves of pine trees.

The next day we drove to Ottawa and Hull ... we listened to Bob Dylan albums and William read me some of Bob's poetry (after all this contact I'm totally on first name basis with him).

Parliament Buildings in Ottawa seen from across the river in Gatineau

I had never seen Ottawa in the winter/early spring with ice and snow around so it was fun to see it at a different time of year.

Samuel de Champlain statue in Gatineau/Hull (you can see a photo of where he left from in France in this post)

After taking a tour of Carleton University in Ottawa (sorry - no photos as it was raining and I didn't want to get my camera wet) we drove to my parent's cottage.  And as we drove we listened to Bob Dylan!  

The drive through Algonquin Park was so pretty.  I'd never been there in the winter and the frozen lakes, birch trees, deep green of the evergreens, and soft grey of the deciduous trees were beautiful.

There was still lots of snow around and ice on the lake at the cottage, but the air was warm and the snow and ice were melting rapidly.  

My Dad dug down in the snow and uncovered the daffodils that had already sprouted up several inches in my Mother's garden.  I wonder how they know it is time to start growing when they are covered in a layer of snow.

A few days later William and I drove home from the cottage listening to  - you guessed it - Bob Dylan.  After listening to his first eight albums (and most of them more than once), I have decided that my favourite is "Bringing It All Back Home".  Seems fitting for a road trip, don't you think?