Day 14- Wars and Walmart

Walmart nights

Late mornings and even later evening seem to be our style on this trip… today this led us to sleeping in the charming campground of the Vaudriel Walmart parking lot.  This particular lot came complete with blaring music from the nearby bar (open until 3:30 am), and some imposing French signs which we couldn’t read but could be inferred by the picture of the tow truck on it.    Let’s just say that Sean won’t be allowing anymore Walmart nights for the Blairs, although it was convenient in the morning to get a quick shopping trip in.  Even in French, all Walmarts are the same old place.

Earlier in the day, after a short run to keep up our 10Km training program, we drove our RVs into Ottawa to the Canadian War museum.  It was quite the adventure to find suitable parking but thanks to Dana’s quick navigation, we found a good spot just in time for an expensive lunch at the museum.

The boys loved this place. It had a touring exhibit on the gladiators with lots of hands-on artifacts to explore, and then another whole room with exhibits on all the wars that Canada has fought in from the Plains of Abraham all the way up to the modern wars.

 

Trying on gladiator clothes, building pontoons

The amount of history we have been immersed in for this trip has been outstanding. We have covered more than a whole year of social studies and we are only on the second week!  I especially enjoyed the information about the French and English fighting for Canada- it makes the whole Quebec/Canada issue so much more understandable. I’m enjoying the history so much and I’m glad to have these pegs to hang our future schooling on -- when learning about things in the next years, we can remember when we were in Ottawa, and Quebec city and the east coast. 

The rest of the museum was a bit of a blur for me, because I was busy chasing after 3 giggly girls who were running from room to room.  The content was a little over their heads, but  Heather and Lucy had a great time trying on some gladiator clothing (one girls in each leg) and I kept getting lost in the maze of exhibits trying to keep track of Lucy and MaryJo. I’m just glad Dana was keeping her eyes on the boys!  I know they loved seeing the big tanks in the last room, and everyone loved the gift shop. They must have spent 45 min choosing the perfect souvenir to take home.

  By the time we left the museum it was well past 6, and we were anxious to get on the road again.  We  tried to stop in a campsite just on the edge of the Ontario/Quebec border, forgetting that it was a weekend, but we discovered the only sites left were a little small for our monster truck/RV so seeing as how it was already dark and we didn’t want to spend $40 to sleep for one night just to get up again and leave, we decided to find a Walmart.  Quebec- Here we come!!