Riviere du Loup was scenic, in the way that every place in the world is scenic provided you’re not blind. From there, it was just a hop, skip and a jump to the border of New Brunswick, as long as you are some gigantic human being who is able to hop, skip and jump across miles and miles of highway really efficiently. The rest of us have to drive the rent-a-car.

(Incidentally, for you motorheads, the rent-a-car on this trip was a Ford Focus wagon, which was tactfully renamed after the “Ford Keep-Your-Eyes-On-The-Friggin-Road” tested poorly in marketing surveys. i found it was reasonably comfortable, but it had no grip on steep mountainous corners when you were flying through the Cabot Trail at 130 km/hr. It was also a pig on gas, but i guess i’d consider nearly every car a pig on gas when we were filling up at $1.14 every few hours)

If i learned anything on our whirlwind trip of Canada’s East coast, it was to NEVER DO A WHIRLWIND TRIP OF CANADA’S EAST COAST. You come home tired and angry. But barring that, i did learn that Information centres are funded by taxpayers, and they exist for me to exploit. These places cropped up every few feet. They had free bathrooms where you don’t have to buy a donut to avoid feeling chincy for using ‘em, and i might also remind you that pregnant girls really do enjoy using bathrooms. They also had free maps which, despite being plastered with hotspot pointers for Klarabelle’s Kountry Kitchen Krafts, would get you where you wanted to go.

The only thing i realy cared to see in New Brunswick was a set of big towering beach rocks that were eroded at the base by the Bay of Fundy, which has the world’s most something-or-other tides and stuff. i asked the girl at the info counter where we could see them, and she pointed us to a place called Hopewell, which was about 4 hours away. THEN she told us that the tide was only low enough to walk around them at a certain time of the day, and when i looked at my watch i saw we only had 5 hours to get there. THEN the girl said that we’d crossed into the Atlantic time zone, so we actually only had 4 hours to g…

i don’t know if the girl finished her sentence, because by then i had already yanked my wife out the info centre door and into the rent-a-car and was probably already on the highway before the girl looked up from her map. i must confess that i laid into the “go faster” pedal a little heavier than usual in the hopes of gunning it down to Hopewell before the tide came in and drowned our chances to skip around the neat-looking rocks.

Time ticked away as the scenery out the window bled into shiny streaks of colour, my rent-a-car angrily devouring the yellow highway dashes like a vengeful Pac Man on a power pellet bender. The stretch of the Trans-Canada connecting the border of New Brunswick with anything remotely interesting was the longest, most regrettably boring piece of road we encountered on our trip, and the only thing worse than driving it was driving it AGAIN on the way back.

When we arrived at Hopewell over 4 hours later, we were already well into low tide time, so instead of checking in at our Bed and Breakfast and getting our bearings, we sped on to the Hopewell Rocks Gimme 20 Dollars Park and gave them 20 dollars. Then we raced around the placid footpaths for a little while trying to find the one that lead to the beach. Having finally found it, we followed it down through oodles of trees and boringness (why put the entrance so far away from the rocks? The people paid 20 dollars to see ROCKS, not trees). At last, we arrived at the 3-storey metal staircase that wound down to the beach.

At the top of the staircase was a sign that said something like “Attention Moronic Tourist: Be sure to make it back to this staircase BEFORE x-o’clock to avoid being trapped by the tide like an idiot.” And there was a big doomsday clock telling you when you had to beat a hasty retreat. Fair enough.

This is the point at which you’d love for me to weave you a tale of how we were trapped by the tide, but unfortunately it didn’t happen like that. All i can offer you are the pictures of some nice-looking rocks (one of them looked like a dude’s unit), and the somewhat amusing staircase signs, one of which was definitely more entertaining and eluded me the first time i walked by it.

Also of interest was a sign that encouraged tourists to do the funky chicken in case of falling rocks:

And, finally, the rocks themselves, so that you may save yourself 20 dollars:

Having scrambled so frantically to reach the rocks on time, we were glad to drive back to the B&B to get settled and ask about a place to eat, which became an adventure in itself. The Inn was called Family Treasures, and i will offer this up as an enticing cliffhanger: it had llamas.

Like a serial novel you’re reading all out of order, like a one-hour prime time dramatic teevee program that you start watching at episode 29, i’m writing you from HALIFAX - yes, Halifax, where the lobster run free-range on the expansive coastal prairies and the beer flows like wine, and the wine doesn’t bother flowing really because everyone’s already drinking beer anyway, so why should the wine bother? The wine’ll go to France or some crazy place where it’s appreciated.

My wife and i have been on a road trip for the past week, the very last vacation we’ll be able to enjoy as an unattached couple, babylogically speaking. Of course, i use the word “enjoy” rather loosely, because there’s nothing all that enjoyable about hauling around a nauseous pregnant girl who’s moments away from puking, nagging, or peeing her pants at every moment of the day. Don’t get me wrong - it’s been a good trip so far, relatively speaking, and i pretty much knew what i was getting into when i planned our vacation. At any rate, it’s much better than our previously-planned vacation to Europe where we had counted on backpacking across some God-forsaken, unwashed foreign country with a girl who REQUIRES a bathroom every three and a half kilometres. And by REQUIRES, i’m talking about a certain wrench-the-steering-wheel-out-of-your-hand-and-tilt-the-car-into-the-ditch kind of urgency that i don’t hope that anyone would come to experience in his or her lifetime. And then, after this life-or-death freakout, after my wife “sees a man about a horse” by beating that man senseless with a lead pipe and steed-jacking the horse, she’ll come slouching out of the bathroom saying “mmm … i wasn’t really able to go.”

Mystifying. Pregnant girls are mystifying in a very horrible way, and i encourage you all to adopt.

By now, we’ve seen a decent sampling of everything East of Toronto that Canada has to offer, except Prince Edward Island, where i hear they shove the Anne of Green Gables down your throat like it’s a manifesto, and Newfoundland, which costs about a bazillion dollars and hours to travel to.

We started our trip in Montreal, where we stayed with some friends of ours who are also pregnant. As usual, my wife seems to have it 800 percent worse than anyone else in a similar situation - our friend MildlyPreggy was 7 months out-to-here, but she is a ruddy, Earthy kind of farm-rutabagas-in-the-backyard sort of girl, and i didn’t hear her say much about having to pee every three steps or needing to vomit whenever anyone mentioned some random trigger word like “bookshelf.” It vividly reminded me of when my wife had her wisdom teeth out, and i seemed to remember seeing every other patient skipping out of the office with clean gums and a lollipop, while my wife looked like she’d been French kissing a food processor.

The stay was lovely, and our hosts were extremely gracious. It felt like Montreal was our destination, like we were set to turn around and go home. But NO! When it comes to travel, i’m like a drill sargeant, and i won’t stop until your will is ground into the dirt and you’ve come to enjoy the feeling of my boot on your neck. You want your mama?? YOU WANT YOUR MAMA, TOURIST? Well guess what? I’M your mama now, and you’re going to march up Main street and into every kitschy boutique on the strip, and you’re gonna LIKE it. You wanna mess with me? Huh? Cause i love nothing better than to watch pansy-assed tourists like you read every brochure in the information centre from cover to cover, in French AND English. THAT’S how i do vacation.

Of course i exaggerate, but my exaggerations are only about three shades away from what’s really going on. i’ve been driving this rental car like it’s hot, shredding the Trans-Canada highway in my wake and leaving behind a trail of decimated tourist info booth ghost towns. “De man .. he … he take all our pamphlets and … and he speet-shine hees boots on de in-fo-may-shee-un desk. HELP us, El Shooto!”

i will not be captured by El Shooto. From Montreal, we continued on to Quebec City, which is very old and very nice i’m sure, though my memory of it is as a blur, the colours and highlights all bleeding together in a blurry smear as i drag my wife around the cobblestoned sidewalks, making sure to take in as much as humanly possible for one afternoon before we tear out and put two more hours of highway behind us. We stayed in Riviere du Loup, which is famous for being the place where you stay when you’re en route to somewhere more interesting. We paid about a hundred bucks - eqivalent to a week’s wages - for a room where we slept on the hardest, most plywoody sheeted slabs this side of dollhouse furniture. i felt like i could charge admission for people to watch me lie down on these beds - no joke. My wife, as germ-phobic as ever, was careful never to let her bare skin come in contact with any part of the bed, vividly remembering a prime time news exposé where they shone a black light in a handful of motel rooms and they lit up like Amish kids at a cigarette store.

The place was called Motel Loupi, and i hestitate to use its real name for i fear the copyrighting power behind the establishment’s world-renowned, most excellently beloved mascot “Loupi.” You’ve heard of Loupi, of course? Loupi, the orange bear groundhog/gerbil thing whose unsettling mugshot graces everything at the motel from the room keys to the don’t-flush-sanitary-pads-down-the-toilet signs? You know, Loupi, who’s murky brown in one picture and eye-bleedingly bright orange in another? Loupi, who’s short and squat when he’s depicted in papier macher statue form outside your motel room and tall and lean when leers at you from the sign next you your door reminding you to turn out the lights when you leave? LOUPI, for God’s sake. He’s like Quebec’s answer to friggin’ Mickey Mouse. Of COURSE you’ve heard of Loupi. Every year at the winter carnival, Loupi punches Bonhomme de Neige in the snout and sets fire to the maple syrup stand. Loupi’s one badass mascot, bitches, and you’d best be showin’ respect afore he comes to your house and messes your stuff up.