The Drive

 

The sun slowly set as I drove farther and farther south away from Burks Falls.  I had originally planned to listen to an audiobook during the drive but I seemed to make a mistake putting it on my computer.  I forgot a whole CD.  So decided not to listen to it at all.  If you have never tried it, audiobooks make a long drive go by so quick.  I highly recommend it.

Canada’s Wonderland had wonderful fireworks to bid me adieu as we come up to it.  I’m not sure what the event was but it was pretty spectacular even if I didn’t get to see them too closely as I was driving.  Many cars were pulled over on the side of the highway to watch.  After looking it up, it was Snoopy’s 60th Birthday.

We got to the border at just about midnight.  The border crossing went amazingly smooth.  Even after the attendant asked where I was going and I replied “Scotland”.  He looked at me quizzically trying to figure out how entering the states helped me get there.  I had to quickly explain about the ship leaving from Brooklyn.  There wasn’t any problems with my luggage or having to show our boat tickets.  The only other question was how did we know our neighbour since his last name stood out as different to ours.

Around 2am I was quickly starting to get tired and even more so as everyone else in the vehicle was dozing soundly (like my parents neighbour), sleeping fitfully (my dad) or just resting (my mom), so no more conversation to help pass the time.  My Dad took over driving and I attempted to get some rest.  Not easy for me, especially in a F150 where the backseat doesn’t recline even an inch.

Throughout the night and more so as the sun rose I saw lots of wildlife along the side of the highway – multitudes of deer, weasels, wild turkeys.  I was surprised that we didn’t see any wildlife on the highways in Canada but almost as soon as we were across the border they were everywhere.

Despite planning the trip with Google we were really early. At 7am we decided to have a leisurely breakfast at Perkins in New York.  Perkins didn’t have the same menu as Sudbury which was disappointing.  I was looking forward to having strawberry cream filled waffles.  I had to settle for plain waffles with fruit on top.

Since we were so early we wondered what to do to pass the time.  We decided to go and find the cruise terminal then hang out nearby.  As we crossed a bridge into Brooklyn we got our first look at the Queen Mary 2. 

 

See if you can see it in the picture.   You can click on it to see it bigger if needed.  I’ll give you a hint.  It has a red funnel.

 

 

 

 

Here is our next glimpse of the mighty ship.

 

 

 

With such a big ocean liner I thought that the cruise terminal would be large and have a well marked route to it.  I thought it would have a grand sign at the entrance since the QM2 is toted as the Worlds most luxurious cruise ship.  Instead it was a small road with no signage along the route to guide you and this is what the entrance looked like.

Those are two security guards, at least that’s what  I assumed them to be.  Although they didn’t do anything other than a mild glance as we drove by.

This view of the QM2 starts to reveal just how big she actually is.

 

Notice the well known landmark?

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had chosen to have a “deluxe obstructed view balcony” stateroom when we ordered our tickets.  That meant that our room would be behind those lifeboats.

 

We drove around the loops at the terminal passing all of the passengers who had disembarked and were waiting for taxis.  Many of them had lots of luggage, not quite as much as I but enough.  That made me a lot less nervous about mine being too much.

We stopped and asked an employee where one would drop off their luggage and were directed to one end of the terminal.  There appeared to be only one employee working in that area and he was loading someone’s luggage into a giant black crate on wheels.  The crate must have been 6 feet x 8 feet x 4 feet in size.   After he was finished with their luggage he turned to us.  We warned him about the amount of luggage I had but he didn’t seem fazed at all.  He loaded it into a new black crate, my luggage alone seemed to fill it.  He then pushed the crate over to another employee and that was it.  It was 10am, 2 hours early for our boarding time.

My Mom and I said a goodbye to my Dad (and their neighbour) and they got back on the road.  I found out later that they truly did just turn around and head home.  They arrived at midnight.

It was very hot outside that day and my Mom and I headed inside the terminal to wait.  We thought that we would have to wait until our embarkation time before we could start the process of being checked in.  We were wrong.