2581 miles later . . . . Columbus us beautiful . . to a fault

After 2581 miles in a car driving through Canada, the U.P. and Wisconsin I gotta tell ya. Columbus is still one of the most beautiful towns around.

Of course that beauty comes at the expense of not having a thriving business district but you have to pick your poison.  Beauty or business. 

The Trans Canadian Highway is basically a 2 lane road that goes from small town to small town.  Every town had a character and while driving through you could clearly see what the stores were and the basic flavor of the town if you were shopping.

Trans Canadian Highway 

Every town always had some famous statue of some beaver skinned hunting dude with a canoe and so forth.  Or a big fish or a big tee pee or an iron bridge and so forth (one town IS called Iron Bridge).

So when we finally drove through Columbus after 2581 miles is was such a beautiful town . . . but not one reason to stop and not one clue what the store fronts were.  Our attention is drawn to the 2 or 3 large back lit signs and American flags.   Not one store sign can been seen at all from the street.  Drive through, no reason to stop.

I think what the city has done is combined both worlds so neither of them work. A few large signs to draw your attention AWAY from all the other stores trying to make a living. . 

HOWEVER - it's a beautiful town for sure.

Were still decompressing from the journey.  It was mentioned to us that DJ and I were both pretty quiet and we noticed that we were both subdued Saturday.  I think the "not bad" stress of 8 days on the road wore us out a little.

So I'm just going to mention some things and post photos that stood out on the trip to Canada for the next week.

One thing you can't by 6 packs of Canadian beer.  They just don't make them.  They only sell

pints and they ONLY sell beer in grocery stores.  There are no "liqueur" stores in Canada.  If you want wine or the hard stuff you have to go to a SAQ (Société des alcools du Québec) or whatever the Provence calls it's particular government run liqueur store.  This explains why we could not find any beer stores LOL  OH - and we were looking.

We had to ask a person who spoke 10% English and figured it out.

Most things seemed inexpensive but then you have to add on about 15% tax (it's a socialist Country you know) teh price go up.  The exchange rate is about 72%.  For every 72 cents you get 1 Canadian dollar (which are REALLY cool)    The odd thing we noticed is that of you buy a certain quantity of lets say donuts or pastries they would say (in French)  Buy 1 more and you don't pay tax . . . .which I still don't understand but we always purchased one more.

They do not use pennies which was surprisingly awesome.  You would not think that NOT having pennies is a big deal but WOW.  I LOVED not having to deal with pennies. Everything is rounded up or down. 

There are no $1 bills but loonies and twoonies.  $1 coins and $2 coins. 

loonies and twoonies and a dime

And with that said (what was said?) the pastries were AMAZING - better then anything we have eaten in the States.

and of course there are Tim Hortons EVERYWHERE . No! I mean EVERYWHERE. If you think Starbucks is everywhere - go to Canada and look for a Tim Hortons.  They are like a upscale Duncan Donuts . . but better.  Every town with more then 1000 people have at least ONE Tim Hortons.

I wish Columbus had a Tim Hortons.

another odd thing is when using a Credit Card (the best exchange rate) everybody has the same exact machine.  Learn it once (as it's all French in Quebec) and every exchange is the same.

We stayed in Beaupre which has a huge church and the highest ski hill in Eastern Canada. Could not see the top for a few days from clouds a few of the days from our condo.

But they did have a HUGE church.  The Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré.   In 1658 a shrine was put in the spot to honor Saint Anne the mother of Mary and grandmother of Jesus according to apocryphal Christian and Islamic tradition.

It became a hit and a goto destination for those wishing to . . do whatever people do.  Everything kept getting bigger and bigger and a Basilica was build in 1876.  It burned down in 1922 and a new bigger better one was built in its place.  A small little one.

With a quaint, homey inside

A mix of Gothic and Roman.  I did not notice at the time but my brother who started as a Stain Glass artist and is responsible for the deconstruction, cleaning and reconstruction of the stain glass on top of the ILL State House (below) point some things out.

State House Illinois 

He noted that the stain glass at the top of the Basilica had iron workers, and jack hammer dudes and so forth.   They wanted a church for ALL the people. 

In the coming weeks if another photo of the Basilica pops up you will know what it is.  We stopped at a little hamburger joint that was across the street.  It actually had the word "hamburger" in a sign  . . .unlike McDonalds where the menu was 100% French. 

Well . . . . .DJ order a grilled cheese and it came with American Cheese, as did our burgers . . . but you did get poutine. 

Poutine, the national french fry. Nobody orders "french fries" as with everything you get poutine which scared the heck out of me.  But it's AWESOME of course.

French fry's, like 5 Guys with fresh cheese curds and gravy on the top. 

 

You eat it with a fork and it truly is REALLY good.   The Old Fashion has it in Madison and in Canada every McDonalds has it.

So that is it for today.  Getting pretty loaded with photos and I have so so many.

Talk at ya tomorrow.