Travelling Cross-Country to Toronto

We're still a week behind on this blog, but we figured you might like to hear about getting here.

We got back from our quick trip to Toronto to get our Visitor Permission documents late Sunday night, so we just crashed and went to bed. We got up early Monday morning and started putting things in the CRV and packing up the remainder of what we needed. We were ready to go by about 1:00 pm, with the CRV pretty well loaded up. I could see out the back window over the suitcases and such through the rear-view mirror, but not by much!

We drove to Glenwood Springs, Colorado, and stayed in a Hampton’s Inn there. We had hoped to stay at the Hotel Colorado – a very nice, restored, older hotel – where we had stayed before. Knowing it might be busy, I had checked for availability a week before, and sure-enough, it was all scheduled out. But, since we love the drive along I-70 so much, especially through Glenwood Canyon, we took second best. The drive was lovely and the weather was exceptional when we got there, so we took a stroll down the street to a Village Inn restaurant for dinner.

We heard from my brother, Ralph, and his wife, Marilyn, that they had arrived in Denver in their new home over the weekend, so we stopped there in Westminster on our way to Omaha, Nebraska. They showed us their home, which is a “10-minute bike ride” from one of their children and their family. So that’s nice for them. We had a nice visit, and a treat of yogurt and berries for lunch, and headed out for Omaha, arriving about 9:00 pm. Instead of trying to find a local restaurant, we just had a couple of salads sent up from Room Service. The salads were very good.

The next morning, we headed out for the Chicago area, staying just to the southeast in Merrillville. We had thought about staying closer, and attending the Chicago Temple, but realized that we didn’t want to leave late and drive late into the evening again. We got there early enough to stroll over to a Bob Evans restaurant for dinner. Since this chain doesn’t exist out in Utah, we thought we’d give it a try, and the food was very good.

We headed out the next morning for Cleveland – a short trip for a change. We stayed east of town in Beachwood and found another Bob Evans restaurant close. We chose Beachwood because it was very close to Kirtland, and we wanted to visit the temple there, since the church has recently purchased it and is in the process of renovating it.

We wondered how far along they were, so we visited the next morning, arriving before it opened at 10:00 am. But the missionary was just arriving, so he let us in, and gave us a personal tour of the temple. His explanation of the history and significance of everything was so much more complete than we had experienced before. When we came six years ago, it was owned by the Community of Christ church, and they did a wonderful job of maintaining and presenting the temple, but some of the things that happened there didn’t get explained very completely.

Sister Lyon and I at the Kirtland Temple.

Anyway, it was sweet to get our own personal tour, and see the things that are being done to reinforce floors and walls and preparing for further renovations.

We drove on to Buffalo, arriving just after noon – quite the short drive for a change. We checked out a Walgreens in anticipation of picking up prescriptions there every couple of months. Other missionaries had indicated that you didn’t have to have your prescriptions rewritten in Canada and could just drive down there to do it. We also checked out the UPS store, where many people in Canada have packages shipped to avoid customs, etc. Others had indicated that this was a viable option, so we just wanted to visit the store and make sure we understood the procedures. We’ve since learned that this might not be the optimal way to do things (we’ll explain in a future blog post).

So, we stayed there in Buffalo on Friday night, and had dinner at Smokey Bones in Cheektowaga (!) – a BBQ restaurant. Good food again. This will be our last night in the United States for a while!

On Saturday morning, we drove to the border. It didn’t seem too busy – the lines weren’t that long, but it took us about 40 minutes to get through. The border officer was polite and careful, and we continued on – after paying a 11.00 CAD (Canadian dollar) toll to cross the bridge (that will come into future considerations….. for a future blog).

The drive to our new address took over two hours. It might be that it was a Saturday, but the freeway was terribly busy. We’ve heard that the 401 Freeway in Canada – key to our getting to our address in North York – is the busiest in North America. We arrived at our new home – a basement apartment at 43 Gravenhurst, North York, Ontario. It’s a bit north-west of Toronto proper and is possibly the most diverse area of the greater Toronto metropolitan area, according to the locals. Lots of refugees from areas of Africa, among other countries, a significant Latin American population, etc. There are lots of restaurants with a variety of difficult to pronounce names. We just might try a few of them.

We met our landlady – Nyree – a bit later that afternoon. She is a wonderfully pleasant, educated person. She gave us the lowdown on the trash/recycling schedule, where the closest Wal-Mart is, where to get the best produce, etc. We can tell we’re going to enjoy living here.

43 Gravenhurst Ave, North York, Ontario

This is a picture of our address. The current owner has really rehabbed it, so it looks quite nice. We live in the basement, entering in the side door on the right. The basement has a walk-out to the back yard, which is really pretty.

Steps down to our backyard.

So that’s enough for this post. We’ll get into our first full week of living here, getting settled, meeting the mission President and his wife, the mission office staff, the missionaries, and our ward.