Chapter 2 - Across Canada - violets and wolves

We crossed the border into New Brunswick. Every time we go into another province I look up the provincial flowers, trees, and flags in my atlas and almost have them all memorized. I will always think of purple violets now when I think of New Brunswick. I can test myself on the way back. The scenery is mostly just trees and trees going on and on. There's no mountains, just lots and lots of trees. Mom says this province's motto should be "the drive through province". I think she meant it as a joke.

I like to trace the outline of each province on my atlas to memorize its curves and shape. The least interesting was Saskatchewan which is just an enormous rectangle. My favourite so far is Quebec. Its shape looks to me like a wolf, with a long snout and its mouth open to the sea and its lower lip sticking out which is the Gaspe peninsula that Dad says we will get to see on our way back home which makes the idea of heading home much better knowing I am going to go round Quebec's lower lip and see Roche Perce which is a big rock with a hole in it that boats can go through which I know about because there is a photo of it in my atlas.

It rained really hard almost the whole day. Because the only things you could see were trees that went by in a green blur I watched the raindrops hit the window and flow across in streams on an angle from the top left to the bottom right as we drove along. Sidney would be able to see them going from the right to the left as she is sitting by the other window but she doesn't seem that interested and just rolled her eyes at me when I brought it up. I liked to trace the path of the water streams just like I trace the outline of the provinces and tried to see patterns but it was mostly only lines. When I got bored with that I would watch a raindrop that landed near the top of the window and that was really small and then got bigger as another drop fell on top of it. It would finally get so big and heavy that it started to move down the window, slowly at first in little steps and jerky movements and then, as it joined other drops and got bigger and bigger, it moved faster and faster. Finally it would get so big that it would just run down to the bottom of the window really quickly and I would have to find another drop to watch. Rain really is beautiful when you have the time to look at it and don't worry about getting wet.