By now, you probably have read Renee's post called We Have A Dream. If you haven't, go read that first, I think it is important background to what I am going to write here.

Before we had a dream, we had a fear. We loved where we were living and couldn't imagine having to leave. We were worried that if our immigration fell through we would have to move. Instead of worry about that prospect, we just put it out of our minds and went on with life assuming everything would just work out. Of course every so often that fear would creep back in and inevitably when it did I found myself asking the question: where?

The question of where to move (if we had to) brought with it a whole bunch of new questions, fears, and insecurities. For me, the single biggest issue was the mountains: I wanted to be as close to them as possible. For Renee, the single biggest issue was her parents: she wanted to be at least within driving distance. We have both of those criteria met where we are right now in Maine (although I would still like to be closer to the mountains). The good news is that both of those can be found in Canada. The bad news is that they exist on the opposite sides of the country; The mountains are in the west and Renee's parents are in the east. In my mind I felt like it would be one or the other and I didn't want to have to make that decision.

One night while the thoughts and fears of having to move back to Canada were creeping in, I did what any respectable mountain lover would do: I pulled-up Google maps, clicked on the terrain view and started scanning the topography of eastern Canada. I soon discovered that I had rather poor knowledge of Canadian geography, there are lots mountains on the east coast, especially in Labrador. I started to get excited... until my wife took the blinders off of my eyes. Yes, there definitely are mountains in Labrador, especially at the northern most tip, you know... just a stones-throw from Greenland and Baffin island... an area that is very populated... with polar bears. Probably a cool place to visit (if you can actually get there), but not exactly a place to settle down with the family.

Several months later, just after discovering that our green card was going to take another five years, I again found myself in front of the computer looking at topographical maps. This time I decided to look a little farther south. I did Google searches for mountains in Nova Scotia, mountains in New Brunswick, and mountains in Quebec. Somehow through all of that I stumbled across this region in Quebec called the Gaspe Peninsula. A little more reading and I started to get excited:

• Wikipedia described it as: The interior is rugged, being a northward extension of the Appalachian Mountains. This range is called the Chic-Choc Mountains. A section of the International Appalachian Trail travels along the peninsula.
• It is considered a paradise on the east coast for hiking, backpacking, canoeing, kayaking, backcountry skiing, and ice climbing.
• It is within driving distance of Renee's parent's home. Actually, it is closer than where we are now.
• It has real roads and is inhabited by more than just polar bears.

We mulled over this find over the next few weeks. Our conversation began to take on a new tone: from fear, trepidation, and frustration (from the lack of progress in our immigration process), to hope, anticipation, and excitement. Had we found the needle in a haystack? A place in Canada that satisfied all of our requirements, and potentially more? We didn't want to allow ourselves to get too excited since neither of us had ever been there, and we still had lots of questions. What about the language barrier? The culture? Church? Homeschooling? Jobs? Is there local farms and agriculture? Which town? How much does housing cost? What about the cost of living?

But none of those questions could be answered sitting in front of our computers. We decided we just had to see this place before we could take this decision any farther. Hence the reason for our Christmas vacation couchsurfing trip where our traveller's tally included a few more items than we were prepared to share with the world. The ultimate goal of the trip was to answer one question: If we were going to move back to Canada, would the Gaspe Peninsula be a place we would be willing to live? The answer was a resounding YES!.