Back in Canada!

11 days from Superior Arizona to Fort Erie Ontario, it has been a trek and I think we kept the drive days short enough that we all survived well. Of course we are not done with our roaming just yet as our park doesn’t open for a week yet but we will kick around the Niagara region for a while, visit some friends and family and mooch dock in a couple of driveways. So todays destination is another Walmart just over the border.

6:20 and I’m waking up to a cold overcast day here in Erie PA, but I’m looking forward to being back in Canada and knowing we are just two hours away is a good feeling. I also know we have one hundred miles of some of the meanest drivers on the road, the folks out west are bad drivers but the literally the east coast driver are vicious. Breakfast this morning was a toasted bacon & tomato sandwich always a good choice even better when the tomatoes are vine ripened, it is a cold morning 48ºF (8.8ºC) and there is rain in the forecast today again. Six count them six day of driving with the wipers on, seriously the April showers are suppose to yield to the May flowers!

On the road before nine o’clock after a little longer warm up, just a few hundred yards back to I-90 and east bound toward New York state and the Peace Bridge crossing back into Ontario and our home country of Canada, and yes it is still cold, the trees are just budding, and still some snowplowing debris in the parking lots but it is still great to be back. But the border, crossing the border at the Peace bridge reminded me of our crossing at the Bluewater bridge back in the spring of 2020. We exited I-90, had no traffic in front of us, a single lane going to Canada, but no traffic either direction, when we got in sight of the Canadian customs there were six lanes open 4 regular 2 Nexus and one car at one lane. I slowed down and entered the Nexus line and from the time we entered the border and customs booth we were 35 seconds and we were rolling again, I watched the dash cam to check the time from our exit off of I-90 till we cleared the toll arm and entered the Queen Elizabeth Way was less than 6 minuets.

And the Walmart is less than 2 kilometers (1.6 miles), we picked a spot in front of the garden center and settled in before noon. We are playing a waiting game, another Walmart tomorrow then a Harvest Host and we will see what next week brings as we determine when we can get into our park. It is 4:30 and I’m typing away we watched a movie and I have the golf on, I hear there is a new pope, but we still don’t have any sunshine, so the solar system is not happy, but nothing a little generator time can’t fix, we are facing east so hopefully it will peak out tomorrow. For dinner tonight we went out for Chinese at Happy Jacks in downtown Fort Erie, we haven’t been for we figured at least eight years and I suspect even longer, and the food was just as good as I remember and we have enough left overs for another meal.

Today’s numbers: run time today 2:03 hours distance travelled 161 kilometers (100 miles) we consumed 48 liters (12.7 gallons) of diesel fuel, we averaged 77 kilometers per hour (48 mph) and our fuel efficiency was 30.15 liters per 100 kilometers (7.8 mpg). Lower average speed today a good quantity of 55 mph speed limit as well as a number of construction zones, plus a longer warm up period because of the cold.

The trek numbers: total distance covered 3487 kilometers (2229 miles) we purchased 1078.99 liters (277.38 gallons) of diesel fuel and a quick calculation has us at 29.27 liters /100 km (8.04 mpg) average fuel efficiency, and while not totally accurate was we were not topped off at the start or finish I was over ¾ on the gauge. The painful number was the cost of fuel $1178.32 Canadian ($853.82 American), at the time of writing this blog I have not received the amount of our last fuel purchase discount but I’m expecting less than $20.00 so it is not going to change the numbers drastically. There will also be some toll charges from Oklahoma, Ohio and New York as well as the Peace bridge