Tag: canada

Day 2774

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

Day 2388

Wednesday April 17th 2024

Day 9 of out trek north

Dear Journal:

Well if everything comes together correctly our trek north will end today, we are waking up at the Cracker Barrel in Roseville MI and I have a special breakfast planned for today, we are less than an hour from the border and other than one more fuel stop we will be in Ontario late morning. When I first got up this morning at 6:11 the skies were overcast, and now at 7:18 there is light rain falling, almost exactly as forecast, our weather app is showing a few scattered shower this morning with the heavier rain later today. The temperatures have retuned to seasonal as well the temperature this morning is 54ºF (12.2ºC) with a little breeze, the sad part is that this temperature is the forecast high for todays end destination. We ain’t in Arizona anymore!

But first things first, breakfast and a cup of fresh perked coffee and yes this morning there was a wee Irish blessing in my cup (the end of the bottle). This morning I ordered the “Country Fried Steak” along with scrambles eggs, hash browns, biscuits and gravy, Miss Laurie ordered French toast with “Country Fried Chicken”, maybe a wee bit extravagant but just a typical American breakfast. Along with breakfast I also got to experience the worst customer service that I have ever experienced at a Cracker Barrel, which just go to prove that even an American standard like Cracker Barrel can have issues at times.

Today is our push for the border so we have to prepare for Canada Customs, always a fun experience, trying to remember all the purchases that we are bring back into Canada. My laptop time is 5:58 so I’m thinking is is really 8:58 if it ever catches up, we will be hitting the road in the next few minutes where we will head (east?) on Interstate I-94 that will dump us in to Port Huron at the Bluewater Bridge and our border crossing point. But first one last fuel stop and as bad as the fuel pricing is in Michigan it is still better than Ontario. It is also where I will update Navi to metric so the speed limits in Ontario will be easier as the speedometer on Thunder only reads in miles per hour, and the speed limits just over the bridge are all over the map.

After our fuel stop we are only 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the bridge, and as we approach the bridge the fare to cross the Bluewater bridge is always a mystery, but todays rate was $9.00 American ($12.45 Canadian) compared to last years rate of $18.75 Canadian of back in spring of 2020 at $12.75 Canadian, the receipt today was RV-4 a rate for RVs I assume while often they charge us as a truck, I guess it just depends who is in the booth that day.

Canada Customs was a breeze, of course it helps when I pulled into the wrong lane and the poor agent had to walk over to us to check us through, just the regular questions, how long away, goods or services purchased, and of course the alcohol or tobacco question. That last question is such a silly question because we have a few bottle of alcohol that have crossed the border probably a dozen times so now we just reply we received two bottles as gifts and we have a few part bottles, which is kind of true, along with beer from three different cases, and a few other odds and ends that migrated with us.

Shortly after crossing into Ontario the rain started, not heavy enough to be worth stopping for, but heavy enough to make driving difficult, and as we head further north there are hardly any buds on the trees and temperature just keep dropping. Welcome to Canada EH!

Navi is showing our arrival in Goderich (our summer home) by around noon, and as we take Hwy-21 north along the Lake Huron coast line the winds are buffeting the coach, this old coach doesn’t get pushed around very easily by a little wind, but I can feel the attempt. We made it into Goderich at 12:10 according to my iPad which now seems to have caught up to all the time zones, and we stop at a grocery store to pick up some item that we could not bring across the border.

While Miss Laurie is shopping I decided to exercised the generator, it has been month since I last operated it and as the solar panel harvest today is not strong, so it can replace some battery power as it warms up. Miss Laurie has returned and is putting the groceries away, and we restart Thunder and drive the last ten kilometers (six miles) to Lake Huron Resort. I have to admit this does feel like coming home as this will be the fifth year of six that we have worked here.

Welcome to spring in Ontario or as I refer to it as rain and mud, don’t get me wrong I love seeing all the plants springing to life but as much as everyone was excited by the mild winter, there will be issues because the ground never froze to all the rain had to soak into the soil as opposed to running off. The result is a very wet campground this spring, we were hopping for a couple of days to get our site prepared, but everything is too wet, and the damp cold air is not real welcoming, but a month from now all the wet will be forgotten and life will move on.

Day 9 Stats: 215.6 kilometers (134 miles) solar harvest 84 amp / hours (solar can suck when it rains) $0.00 camping, 21.68 gallons (82.05 liters) of diesel fuel.

And this ends our spring 2024 northern trek 2130 miles (3428 kilometers)