Montreal and onward

29 July 09

We are having “fun” in Montreal.
We are at quite a nice campground some forty miles from the city, where we have good Wi-Fi but have to put up with some road noise, can’t have everything.
We arrive just in time for Christmas, the campground had decided to relieve the boredom and have a Christmas parade an hour after we arrived and so in the blazing sun, Father Christmas made his rounds on a golf cart! The children were delighted.
Our trip into the big city started well with a trip to the Montreal Olympic site, the buildings now have new practical uses, one as Canada’s answer to the Eden Project in Cornwall. This kept us amused for half a day then we moved on to the city quayside for a look at the market and the canal (no big deal). When we returned to our truck we found that someone had had a very successful go at it. The ignition lock was all smashed up and wires hanging everywhere and we were missing many items including a bicycle and the sat nav. Also we needed to get the truck “rescued”.
Sorting this problem in Canada, where the natural language is English, should not be a problem, but in this part of Canada they don’t speak much English, it’s more sort of French!
For all that the French infuriate me with their very Frenchness; these guys take it to a new level!
Even the insurance company is being difficult, so we anticipate paying for our own problems.
We have already found a superb GPS sat nav courtesy of the internet and a few other things that we need but I expect that a new bike will wait till we are back in America, hopefully day after tomorrow!
Today, the saving grace has been the fact that we have “Skype,” and so can make the many phone calls courtesy of the internet; thankfully we have a decent internet connection at the campground.
Freda spent a lot of time today on the “phone” sorting problems. A very full day, even sorting a rental car was difficult as we need to have it delivered and we are not near a major town. We have got one eventually (hopefully, tomorrow) so that we can return the 50 miles to Montreal to collect our truck which is at the Ford dealer for repair. Ford roadside rescue got us and the truck to the nearest Ford dealer, but we had to get a taxi back to the campground as all the car rental places were closed. Our most expensive taxi ride ever, at 123 CAD, that means Canadian dollars.
The rest of Canada has been fun even if it is generally 10% below the USA in terms of efficiency and service.
The weather has been very mixed, heavy rain followed by hot sun. Today has been nice and sunny even if a bit humid.
Normally I enjoy France and the French, one minute being bloody minded and then absolutely charming, but this lot in Canada, words fail me. Perhaps it is partly due to the theft problem. I have since been told that Montreal is the crime capital of Canada. I have had problems with theft in Spain, Italy and England so theft is pretty universal but I was still glad to leave behind French Canadians and head to the USA.
Maine, New England and it is the time of the Lobster Festival, well, it would be rude not to try some, wouldn’t it?
We have had a run into Rockland where the festival was in full flight. The most amusing event we saw was a row of wooden crates (about a hundred yards long) strung together and floating in the harbour. The idea was to get across as quickly as possible, and attracted the young people of the area. This was no careful walk; they were running like hell! The last competitor we saw was going like a train and hailed from Alaska, so I don’t suppose he’d had the opportunity to practice in previous years. I think I should put the video onto “You Tube” it was so much fun!
I have a new bicycle now, $99 in Wal-Mart with front and rear suspension and twenty one gears, how cheap can this sort of stuff get?
Sunday and after the promise of a bright sunny day, we had a dull and drab day, bad enough to cause the NASCAR race at Pocono to be cancelled due to rain. I had contemplated making the run down to Pocono only because my petrol head wife would have loved it all but it would have meant a considerable change of plan, glad I didn’t do that.
Monday was a stunning day and we chose to go into the nearby town of Boothbay Harbor, very New England and very Peyton Place for those of you with a long memory. We had a pleasant amble round the town and noted a two hour cruise on a 56ft schooner, Shall we? Shan’t we? We did, and what a good decision that was, thirty on board including crew and jolly good fun for all, and all for $25 a head, great stuff. The sailing part was good but we also saw seals and ospreys, lots of other stuff including a whale, although I must confess that the whale was one that had washed ashore and was very dead!
We had a coffee in the local hotel and a gentle stroll back to where our bikes were parked, a quick shop for food and then home to organize a superb evening meal.
Onboard the schooner, we had been told where to buy soft shelled lobster, cooked to order for only $4 per pound. Lobster is not our normal fare , it always seems so overpriced but at that kind of value, we had to give it a try and so after the boat trip, we went and ordered a couple of Lobsters to be collected later in the afternoon.
The previous evening we had been to a seafood restaurant and while Freda sorted out the boring stuff, I took time to video the young lady dousing the live lobsters into the steam and then preparing them for the table, a fascinating learn to be put to good use the following day!
While we were having our own lobsterfest outside our RV, our neighbor came along and introduced himself, and we made an appointment to attend his RV for wine “tasting” later in the evening.
Today has been a two hundred mile drive down to Middleboro, Massachusetts, after driving through three states (there was a short loop through New Hampshire). I had done enough driving by the time we got here, passing through Boston was crazy busy and so was the stretch to the south. I was glad to get out of the driving seat and Freda had done enough navigating thank you very much. Life is so much easier when you have sat nav and of course, more difficult without.
Caroline is travelling to this part of the world next weekend and then we will have our new sat nav at last (it was delivered to her address a couple of days ago)
We now have an agreement with our insurance company, they are going to pay and so I am feeling about a grand more cheerful!
The next day we visited Plymouth, MA where the Pilgrims first landed in USA on the Mayflower. We visited the Mayflower II, a replica of the original built in Brixham, Devon and sailed over a few years ago. It was a very hot day and we enjoyed a lovely cool milk shake full of ice cream.
Our next day out was to Martha’s Vineyard, a very exclusive part of America. Getting there cannot be complicated as it’s only thirty miles. Don’t you believe it! Drive to the outskirts of town (Falmouth) and take the shuttle bus to the ferry. The shuttle turned out to be (for us) the bike bus. This was another novel experience. We all sat one side of the bus and the bikes (about twenty of them) hung on hooks on the other side. The day was not too hot, you don’t see much when it’s too hot as you cannot be bothered to make much effort and so the temperature suited us just fine.
A forty-five minute boat ride across the water to the Island which has similarities to the Isle of Wight in some respects, (except that the homes all seemed to be very very up market). Like the Isle of Wight ferry, it is crazy expensive to take your car across so the bikes were the only way to go. I pedalled myself to a standstill and had to stop for a beer whilst the bike shop mended a puncture in my new bike! At the end of the day I was well worn.
Rhode Island. My son-in-law Bruce’s employer has spent a fortune building real estate in this part of the world. He has had constructed a tower block at a cost of $400 million and several houses, one of which we got to stay in for the weekend. It’s not every weekend that you are loaned a $2.4 million house but that’s the way the guy works. You had better be prepared to work 2.4 million hours per week for the privilege.
Bruce gave us the guided tour of the complex and it was all amazing, especially the penthouse that was looking for a new owner, someone with $15million spare change but it was lovely.
We are back to reality now, our house on wheels but it is ours and this is not difficult living. It was nice to make our way home aided by our new sat nav.
Last proper camp tomorrow in New York State for three nights then down to Quakertown, PA to clear out all our stuff before putting our “house” into store for a few months
Newburgh, near Albany, New York State.
Deep in the woods but the weather is very hot and we are glad of the shade and the air-conditioning,
We have two days here, we can spend a day getting sorted before the trip into storage and a day sight seeing, the only problem is my wife’s over active imagination. Day one sort all our stuff but only after we have been here there and everywhere. Day two is well planned but the sorting out sort of got missed!!
As if the site owners know that they have to beat the opposition and they have heard about Christmas in July at Montreal and not to be outdone by the “Hayride” offered on most camp grounds, this lot have a beautiful old fire engine that they thrash round the campground loaded with kids each day! Sirens and bells going flat out, all good fun!
Day one and we haven’t had breakfast at “Cracker Barrel” for a long time and there is one locally. This is a country style sort of place, a bit up market but very old world and nice, we just had to go. It was not much further to West Point Military Academy and it would have been rude not to go. The next day we drove into the Catskill Mountains and visited the Belleayre Ski resort. This was a not desperately exciting place but it was all trees and sunshine in a relaxed manner so it was good. Sod all was achieved re packing today!
We have fair internet connection here; this is normally free on most campgrounds we’ve been to. I note with dismay that the British Camping and Caravanning Club are offering this service at £4 per hour, an outrageous fee!
My new bike was getting scratched against the side of the truck bed as was the truck bed itself and so I dived into “Lowes” (DIY superstore) and bought some timber to sort the problem. The timber was very cheap and not the usual crap “white deal” that we have in B&Q, this was respectable hardwood that would make something durable, what a pity that I only have limited tools here, one has to have some tools but eventually one has to draw the line. Lowes is like B&Q and it is easy to see where B&Q got the idea from, to be more precise, go to “Home Depot” next time you are in the USA and you will feel very, very “at home” like you would not believe. The prices are different of course but the stuff on sale is a similar sort of stuff, same colour, same layout!
Time to move on back to Philadelphia area and empty the RV of most of the stuff before it goes into store. There’s just one problem, this morning we had an e-mail from our friendly RV dealer, who normally stores our RV, that says he is shutting down his business in a few days!
We have had a hunt round the dealers after we had parked up north of Caroline’s house in the mud of Tohickon Family Campground. They cannot help the rain (and we have had a lot!) but the place does quickly turn into a bog with little provocation. I must find somewhere else to start and end our trips.
Caroline grabbed a phone and found us a really good storage deal not far away so that will be our next and final stop for the R.V. for this year

From Montreal looking back

Muskoka 5th July
Parry Sound is actually on Georgian Bay, round the corner from Lake Huron. We have moved on from there after meeting up with our Canadian friends Gary and Judy who we met in North Carolina last October.
Gary and Judy arrived to spend a little time with us at Parry Sound, home of the world’s largest fresh water Archipelago. There are thirty thousand Islands here and a boat trip convinced me that if you’ve seen one etc… We were told that an island has to be one acre in size to be called an island, anything smaller than that doesn’t count.
A boat is a definite must here, some folks even have floatplanes at the bottom of the garden whereas I only have fairies!
Gary and Judy escorted us to our new campground, about sixty miles from Parry Sound and close (by Canadian standards) to where they live. An invite to dinner was immediately offered (and accepted), and so we leapt back into the truck and headed for the boondocks.
Our friends live a ways off the “pavement” (tarmac) on the very edge of the water and we were treated to a very pleasant ride on the lake in the power boat. It was interesting that full throttle could be used on the 50 horse motor without my lunch being spilled over the side. The two Labrador dogs like to sit in the prow but not when we are going flat out!
I am pleased to see that these guys over here and in America have got all the toys that a man needs, it annoys me greatly that it is not so in the U.K.
Just to illustrate how out in the wilds these guys live, Gary and Judy had seen a bear in their yard only a few days earlier.
There was an evening concert in the park which we attended, the country music star was playing and singing at a speed of dead slow, we all nearly fell asleep.
We have been trying to play golf again as we do on rare occasions. The 9-hole par three course on the campground had so many trees, bunkers and water hazards, that we almost lost a ball per hole! This is not a course for novices.
We stayed at Gary and Judy’s house for a few days. I was amazed at the wildlife in the garden; there were red squirrels, grey squirrels and would you believe, black squirrels! We also had chipmunks and Mallards, and lots of beautiful birds.
The day dawned that I had to paddle a kayak but it was no problem. Gary had told us previously that he and Judy have a collection of kayaks and when the moment arrived I was given a kayak built for two with a large beam. My wife who has the large beam got the racing kayak. This was all lots of fun and a memorable event. Then Judy suggested a swim, she said swimming off the dock was OK, but I was deliberately slow at getting my clothes off (fortunately), and Freda was first in the water. As the video was capturing the moment, she didn’t like to hesitate about it!
Not for the first time this side of the “pond” we attended a vintage boat show. These boats are all about varnished wood and beautiful styling, a combination that is hard to put together and anyone who has had a boat will tell you that keeping things that way requires lots of hard work.
If you own a boat in Canada, you need a boat house. The kind of place that will protect your boat in a serious snow storm and also fitted with a hoist so you can lift the boat out of the water, you don’t want it crushed by the Ice!
A local Old Tyme Steam fair was nothing compared to what we have seen at the Great Dorset Steam Fair in England but there was some strange and interesting stuff to be seen.
A memorable stay with Gary and Judy in the Muskoka region,
We moved 125 miles (perhaps I should really be working in kilometers like the Canadians do) in a south east direction to spend time with horse farming friends, Debbie and John. They found us a convenient spot outside the hay barn, not too far to stagger at the end of an evening!
We saw some of the local countryside and because Canada has a lot of water (don’t ask about the mosquitoes!) it has lots of canals and locks.
The local town had another spectacular lock with a 48 foot rise and fall. This is actually a two stage staircase on a very pretty part of the outskirts.
By pure chance, there was a boat due and I was talking to the boat owner, before he dropped out of sight and into the depths of the lock,
It transpired that a buddy of his who previously owned a nightclub on the Island of Jersey, (Channel Islands) was actually one of the nuttier customers that I had had at my garage! His pal had arrived fresh off the channel island ferry at my garage by taxi. “I want a car, that one, I want it now” he said producing a briefcase stuffed with readies.
Three days later I’d had a phone call from a Rolls Royce dealer in London, the guy had done a similar stunt there and the Dealer was wondering if he had stolen the car that the man wanted to trade in and the briefcase full of money! I explained that the man was a former nightclub owner from Jersey and seemed ok to me, my bank manager liked the money, what more could I ask!
I spent a little time helping John and Debbie with the haymaking and it reminded me what a bad habit work is. We enjoyed our stay on the farm but were constantly reminded that horses equal flies!
Another 130 miles east to call on yet more friends, this time folks who have connections to my Swiss domiciled cousin Sylvia and her husband Peter. We have again been made extremely welcome by Rosmarie and Peter; this time we are in Mallorytown but I do wonder if the Brits would think it large enough to give it the title of town!
Rosmarie and Peter also have a black Labrador and the usual collection of wildlife in the garden but it was a treat to see a Hummingbird at the specially designed feeder that some folks have.
The campground is nice with a heated outdoor pool and wifi but it could not be called high speed internet and phone calls over the net are a bit fraught.
We often find poor mobile (cell phone) signals on campgrounds and just use the “Skype” anyway, but eventually the penny dropped that we do not have “roaming” on our USA cell phone, that’s why the bloody thing won’t work! We won’t worry about it now as we will be back in the USA in a couple of weeks and there was a time that I thought this might be our only trip to Canada but now I’m not so sure. We like it here.
One item of wildlife so far unmentioned is the skunk. We have seen a number of these and they are a little larger than I expected. We have also found out what the smell is like. They only create a stink when they are frightened but I suppose they are entitled to be frightened when a truck is bearing down on them faster than they can run. So far the only ones that stink are lying in the road, I have driven past the same dead skunk for several days and the smell has shown no sign of decreasing yet.
We have been having a fresh study of fuel consumption and the onboard computer tells us that when not dragging our home behind us we are doing 18.5 Miles per US gallon (24.2 miles per imp gallon), not bad when I remember the old Ford Zodiac Mk III doing 14 per gallon.
When our house is tacked onto the rear we manage only 11 mpg (US) or 13 miles per Imperial gallon, mustn’t grumble even if Canadian diesel cost a ridiculous £1.79 per US gallon or £2.14 per English gallon. It is important to remember that the whole kit and caboodle weighs twelve tons.
For all you pretend Spaniards, I did not bother to work it out as Ltrs per 100 Km, It’s been a long day and today we have moved to Ottawa, a leisurely trundle in the sunshine.
Well, we have “done” Ottawa and enjoyed it even if the weather did spoil things at the end of the day. We knew it would all go pear-shaped so we had planned to do outside things in the morning and indoor stuff later. Indoor stuff was inside the Canadian Parliament building and very interesting (and very English) it was too!
Outside, this was a very busy city with very French looking buildings and the chatter of French voices on the street, lots of water and rivers and even more canals. There is a staircase of eight locks alongside the Parliament building and maintained very well as a tourist attraction. The Brits could learn from this as we have a “staircase” of very grand proportions at Devizes, Wiltshire maintained very badly. What should be a tourist attraction to be proud of is barely scratching by, with no help from the government.
Ontario normally has superb weather at this time of year, not so this year. The weather Gods have deserted them and perhaps global warming is having more effect than anticipated. The weather is rubbish, big time thunderstorm today and lots of cloud, some days with temps in the low twenties. Low temps can be a good thing, we know how wearing a steady 32 centigrade can be but a normal amount of sunshine would be nice.
Canada is nice but just not as “sharp” as the USA. Campsite internet can be very poor to non existent, service in shops etc is just lacking that extra fizz that we have become used to; cars are generally smaller than the USA and roads a little narrower. It’s all in the economics with a smaller population to pay for a greater area so some things will never match the USA but the people have all been very nice!
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U.S.A. and Canada 2009

July 3rd Parry Sound, Canada.

We started this year’s American trip with a weekend in New Jersey, that’s the bit just south of New York. We went with my daughter and her husband to her mother-in-law’s caravan on the Jersey shore. I don’t think the Brits would want to pull this caravan down the leafy lanes of Dorset with a length of thirty eight feet. There was plenty of room for all five of us.
The following week we set off to collect our “home” and camped twenty miles from my daughter; we find it best to be sure we have everything in hand before disappearing over the horizon, and we had not seen our “fifth wheel” for over six months.
We spent a day or three near Quakertown, just getting our fifth wheel up to speed, stocking with groceries and other essentials like booze! We had to paddle about in the mud for a day or two, weather most unlike we should have had.
When we eventually left the Tohickan campground, we had 250 miles to cover on not the best roads. This was a bit of a challenge for my first day in a long time, behind the wheel and dragging our house. By this I mean tugging a total length of 54 feet and six tons of fifth wheeler, and my own six tons of truck, but at the end of the day we nicely parked at Watkins Glen.
We did allow ourselves to become sidetracked en route when we realized that the American National Soaring Association had a museum not far off our route, and so a quick phone call to discover how large the car park might be (we need them to be definitely not small, just think how much room I need to turn this rig around) and we had a small detour organized quickly. Some you win etc and this was not one of them. It was nice but not startling.



Watkins Glen
The motoring nuts among you will remember that Watkins Glen was the venue for the American Grand Prix in days of yore. As luck would have it, they were having a race weekend for race cars from days of yore while we were there. This was a three day event for the race cars but not for us. We were camped close enough to hear the cars during the daytime but it was not as noisy as being at Le Mans!
Watkins Glen’s main claim to fame is the spectacular glen that has nineteen waterfalls and lovely scenery. This is a NY State Park and they thoughtfully provide a return shuttle from the top of the glen. The Americans quickly cottoned on to the fact that you could ride the shuttle to the top and then walk the mile and a half downhill more easily. You will be proud to note that we walked both ways, it’s 832 steps going up, (plus lots of pathway) The walk was one of the most beautiful sights that I have seen for a long time and must come very close to the top of them all!
We did see more than our share of waterfalls and yet we still had Niagara to come. We thought we might be “waterfalled out” before we got there!
The Finger Lakes region, is the wine region, or one of them. We found a winery open for tasting for a very modest one dollar a head. We just had to do that, and had some fun including a guided tour of the wine making and brewing facility. (They made beer too.) We did expect to be “strong-armed” into buying wine, having sampled the “degustation” in the Loire Valley in France, but that was not the case here. I did buy a few bottles and am very pleased with the result.
We spent the Sunday at the race track, cheap admission and we could go anywhere we liked. We had a great day in the sun and were glad we took our bikes to help get around. We treated ourselves to an ice cream at one point, one dollar each. Can you imagine that at Silverstone?

Canandaigua We moved a hundred miles to the northern end of the Finger Lakes area and had a few days at a rather nice campground, cycling the Erie Canal and other places, before going on to Niagara.
We had a bright weather window of opportunity at Niagara, a little cloud on the first day improving over the next few days. We elected to leave the falls until the third day, having seen them before. The falls themselves are there because the two lakes, Huron and Ontario, are at greatly different heights. There is a lot of shipping with quite large boats on the lakes and to move from one lake to the next requires a canal of gigantic proportions, The Welland canal.
The Welland canal has the largest locks that I have ever seen, lock three has a rise and fall of 47 feet and another of the locks claims to have the greatest length in the world.
We also visited the botanical gardens, St Catharine’s and Niagara on the lake, and finally, in bright sunshine, we visited Niagara Falls.
If you park your car opposite the falls, it will cost $20 but if you look just a little further along the road it’s only $4 per hour. Look a little further still, and it’s free! Park and ride – our bikes, that is.
Last time we were here, fifteen years ago, we had steady rain, today we had perfect weather and we thought there was more water going over the falls. We will check our picture album when we are next in Spain, and compare.
Time to move on, another seventy miles.
Toronto
Toronto was a short blast of some seventy miles from Niagara and it was the kind of day one is pleased to sit in air conditioned comfort, I almost wished the drive was longer. Our new garden outside our ever moving house is just a little nicer and more spacious than the last. We are not far from the pool but as yet it is untried.
Day two and we had a drive into the big city after an outdoor breakfast in the sunshine. The day became a little overcast and as soon as we had parked and unloaded the bikes, we were struck by a thunderstorm and so we sat in the cab watching the torrential rain and relaxed for a while.
We had a little cycle around the Waterfront Trail before an excellent light lunch. The CN Tower, claimed to be the tallest in the world, was almost engulfed in the low cloud and the queue to get to the viewing platform was discouraging. We gave it a miss. Perhaps today was not a great adventure, but it was fun and that’s the bottom line.
Day three and we went to investigate the town of Hamilton. This was the place where, in another life, I was once planning to emigrate to. It would have been an excellent choice but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
During the evening we did another adventure, something that neither of us had done before; we went to the local horseracing track where they had been advertising the “Pepsi $1,500,000” all week.
We found we could enter the track for free and that the $1.5 million was all on race number seven! All the other races were for a miserable forty grand or so, just to add insult; this was for Trotting. There were no seven stone weaklings sitting on these horses, these horses didn’t even carry the jockey! (They had to drag one behind on a sulkie)
All good fun and another new experience.
Owen Sound, 96 miles north of Toronto. We set off from Toronto on minor roads in the drizzle but we saw no point in rushing towards a soaking when we arrive and set up our mobile home. We just cruised for three hours. We arrived to find dry weather that later turned to sunshine. The campground itself is quite pretty but communications are dismal with no internet unless you trip to the office, no signal on the phone and only five TV channels. The ‘net’ is particularly dismal as we normally make all our phone calls courtesy of Skype.
We eventually find that the net is a satellite service and is badly affected by weather so we can be down to 5Kbs/sec on occasion.
The folks next door have a bird feeder, the birds drop bits of food to the ground and then we have the sight of a family of chipmunks there twice a day to re-fuel! Quite novel to us Brits.
We had a good walk through the forest yesterday but today does not promise great things, perhaps a day to catch up on those boring chores that we have to do to survive like washing and ironing but we did have a short trip into town.
Tomorrow is Canada day and we will be travelling again, this time to Parry Sound, a distance of 140 miles.
Parry Sound
Almost a sea side resort but of course it’s a lake, Huron. We made the journey in three hours which pleased me as the roads were not great. Canada has not the population to pay for top class roads the way the Americans have, and so I don’t moan about the quality. Considering the economics, the Canadians do very well.
Today July 1st, is Canada Day and everyone celebrates. We went into town in the afternoon, just to see what was in the offing. There was all the stuff on the quayside that you might expect with ice cream and other stalls, and on the band stand were the nature experts giving brief chats to the children about Canadian wildlife, mainly snakes and quite fascinating. A quick inspection of the schedule showed that we were to have fireworks at ten pm and a rock band at eight, good enough to make us return later that evening.
We still have no phone and p*** poor internet! And another thing, the weather is distinctly lacking sunshine!! The weather should be around twenty eight this time of year but today it might make 21 with luck!

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