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!

You can see the latest pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/arthur.croasdell/USAAndCanada2009?feat=directlink

At the top left you can click to view as a slide show and then click F11 to view full screen