Michigan to Ontario to Massachusetts

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German pancakes and coffee had already been prepared for us as we walked in to say good-bye to our friends and hosts. It was a great breakfast and Katy sent us off with a load of goodies. On the road by 8 am, we gassed up the van and drove south on Route 75 to Flint and then headed east to the Canadian Border. Because we had the shotgun, we had to pull over to have them examine the gun and look at the serial number, which only took a few minutes.

We drove straight through Canada, thinking about our friends in England, Nick and Sandra, as we drove through London (Ontario). We ate and fueled the van in the US, so we didn’t need to deal with anymore Canadian money. Coming back into the US, we picked the wrong lane. The self-important, little, squirrelly eyed border agent, just out of boot camp, with the personality of a radish, felt the need to interrogate every individual with asinine questions,. This lane was the only lane that it took 10 minutes per car to interview, instead of the 2-3 minutes in all the other lanes. We were there waiting for 45 minutes as the other lanes around us zoomed on by.

Dave did very well keeping his composure, through the asinine questions this idiot asked, but I really thought he was going to lose it, when the agent’s last question was “What were you doing in Alaska?” Dave sat there stunned for a minute and I thought some expletive was about to be expounded on this twerp, but Dave calmly said, “Seeing this beautiful country of ours.” Realizing it was a stupid question, he handed us back our passports and let us go.

Dave and Ellen, our friends in the Buffalo area, who we were hoping to stop and see, were not at home. When I reached Ellen, she herself was traveling from the Adirondacks toward home, but would not be there until late. So Dave and I decided to keep driving and figured we would sleep in the van somewhere after dark. We stopped several times on the New York State Thruway and were pleasantly surprised that they have free WI-FI in their service areas. Way to go New York! I was able to get out a few blogs that we were behind on.

The temps were in the 80’s and so we kept driving, hoping it would be cool enough to sleep in the back of the van. Exhausted, we finally stopped as soon as we got into MA, around 10:30 pm, at the first service area, in Lee. The temp had dropped to the high 60’s. Dave drove 800 miles today. Two more hours of driving tomorrow morning and we will be home.

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Photos

Lock
First time I saw a lock being used

Entering Ontario
Entering Canada for the 4th and last time this trip

Enter back into the USA
5 cars in front of us took 45 mins