Road Trip Through Terrific Toronto Traffic

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On our final morning in Niagara, I looked out our window and was surprised to notice that somebody had turned off the water! Okay, so maybe I just couldn’t see the water. The fog/mist was so heavy that we couldn’t even see the street below. The Horseshoe Falls did gradually reappear as the morning emerged. Today we planned to finish our road trip through Canada to reach Montreal. We had been warned that there was roadwork approaching Toronto that forced traffic down to just two lanes. Despite this warning, when my GPS offered us three routes to Montreal, we decided against the one that went back into the states, did a double international border crossing, and took two extra hours. We were looking at a seven hour trip as it was. We decided to get started and look for a place to eat along the road. I had gotten gas in the states before crossing into Canada, so expected to have no trouble reaching Montreal without refueling.

After driving towards the freeway, I finally concluded from watching others that the “right-turn-on-red” law had migrated across the border. When we got to the freeway, the speed limit was posted as 100 KPH (about 60 MPH); but, the signs are small white signs with black lettering that you might dismiss as a route sign except for the small “KPH” included on the sign. The large sign that informed you of all the bad things that can happen to you for speeding tickets in excess of 50 KPH over posted limits; however, are not hard to miss. Some of those bad things are $10,000 fine and loss of license. Later signs inform you of the lesser fines for going 120 KPH, 130 KPH or 140 KPH. I putted along at about 105 KPH and found most traffic going a bit faster… but nobody was up at that 90 MPH level that would qualify for the big time. The lesser fines ranged from about $100 to $300 dollars. We didn’t see a lot of patrol cars, but there are plenty of signs warning of aerial surveillance as well.

We finally decided to get off of the freeway to look for a place to eat and wound up driving several miles through a variety of sleepy neighborhood and business district streets. We did come across several Tim Hornton’s, but that wasn’t what we were looking for. We eventually broke down and settled on a McDonald’s. Sharon got her “Big Breakfast”; while, I had to settle for an “Egg McMuffin”.

We got back on our way, and we did hit that heavy traffic around Toronto that we had been warned about. Obviously, the roads and interchange lanes have changed some since 2009 when I bought my Toyota Prius, because the GPS mapping from that time don’t quite match the roads today. More than once I’ve been guided to the wrong side for changing routes; and, I had to double back to get onto the final 300 mile stretch of freeway heading towards Montreal. This freeway had frequent rest areas, about every 30 miles or so, that concentrated several fast food places and gas service. Burger King is quite prominent. A&W Root Beer seemed to be present at every other rest area.



We had more GPS problems in Montreal, but finally did get things sorted out. We needed to make several passes by our destination Fairfield Inn due to road construction but finally were able to follow some strategically placed signs pointing out the new route to the entrance. We chose this hotel for its very attractive long term parking, allowing us to leave the car for two weeks and stay for one night for about $160. Compare that for the $20 per day parking they want at the port, this works out very well.

So tomorrow it's a cab to the port and boarding the Maasdam for 14 days. We're definitely ready for that and hopefully the blogs will get more interesting once we board too 😊

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Comments

[freespiritwithagypsysoul]

Hi I just wanted to say that I loved reading your blog I live in Niagara Falls and have lived all around the Toronto area and I found that your blog was very well written and accurate I cant wait to read more about your travels :)