Into Canada!!

(OUR VERIZON INTERNET SIGNAL IS KIND OF CRAMMED UP HERE WITH SO MANY PEOPLE ACCESSING THE TOWER. I WILL ADD PHOTOS TO THIS POST LATER)

Our Cracker Barrel snooze was rudely interrupted in the morning by the sound of dumpster trucks at 5:30 a.m.  But we really can't complain for a free spot safe and out of the storms and the flooding. By 6:00 a.m. we had coffee perking and took showers. Then we headed over to the nearby Menards for more bottled water, salsa sauce, and root beer. Steve loves the Sprecher brand of sodas that they carry at Menards. Especially the root beer and the cream. 

It was going to be on and off drizzly and rainy all day according to the weather man. But happily, the storm had now moved on to the east.

We decided to head straight east across the thumb of Michigan towards a county campground along the shoreline. It was beautiful country roads and scenic vistas, dotted with many large windmills. It kept drizzling on and off as we headed east. When we did reach the campground, we weren't too impressed. It was right by the road and all the sites were right next to each other. Camper after camper after camper. So we turned south and headed along the shore line to scope out a few other county and state parks.

We drove past the Lexington area and their county park which wasn't much different. All of the private campgrounds we drove by were packed in like sardines. There really wasn't anything nice about it. 

So we decided to pull off at a roadside stop that was very nice. We were able to make up some late breakfast. Used up the rest of my ham from Cracker Barrel and we also used up the rest of our eggs. We were getting ready to cross the border into Canada!

The list on the website of the newest prohibited items going into Canada are things like poultry, eggs, fresh meats, and any root vegetables or produce and citrus. We had just eaten up the last of our two potatoes the day before, and really only had a few little things left to toss in a bag. I was sad to lose the rest of my raw carrots. But we can pick more of them up once we get over the border.

Then we gathered all of our items to be ready on the dashboard as soon as we reached the border. We had our passports of course, our current covid shot records, and Binney's health certificate from the vet, along with her rabies vaccination information.  

We also prepared with putting all of our cash in our wallet or purse and kept them on our body. In case we had to exit the vehicle, we had everything with us that we would need.

Incidentally, when we travel we separate our types of credit cards. Instead of us each carrying the same cards for the same accounts, we make sure Steve carries the American Express and I carry the MasterCard. That way if either of us happens to lose our wallets, we still would have a card to get back home again! 

We have friends who had lost/or stolen his wallet and after reporting their credit card stolen, the replacements were only able to be mailed back to their home address! Because their accounts were frozen, she was unable to use the duplicate cards in her purse to finish their vacation and get back home. They ended up having to have their daughter wire enough cash money to a bank, and use cash the rest of the way home. Not a nice way to get through your vacation.

So once we had everything set and ready, we were able to drive on down to Port Huron to cross the border. The current time on the border crossing on the Waze app said zero waiting. That sounded good to us.

We arrived near the ramp to get up near the toll booth. Keep in mind, this is just the toll to get on the bridge. This has nothing to do with the Canadian customs yet… 

The traffic was backed up. We actually waited 1 hour! Yes 1 hour to get up this little curve and merge with the other traffic to get up to the toll booths. When we got to the toll booths only 3 booths were operating for 5 lanes of traffic. Everyone was having to take turns and merge to get together to get close enough. It was crazy!!!! 

Once we paid our meager little $3 toll fee to cross the bridge, now we got over to the Canadian side. There was absolutely no waiting at all!

The friendly young man in the toll booth took our passports and asked us where we were from. WISCONSIN We said.  We clearly gave one word answers. That's the best way to handle it. 

Then he asked us how long were we planning to stay, and Steve just said scenic vacation. He asked for a general itinerary. I replied Pinery Provincial Park, maybe Algonquin Provincial Park and then Niagara Falls. 

Then he asked us what was the license plate of our vehicle? I recited it and then he said "and that is Michigan correct?" 

Aha! A trick question! We had just said to him that it was Wisconsin.

So he smiled and gave us back our passports and said to have a enjoyable vacation.

That was it! No questions about firearms (which we had none), no questions about food, not even a question about dogs or anybody else in the vehicle with us. It was easy peasy and we were out of there in less than 2 minutes flat. 

We cruised along and were soon away from any residential area, and back in the rolling farm lands and beautiful scenic woods.

We headed on up to Pinery Provincial Park along the Eastern shore of Lake Huron. Just before the park we found a little grocery store. We were able to stock up on fresh veggies and a new dozen of eggs.

When we arrived at this huge provincial park of 800 plus campsites, we shook the dice to take the gamble and see if we could find a campsite. 

The very friendly girl at the entrance office easily found us a campsite for two nights. She got us registered and accessed our account that we had already started online with the Ontario Park system. Within a minute she had us registered and handed out a scanner for our credit card and handed us a map to our campsite. That was very easy!!

P.S. our credit card converts it back to us currency. So the 4750 a night plus tax came out to $107 canadian. That corresponded back to $80.25 US. So two nights camping on an electric site was only $40 a night. 

We drove on through this beautiful park. It's absolutely huge! All of the campsites are in little clusters and loop sections so you don't feel like you are part of one huge conglomeration of a place.

We made it to what's called the Riverside loop and worked our way back to the #800's of campsites. We made one incorrect looping and then found our actual loop with our number. Our site was nice and level and in rich shady woods. There's lots of brush surrounding as well as tall trees. We can barely see only one of our neighbors.

We walked the site and moved the picnic table over to be able to park the motorhome in the best spot. When we looked down on the table here we're two "LOONIES"!  Canadian $1 coins.

We had already gotten some extra coins at the grocery store exchanged so we could have coins for the laundry that's located over by the shower building. Yes, Canadian provincial parks usually have a washer and dryer in the same buildings with their showers and restrooms. We were thinking it might be time to throw in a load, so we wanted to make sure we had enough coinage.

We turned the camper around so we could pull in at a more advantageous angle. We were perfectly level and that was that.

It was pretty blustery.... The winds were blowing and it was drizzly rain on and off. Way up high in the canopy of trees, they were really whipping back and forth. 

I had pre cooked up some chili back at home in frozen in ziploc bags in the freezer to take along. That was one of my solutions to not taking raw meat in our freezer. By pre-cooking the food I had hoped to not have any complications at the border. Well as it turned out, he didn't ask us anything about any food.

I boiled up some radiatoire noodles and mixed it into make the chili go little farther. What a perfect thing to have on a damp in drizzly day.

After supper, the rain quit so we were able to take a little walk around the campground and stretch our legs. Binney had a lot of things to sniff, she wanted to find out more about these Canadian dogs. Lol

We scoped out the location of the nearest shower building and laundry facility. I was thinking about hopping in the public showers for myself, and conserving some of the water in our motorhome fresh tank. We can only carry 30 gallons or so of freshwater. But also our campsite is located right next to a water faucet and drinking fountain. We could tap on there if our hose reaches. We will see. 

We came back to the motorhome and decided to run a scan to see what kind of TV stations we could find in the area. Is luck would have it we found one station. But it was in French lol.

So we popped on the Weboost antenna booster for Steve's cell phone and set it to tether to our Roku stick. We watched some TV before bed but I think it was dithering a lot due to the large volume of people trying to access local towers. We had plenty of signal strength, but the uploads and downloads were being compromised I think by too much traffic. So instead we gave up and popped in a DVD before bedtime.

Now it is Tuesday morning and the rain has stopped. The sun is out and it's going to be a beautiful day. We are hoping to meet up with some camping RVing blogging friends that we've known for years but never met face to face.