Back in the USA!!!!!

September 18, 2012

It’s raining and our experience now tells us, rainy days are good for driving. We have come a long way today.  We started out our day well north of Montreal and are now in Ontario, continuing to follow the St. Lawrence river southwest.  This is becoming a story of the St. Lawrence.  Again, a very different feel here around the Montreal area.  More urban and familiar.  We see many US stores including a couple of Walmarts.   (There are Walmarts everywhere we have traveled in Canada for anyone wondering.)  This is a large highway with little personality  so we aren’t getting the local flavor.

We are ambivalent about where to stay now, stop at a Walmart (they allow you to park your RV overnight) or find a campground.  I’m leaning toward campground.  One last hurrah for Canada.  We’re also both thinking expediency.  We want to get down to Watertown to see family.  We decide to go over to the local road at Cornwall in Southern Ontario.  I’m driving.  This is our first town outside of Quebec and our last town of Canada. It has a different feel to it - industrial town that has seen better days, but I’m glad to be out of Quebec.  It feels more like the States.  We try to avoid the center of town with our big RV and end up going right threw it.  We see children clutching parents’  hands pouring out of a dance class, warm sweaters over pink toile  - laughing and prancing.  This is probably the image I’ll remember of the small town.  It feels good to see such a familiar image.

We leave town and it’s getting dark.  We’re anxious to find something now.  Neal checked ahead on the internet and we know there are plenty of campgrounds around.  We see a campground advertised - open through October 5th.  “Here! “ I say. “Good!” says Neal. We turn down the road and into what appears to be a provincial park along the river. Now we know the US is just across the river! 

The road takes us over a bridge to an island.  That will be nice, an island!   But the island ends and we take another bridge to another island; then another!  Each island has manicured areas, soccer fields, shuttered buildings, closed gates.  And the islands continue on.  We pull over when we see a building with a light on but find no one.  This place has an abandoned feel to it.  On the very next island we find the campground!  And it’s beautiful.  Filled with RVs and some tents.  We pick a spot near the water - our GPS indicates the RV is half in Canada, half in the US!


Next day to Upper Canada, a reenactment village.  Here are some pictures: 

Upper Canada Village

Boarders have been a striking feature throughout the trip.  How can something so human made and arbitrary, create so many differences?  We could swim over to the US in minutes and find a different  currency, culture, communications and legal system and more. As we were driving along 132 in Quebec, I felt we had journeyed deep into the heart of a foreign land but when I looked at a map, I saw that the Maine and the US boarder were only 25 miles away traveling due East!

Next day we arrive in the USA. Hallelujah!  Another sparkling day and no problems at the boarder. Though our trip through Canada was exciting, I’m elated to be home. Cell phone is working again. Cheaper gas and food prices. No expensive, anemic rolls of paper towels. Familiar radio and TV programs.  US currency.  Familiar people and manners. The great sense of personal freedom and power.  I’m a citizen.  Home.  I want to listen to Bruce Springsteen all day!

Gwen's Computer Painting September 2012

What’s Old Is New

September 25, 2012

It’s so great to be back in the States.  I can’t quite explain it, we loved Canada. I suppose the best way to say it is “there is no place like home.”  

Since the US is so familiar, I wonder if the US experience can stand up to the excitement of the Canada experience. Now our nights and sometimes are days are cold.  The leaves are changing - reds and golds beginning to appear. But the US is surprising me - at least subtly so.  The serendipity of our travel in Canada has followed us into the US and its keeping us open to experiencing life on the road with open eyes.  

We come down through the finger lakes region of New York.  Here there are beautiful vistas down to the lake below.  Vineyards abound.  We are trying to reach a wooded campground near Angelica, New York.  But we hit a detour around the center of downtown Angelica because of a civil war reenactment taking place there.  We mistakenly drive into the parking lot and are told we can’t back out, we must move through it, leading us straight to the town green and the ending of the reenactment.  Soldiers and women in period costumes mingle with on-lookers.  We inch along.  Tents are still set up, along with fires and men cooking using implements of the day.  We move along with the crowd.

Eventually, we reach the end of the busiest part of the street and are off to the forests surrounding the town.  This feels really off the beaten path.  We find a friendly and largely empty wooded campground with lots of seasonal trailers - campers who keep their trailer at the campground all summer. The manager says she never gets anyone from Connecticut.  It’s quite local.  But that’s been one of the themes of our experience - it’s all very local, wherever we go.  Most people are not moving around a lot - even in the US. 

Lake Ontario

Neal and Gwen take a bike ride while Phillip and I stay put.  They come back with their report:  “What did you see Gwen?” I ask.  “Nothing.” (She was expecting pizza restaurants and produce markets like the ones in Caraquet).  But Dad has more information about the ride.  It turns out that they stopped at several “stores” along the road that were run by Amish.  One was a man, along with his young son, making leather products - sheep skins, belts, keys chains.   Another was a furniture maker with one piece of furniture in his shop. Neal says it was a custom business.  They were all dressed in traditional Amish clothing.   We also noticed some Amish people in a carriage in Watertown, NY a few days ago - we were told that their population is in Watertown is growing.  I didn’t expect to see them anywhere in NY!  And I didn’t expect to see them so readily, living there lives along side us. 

This all is teaching me, 1) the US is not the culturally homogenous place I tend to think it is, 2) there is so much that is uniquely American that I am just beginning to appreciate,  (Civil war, the Amish for example), 3) the RV, our bikes, and our loosely planned schedule, continues to help us to experience “real life”  and people is the process of living, in the places we visit.

Lake Ontario