Back in the USA

Coming back to the States was a bit like coming back into civilization: people everywhere, cars, traffic jams.... That wasn't helped by the fact that it was peak holiday season there, which made it quite hard to find vacant sites on campgrounds at all, not to speak of the beautiful, spots on the seashore we had envisaged to occupy all by ourselves! Bummer!  The other thing is a phenomenon we hadn't know about before: Quite reliably every afternoon  there is a cold breeze coming in from the Pacific Ocean - and I mean, really cold, so maybe 10 to 13 degrees Celsius -, bringing with it dense fog  to kill off the warmth the sun might provide otherwise. This is a real killer. Combine this with the overcrowded beaches and parks you'll see our reasoning in leaving the coast after a drive around the Olympic National Park east of Seattle and through some - actually quite amazing - redwood forest in the South of the park. We tried a bit of the Oregon coast before retiring for a week at Eugene, Oregon.

 Fog moving in near Astoria, Oregon

It wasn't all bad on the tour around Mount Olympus, at the start we had a couple of nice days at the Victorian town of Port Townsend, some arty community with cozy town center, old beautifully redecorated cinema, a marina in walking distance to the center, all nice and enjoyable. As mentioned, there was the Redwood Highway, a smallish road amongst huuuuge Redwood trees and lots of short walks into the forest.

That little red bug at the tree is Claudia and she's 1.6 m or 5'4" tall

Seattle: left after 2 hours or so, not ugly, but not great either, didn't do it for us.


In Oregon we had hoped for a bit of space, still no way to get some, so we finally gave up on the coast at Newport, heading for Eugene. We just wanted some place to rest after a lot of driving through Yukon, British Columbia, then Washington and now Oregon. In Eugene we found the right spot. They have a well kept county park close to town there, great service, not too busy and still close enough that we could do most of our stuff by bicycle. Eugene itself is ok, nothing special, a farmers market to visit, a cinema to visit...
After a week here we felt ready to attack our next destination: Crater Lake National Park.

Back to Yukon and British Columbia

It is an incredible ride from Tok, Alaska, to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. For about 100 miles the road is often deformed by frost heaves, forcing especially trailers to a speed of sometimes no more than 20 mph, definitely making for an interesting ride otherwise ;-) .
 
Claudia and I love Yukon, lots of  space, nice people should you happen to meet some, magnificent landscapes! As the road via Chicken and Dawson City is closed near the Alaska-Canada border due to  a washed out road since spring, we return the same way we went up to Alaska.

Wildfire smoke at Highway 37 near Boya Lake

When we entered British Columbia shortly after visiting Whitehorse again, we just made it onto Highway 37 South to Prince George and later Whistler and Vancouver. Shortly after we passed the junction onto HW 37 wildfires closed that junction and it remained closed for the next 3 days. We saw the huge smoke clouds from quite a distance in the evening, an amazing sight. Initially I thought it was a thunderstorm brewing but it became clear not much later that this must be a wildfire... and actually an early end to our trip through British Columbia.

Salmon near Hyder, Alaska

We stayed for 2 nights at this beautiful provincial park on Boya Lake before returning to the road. On our trip South it became more and more obvious that there must be a lot more wildfires because the sky got hazy first and then smoke was clearly visible against the mountain tops and later like fog down to ground level. We decided that it can't be healthy to stay in that smoke for a prolonged time and rather rushed through to get out of it.

 Marshland near Stewart, British Columbia

A short relief from the smoke came in form of  a little side trip to Stewart and Hyder in Alaska again, at the Southern end of Highway 37. Stewart is a nice little township on the Canadian side of the border with Hyder being in Alaska. In Hyder, there is another Salmon spawning creek where grizzlies are supposed to wait for them and .... You get the picture! Again, there were of course no grizzlies, at least we saw some 30 or so salmon swimming around and preparing their nest, whatever they do in those creeks. However, some really good thing came of our trip to Hyder: unbeknown to us there is a glacier, called Salmon Glacier, where you can drive a gravel road up to a peak high in the mountains with a beautiful vista over the glacier and the surrounding mountains. So that's what we did and boy, was it worth the drive and even more the cleanup required on Shorty afterward. All that dust.....
If I have never mentioned it before: Alaska offers some incredible landscapes!

That's the road up the peak at Salmon Glacier, the glacier below

 IT was also very interesting to drive through Hyder. We spoke to a local running a kind of visitors information 'office' and he told us that there is actually no law enforcement in that part of Alaska, nobody pays tax, no police, no nothing, just a couple of ramshackle huts and some tourists indulging themselves on cheap booze.

Some 50 kilometers on that road got some dust on good old Shorty

After this side trip it still took us a couple of days to get out of the increasingly dense smoke as it only cleared out when we approached Squamish and Vancouver. This was a real shame as we missed out on the views on a beautiful stretch of road on Highway 99 from Lilloeet  to Whistler.

 Salmon Glacier, it definitely was worth the effort!

We had stayed in Vancouver for a week last year so this time we only did some shopping for groceries before continuing to the Canada-USA border.

Anchorage and Kenai Peninsula

Oh dear, I'm running behind 2 or 3 weeks now with my blog... Well, anyhow: 

On our arrival in Anchorage is was raining again. This may have influenced our view of the town but it seemed pretty bland, boring. The funniest thing is actually the main visitor center. It is guarded like Fort Knox, x-ray for Claudia's backpack and metal detector for us humans, all that supervised by 2 officers. Maybe that's the way they welcome visitors in Anchorage ;-) ?

 Cook Inlet on our way back to Anchorage

We had to wait out the weekend to have some tires replaced. The previous owner had put on new tires before selling the RV and apparently had gone for some rel cheapies. One of these had a blow out at Denali so we decided to replace them all with a more trustworthy brand.

 Same location, 2 monkeys in the image

Once this business was finished we headed off to Seward, around 125 miles along Cook Inlet and through the mountains of Kenai Peninsula. This is supposed to be an impressive drive, but on this day the weather was what we learned at the Seward Visitor information: overcast with a few showers. That's obvious their summer weather! When I asked the lady about the photos of a boat trip we wanted to do the next day, all showing blue skies, she just smiled and said:' These people select their photos very, very carefully'. Well , there you go!

 In Resurrection Bay, off Seward

It promptly had started to rain on the way to Seward and kept doing so for the rest of the day. We went to see a creek  where salmon was supposed to be spawning, the place being fitted with a underwater camera. The only fish we saw were some smaller salmons swimming lazily around that camera. Ok....
We found a nice place on a smaller road to stay for the night, close to riverbed. There, the highlight of the day showed up in form of a bald eagle landing on a tree stump in the middle of the river and sitting there for an hour or so, not bothered by our interest.

 Bear Glacier at Resurrection Bay

As the forecast was for more of the same weather we decided to sit out the rain because we definitely wanted to go on a 9 hour boat trip  into Prince William Sound to see glaciers calving into the sea, sea otters and maybe a whale. The next morning, however, against the weather forecast, we woke up to an almost clear blue sky. So we hurried to the ticket office for that boat trip and organized the tickets. After getting rid of Shorty at the public campground in Seward we walked to the boat and the tour would start soon after.

 The coastline at Resurrection Bay

This was absolutely the best boat tour we have ever done, even Milford Sound in New Zealand can't compare to the beauty of Kenai on a clear day. The landscape is just amazing, wildlife all over the place. First we were 'greeted' by a couple of sea otters swimming lazily on their backs in the bay. We also saw huge glaciers , smaller ones calving small icebergs into the sea, a couple of humpback whales, porpoises, sea lions by the dozens, puffins, several kinds of seagulls, more birds than I can remember, some mountain goats on the seashore, it was unbelievable. One of the best days of our whole trip!

 approaching a calving glacier at Aialik Bay

Next morning it was back to rain, so there was no point in staying at Seward. The next destination was Russian River, famous for salmon returning from the sea at this time of the year and grizzlies waiting there for them to eat them. To keep it short: we saw the river, didn't see any salmon and no grizzlies as well. It didn't bother us too much, though, we were still relishing the day on the boat.

 I knew that beanie would come handy

After one night there we decided to call it quits and try our luck at Valdez.After a beautiful drive with wet tundra, mountains and glaciers we stayed for the night at some state park along the road. The weather had cleared  and we hoped to make Thompson Pass in sunny skies  the next morning as there are supposedly some amazing views onto glaciers and the mountains.

Humpback whale going for a dive



On our approach to the pass it started raining again, the pass itself covered in  thick fog, only to revert to proper rain at Valdez.  Apparently it rains a lot in Valdez, the forecast was for a lot more rain, so the next day we were back on the road to Tok to leave Alaska for good.

A puffin

Alaska seems to be very beautiful in  parts, however most of the beautiful parts are accessible only by plane or boat. This makes things slightly expensive. We had considered visiting Katmai National Park, but at a cost of $ 1.500 per person for a 2 night trip this simply was outside our budget. Nevertheless we saw some impressive landscapes, a lot of wildlife, the changes caused to permafrost grounds by rising temperatures.... it was definitely worth the drive!

Denali National Park

On our way from Fairbanks to Denali the weather was still fine, providing us with some good views onto Mount Denali from around 120 miles distance. Even that far away this is a huge bugger! Apparently it's the highest mountain on earth if the actual elevation from the base is measured , some 16.000 feet.

 Mount Denali

We reached the National Park in pouring rain, however and the forecast for the next day wasn't much better. As you can't travel through the park in your own vehicle and the trips in the shuttle buses are usually fully booked at this time of the year, we jumped on a bus for an 11 hour return trip the next morning. Forecast was for clouds with a 30% chance of rain. This turned out to be rain all day. Anyway, as the bus driver mentioned, at least if we saw some wildlife on this trip, it would be close :-). In the end the trip was quite enjoyable despite the rain. We saw some grizzly bears, moose, marmots, golden eagle, lots of mozzies, but not Mt. Denali.

 Two huge moose antlers hooked together after head-butting. They couldn't separate so both died 

After sitting out the rain for one day at the camp ground we tried again the day after. And boy, did we get lucky! Forecast was again for a 20% chance of rain, but no rain was to be seen that day. We did a shorter trip of about 9 hours and were just spoiled by wildlife sightings. 16 grizzlies, sometimes a sow with cubs,  caribou, moose, a wolf, mountain goats, the eagles, marmot, you name it, all were there to be seen. Claudia and I did a 2 hour hike up a mountain with amazing views onto Mt.Denali and the surrounding landscape.
This was Denali as good as it gets! What a day.....

So, the next day we were happy to leave for Anchorage.

Our trip so far (to 15 July 2010)

 

That's our trip so far, about 16.400 miles or 26.400 km. Not bad for a start ;-)

Alaska Highway

After a couple of days in Jasper we finally started for our trip on the Alaska Highway, a total of 1,422 miles (2,288 km) from Dawson Creek to Delta Junction. We want to travel on the Fairbanks, Alaska, and then to Denali National Park with Mt. McKinley or Denali, the highest mountain of North America.

Overall, the Alaska Highway was a beautiful trip, to be enjoyed again on our way back :-) . There are not too many towns along the way, most of them just plain and simple to cater for the needs of the people living in the area. Fort Nelson and Whitehorse, the Yukon capital, were rather nice, but most enjoyable is the scenery, forests, mountains, sometimes snow-covered, glaciers, creeks and streams, it's all there! Endless stretches of seemingly untouched landscape, no power lines, houses or other signs of civilization (besides the road, of course), every now and then some wildlife like bears, deer, elk, moose, bison, wild horses.....

In the evenings there almost always heaps of choice for a site on a state or provincial park. These are much nicer than  the commercial campgrounds, offering a lot of privacy in mostly stunning locations. The only slightly depressing part are the big number of run down or given-up service stations along the road. There must have been a time when it was easier to make a living here from the tourists.
Before we left people had told us to fill up on fuel at each and every location, we might run into trouble otherwise. That was obviously bullshit, at least with a fuel tank the size of  ours (~ 280 liters, good for at least 500 miles or 800 km's) .

 Bald eagle near Whitehorse

Fairbanks, Alaska, is good for restocking on groceries and fuel, and that's it. Ok, they probably have more days with temperatures below 0 Celsius,but still, I wouldn't want to live here. Anyway, its only a short 3 hour drive to Denali, so that's where we go next.

 The end of the Alaska Highway at mile 1422 or km 2288

Banff and Jasper National Parks

We had been to both National Parks last year, and surprise, they haven't changed all that much since! We travelled via Calgary where we did some wholefood shopping and made another visit to the Walmart Supercenter. Besides that we bypassed Calgary as apparently its main attractions are undercover/underground shopping and the 1988 Olympic venues, both not really our favourites. Shopping, well that's a no brainer, and the Olympic sites were used for the winter olympics so their main feature is not so obvious in summer.

  Our site near Banff

Anyway, we moved on and had a beautiful campsite at the Bow Valley Provincial Park, some 20 or so km's to Banff.  Next morning into Banff which is of course highly touristy yet still in a tolerable way. We managed to stay for a couple of hours before cold and rainy weather moved in and us out of Banff. The road from here to Lake Louise was still impressive despite the rather poor weather. At Lake Louise we went for a 3 hour hike up the mountain to  a small lake with amazing views over Lake Lousie and the surrounding mountains.

The next day the weather was still rather poor yet better than last year when we had a snow storm here in August. Still, the Glacier Highway is impressive, sometimes breathtaking, glaciers all over the place, waterfalls, bighorn sheep, mountain goats......

The next station was Jasper where we had to discover that our favourite Greek restaurant from last year had a new chef. The food was still ok, but we had hoped for a feast. Well, tough luck and it was back to home-cooking. We stayed at the Jasper campground for 5 nights, waiting for a spare part for our heater that is rather impulsive in deciding when to heat and when not to heat. Unfortunately, quite often it doesn't start up in the morning and we were at 1600 m in the mountains with all those glaciers.

 Biking near Jasper

We used that time for a couple of bike rides around the area, little bit of sightseeing at the Maligne Canyon ( which we had visited last year, so it was not as impressive now as it was then), some reading and housekeeping.

Our favourite spot for lunch

After five days the package still not had arrived so we had it forwarded to some village near the Alaskan border. Maybe we'll get it there!


From Jasper it's off the Dawson Creek, mile 0 of the Alaska Highway.

Glacier National Park

Internet was quite difficult recently!  From Yellowstone NP we drove to Glacier NP which borders  to Waterton Glacier NP in Canada. The area around Glacier NP is only speckled with smaller townships or villages, one has to be lucky to get internet access at all.

However, Glacier NP makes more than up for this shortcoming. It is without doubt the most beautiful piece of land we have seen on our entire trip so far. The normal thing to do is to drive the Goint-to-the-sun Highway, a parkway built in the 1920's that apparently offers incredible scenic views. As usual, not so for us. The road is still closed due to snow at Logan Pass where snowdrifts are up to 50 feet ( some 15 meters) thick and are usually cleared around June 18. Not so this year! We had bad weather when we left Yellowstone NP for Glacier NP and that accumulated to mere snow at Logan Pass. We drove to Kalispell near the West entrance of the park to collect some forwarded mail and check on the road conditions. Result: there would be no open road for at least another week!

Our site at Two Medicine Lake

On our way to Glacier NP we had stayed the night at a small, lovely State Park at Big Arm where the host had shown us two campgrounds not to be missed on the East side of the park, Two Medicine Lake and Many Glaciers. So that's where we went. We couldn't have done any better!

At Two Medicine Lake we found a beautiful site on the lakeshore. The next day we went on a hike with a female ranger up into the mountains with superb vistas over the glacial valleys and the surrounding mountains. On the way we saw lots of squirrels and a herd of male bighorn sheep with their huge horns. On day three the weather turned to rain again so we made our way to Many Glaciers. After a day in the rain there we returned to St. Marys to do our washing and check our email at the campground. Next day it was back again to Many Glaciers.

The weather turned again over night to a beautiful morning which we used for another ranger-led wakl into the mountains, this time to a glacier lake, a trip of about 16 km's in total with an elevation gain of some 1700 feet ( ~500 to 550 meters). O ly a couple of minutes into the hike it happened: we saw our first moose. It just came out of some shrubs maybe 30 meters away , looked shortly at us and then moved on slowly, totally ignoring us.

You must know that I have been looking out for a moose for 19 years since my first business trips to Scandinavia and I have not seen a single one. Now, finally, here it was, brilliant. Not too long after Claudia spotted a blonde grizzly bear on the other side of the valley, maybe 300 meters away. Thanks to our latest purchase, a pair of binoculars, we had a good look at it before he/she disappeared into the greenery there.
The lake was beautiful as well when we reached it after three or so hours of walking through bush, over rocks and in the snow, so the whole day was a great success.

The advantage of those ranger guided tours is that not only do you hike in a group, which comes handy if the grizzly is not on the other side of the valley, but happens to cross your way. Another thing is the information the rangers give you about the environment, rock formations, plants, animals, whatever.

Next morning, the forecast was for rain coming up in the afternoon, so we decided to use the fine morning for our drive to Waterton NP and into Canada. Good decision, that! The drive on the small country roads into Waterton NP is beautiful in itself - well except for that part where it runs through an Indian reservation. Here houses are often run down and messy, rusty old cars everywhere. The landscape however was stunning with the blue sky, especially as we had missed out already on the Beartooth Highway into Yellowstone NP and on the Going-to-the-sun Highway.

Waterton GlacierNP, however, is quite the opposite of Glacier NP. Despite seeing more wildlife (elk, bears of all kinds, boghoorn sheep, mountain goats, you name it) we didn't like this park too much. It is completely and utterly commercialized, not for us!
So, after one night there we're on the road to Calgary and on to Banff and Jasper National Parks.

Yellowstone National Park

From the Bighorn Canyon we continued our trip to Yellowstone and stayed in Red Lodge at the entrance to the Beartooth Highway. At the ranger station at Bighorn Canyon we had learned that the Beartooth Pass would be open any day... except if the sign at the bottom of the pass said 'Closed'. OK....hmmm.
Red Lodge is another nice, but sleepy small town, not really much to do there. When we reached the infamous sign post it -of course- flashed in beautiful bright yellow letters 'Pass Closed'. Yay! There was no other option than to hope for the next day and find a place for night to stay.

As we wanted an early start for the next morning we went to a small public campground some 12 miles into the highway. Boy, were we lucky! This campground was one of the most beautiful spots we have parked Shorty for the night at on  the whole trip. Clear blue skies, some white-tailed deer to pay us a visit in the evening, a little bear scat right next to our site to increase the tension a little - it was just perfect.
Next morning - even better. Still blue skies when we left the campground, the pass open for traffic, yeehaa - here we come.

But - oops - when we approached higher altitudes clouds began creeping in and finally, pretty much at the start of the most beautiful stretch of this road we were sitting in the clouds, zilch visibility, rain later that wouldn't stop all day. What a bugger! You have to know that the Beartooth Highway is one of the most highly acclaimed drives in the States, plain beautiful, spectacular, almost 11,000 feet ( 3,350 m) high and all we see is mist, rain, well, some 3 meters of snow on the roadside on the higher part. This is soooo mean!
Even the bison we encounter later that day couldn't make up for it.

Anyway, we overnight at Mammoth Hot Springs at the Northern end of that big loop that leads through Yellowstone NP and the next morning, the sky was back to blue. Did I mention that this was mean?
We continued our trip along that loop through geothermal landscapes, the usual stuff like in Rotorua, New Zealand, just smaller and by far not so impressive. Lot's of impressive scenic outlooks, however, woods in the foreground and snowy mountains in the back, the odd lake in between, nice.

After traversing another pass it went up North again on the East side of the park. This the more mountainous part of the park, hence the more spectacular. Hundreds of bison along the way - a sight you do not have every day, no fence, nothing -  a glimpse of a grizzly bear with 3 or so cubs through the scope, this is not too bad. The highlight, however, is the Yellowstone Canyon, impressive waterfall and absolutely bizarre colours for a canyon.

Overall, I have to say that Yellowstone NP is a beautiful park, a huge variety of sights in rather short distance from another, and despite the individual attractions not being the most impressive we have seen, the combination of all of them does it! Well worth visiting, this park! 

... and on to Yellowstone National Park

On the last night at Niagara Falls we have decided to skip Detroit and Chicago on our way to Yellowstone NP despite the advice from a fellow camper that especially Chicago is a city well worth visiting. Detroit is rather the opposite, apparently. Anyway, we decide to drive North through Michigan along Lake Huron, then go West across more of Michigan into Wisconsin, possibly stay a couple of nights near the Apostle Islands near Superior on  Lake Superior before crossing Minnesota and North Dakota  on the way to Montana. The whole drive is a mere 3500 km's, so that could take a couple of days :-).

In the end, of course, things turned out a little different from our plans. After the first 200 km's through Canada we arrived at the border station to the US in Sarnia. We thought re-entry into the States would be easy as, but no, the officials didn't think so. The young lady from  border security was a little suspicious of our 9 month permit for the States. So we were called in , Shorty was searched for whatever and we were interviewed about our trip, our plans and so on. In the end it wasn't more than a nuisance but it still took more than an hour to enter the States again.
We stayed at a small state park close to Port Huron for the night as Shorty needed some maintenance work, oil change and a bit of grease here and there. You all know that I wouldn't trust anybody with such an important job, hence we stopped at the local Walmart for oil and parts and I did the job right there on the car park.

From Port Huron the drive went on small country roads to Bay City, nothing spectacular on the way, some woods initially to be increasingly replaced by farmland. This got worse closer to Mackinac Bridge in the North of the peninsula, a more or less boring ride.

 Hmm, I shouldn't have said that, because it got even worse! After crossing into North Michigan we went to a small state park near Tahquamenon Falls, apparently the second biggest waterfall after the Niagara East of the Missouri river or so, don't ask! Anyway, it was nice, not too bad, but we were asking us whether that was worth the extra miles. From here on to a The Lake in  the Clouds, another state park West of Tahquamenon. Again, not shabby, but the name is the best part of the lake.

Some  interesting people on the road....

However, I shouldn't have complained because the drive was pleasant, certainly not too boring, so what. There's always North Dakota to come!

So, next destination: Apostle Islands at Lake Superior. On the way there we learned that we actually can't visit the Islands as this is pure boating country. Without a boat there is not much to do except walk some shorter walks through the woods and along the beaches which are nice but definitely not that great. On top of that on our approach to Superior the temperature falls from around 26 degrees Celsius near Marquette earlier in the morning to around 8 degrees early afternoon. Not too inviting for a kayak tour on the lake!

We say goodbye to Wisconsin and continue into Minnesota. Again, a mixture of woods and farmland, nothing to report really. I had warned Claudia that this would probably be the most boring part of the trip and so it is. Don't get me wrong, the landscape is sometimes pleasant, sometimes not so much, small , rather boring towns, some seemingly deserted, nothing that I really remember on that stretch of land.

Totally different, however, is North Dakota! This is absolutely the most boring landscape we have seen so far, huge farms and nothing else. They actually have raised the speed limit on the highways to allow people to get through the state faster. That would be the only reason for the higher limit.

Ok, next state: Montana. Quite the opposite of North Dakota. Close the border even North Dakota spits out a little extra for the weary traveller: the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. It's here where TR shot his first buffalo in 18.. or so, a landscape that reminds us of Cappadocia in Turkey. The area is a kind of canyon like landscape with eroded hills with rock pillars and all, not bad. Bison ( buffaloes)  are roaming free here, interesting colours on the cliffs.

This type of landscape continues into Montana, at least at the start, there is some farmland later. One thing that cannot be missed is that Montana is cowboy country, we actually see two of them with a herd of cows along the highway to our station for the night in Miles City.

The city's highlight of the year apparently is a horse fair earlier in the May, otherwise the small town is .....interesting. Claudia and I go for an orientation walk after the long drive to discover - nothing really. There are one or two pubs or bars, a restaurant and everything seems dead at 6.30 in the evening.

There's actually a development we like really a lot: the further we get North the longer the days are getting. In OZ and in Thailand it got dark usually around 7 or so, now we experience long evenings where it gets dark at 10 or even later. Beautiful!

 Bighorn National Recreation Area

Ok, next day on to Billings for 2 new tires after one disintegrated and took its twin with him down the road. Claudia has found a small National Recreation Area with a canyon again, that's where we will stay for the next 3 nights to recover from the long hours of driving. We have to burn some time anyway as both Beartooth Highway into Yellowstone NP and the Going to the Sun Highway  through Glacier NP are closed due to snow.

They are doing some great skies here

Meikel, Elke told us that you are looking into houseboat designs at the moment. How about that one in the canyon ? I'll enlarge it for you

Canada- here we come ( take 1)

Well, there was not much of slowing down, we're in Canada. After 3 nights at Salisbury Beach we went on an unspectacular, but still nice 2 day trip through Vermont to Montreal, Canada. Montreal is rather -hmmm, how do I put this nicely? - uninspiring which wasn't helped by the cold an d drizzly weather and the fact that most of downtown seems to be torn up for building projects. It took us about 1 1/2 hours to realize that this is not for us, so after the second night we hit the road for Ottawa.

The contrast couldn't have been bigger! Ottawa is a beauty, it was a lovely sunny day, Ottawa is possibly the most bicycle accessible city we have seen, in short: perfect! We did our sightseeing in the morning and spent the afternoon on a 30 km round trip along the Rideau Canal and river. This was the end of the annual Tulip festival, meaning heaps of people out and about. It appears that the Canadians are quite a different bunch from the Americans. At least half the city must have been doing something outdoors. A great day!

But again, as Claudia and I are not the ones for museums, one day was enough to see most of the sights. The weather was cooling down as well and with the forecast for more rain we hit the road again for Toronto and Niagara Falls next.

As far as we have read about Toronto this city might not be what we are interested in. The main attraction apparently is shopping in underground malls, huh? When  we reach Toronto the weather is cold, it's tough too find a car park for Shorty, so what the heck, we bypass Toronto and move on to Niagara Falls straight away.
We have picked a 'quiet' - it is actually everything but quiet as this is Victoria Day weekend, a long weekend that starts the camping season for many campgrounds in this region - camp ground at Niagara Falls on the Lake, about 16 km from the Falls. As it rains all afternoon, we use the time for some washing and cleaning up.

Next morning the sun is up early and so are we. We are on our bikes by 8 o'clock and pedalling our way up a hill to the start of  a bicycle path that runs along the Niagara Falls Parkway through the Niagara gorge. Being that early has the advantage that despite this being one of the first really busy weekends we have most places we get to to ourselves. That's just the way we like it !

On our arrival at the falls an hour later they are hardly visible at all through all the mist they produce, so we indulge in a nice Coffee Latte in a very stylish paper cup from Starbucks :-). Half an hour later the sun has burnt away most of the mist and the falls present themselves in all their beauty. The falls are impressive, no doubt, the thundering noise is deafening, the spray a little too cool for my liking, but... again it's all too accessible or Disney-like, casinos and hotels a mere hundred meters from the falls, several cheap entertainment businesses as well . Claudia and I are more purist and think that one doesn't need to 'spruce up' an environment like this. Every Friday and Sunday they have hoge fireworks and the falls are illuminated in different colours.

Initially we had considered  doing a tour on the Maid of the Mist, the boat that takes you right into the middle of the Horseshoe Falls, the Canadian part of the falls. After seeing that the boat - even at that early hour - is crammed with tourists, all nicely packed in blue plastic raincoats, we again decide to skip this and just enjoy the views as they are from the rim of the gorge before returning to our old trustworthy Shorty around noon.