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.

After 3 months

That's what we've done so far, around 8,800 miles or 14,100 km and still loving it!

Over the next weeks I will add pages with more specific tips for people wishing to undertake a similar trip

Washington and on to Boston

The last 2 weeks have been rather uneventful.
In Washington DC we had a nice campground close to downtown and university, so we went there by bus and underground on the second day. The night before we had been on a commercial bus-tour to all the sights, actually rather boring. At least we knew now what we wanted to see again at daylight!

National Mall, White House, Capitol, all that stuff is kind of interesting, but it actually feels a bit like a patriotic Disney World to me, maybe because Washington is not an old town that has grown over time but was planned as the capital city around 1790 or so.

 
You can spend an afternoon there but that's more than enough. The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History maybe famous from the movies but stands no chance to Te Papa in Wellington, NZ.

In the end, we got back early to the camp ground and went for a bike ride around the university area. Washington claims to be the tree capital of the world or so and they may be right here.

From Washington we went on to Gettysburg, the region steeped in history of the American Civil War, battlefields all over the place, patriotism again seeping out of everything you see. The town itself is still smallish, of course touristy but we start to encounter a new problem: more and more the camp grounds are still closed for season, the weather is also deteriorating, getting cold sometimes, rain also, hmmmmm.

Anyway, we bypass New York as we have been  in Manhattan for 3 nights last year and are not really keen to see more of it. Last year's visit was great but so far our second visit to places we had visited before never were able to compete with the first visit. The next stations of our trip are in West Connecticut and Massachusetts, in New  England. Roads through the countryside, woods and beautiful houses and villages mark our way for the next couple of days, one day we saw an Amish horse cart parked at Wal-Mart, funny world. We like that a lot, only problem is to find a place for the night. We would love to stay somewhere for a week or so, but cold and sometimes rainy weather make it difficult. We are driving far more than planned at the moment and are about 3 weeks ahead of the lose schedule we had made up before our trip.
Soooo, well, the beach is always an option, there are more campgrounds also, back East to Cape Cod!  Again our expectations are completely and utterly wrong. Cape Cod - being close to Martha's Vineyard , the island for the famous and rich - we expected to be covered in holiday resorts, high-risers, you name it.
We found a beautiful - although touristy - small town , however, named Provincetown at the end of a rather thinly settled peninsula. Nice campground there because rather empty - off-season !-  and a couple of relaxing days. Claudia had an amazing encounter with a dragon-tail turtle during a bike ride around the dunes!

More of those after passing through Boston on a cold and windy day. We didn't see too much inviting when driving our RV through downtown, there are no RV parks close to the city, so we went on to Salisbury Beach where we are at the moment. Huge state reserve here, but luckily only a few campers.

We definitely need to slow down if we do not want to reach Canada in the snow :-). Last night the forecast for Montreal ( probably a week of travelling from here) was for round 4 degrees Celsius and snow with rain.