Back home in Bayfield, via the US

 

New River Beach NB

We arrived home to Bayfield on Thursday afternoon after a pleasant trip home from New River Beach. 

After our tough trip east via Quebec, we had decided to come home via the Northeast US, as we often did in earlier years. It took 3 more days after leaving New River Beach, 4 days in all from PEI, but mostly a pleasant drive. We would have had more pictures if my phone hadn't acted up and I had to restore it to the original image, losing the pictures I had. Unlike the problems we had with Cathie's phone on our Yukon trip, these are definitely not retrievable this time. 

The first day we crossed into the US via the St Stephen New Brunswick crossing. It was our first crossing into the US for several years, and we were a bit nervous. All went well though, the crossing wasn't busy at our 8 am arrival. The usual questions, but not a 3rd-degree like we've sometimes had in the past, maybe partly because we were only going to be in the US for a couple of days.

We have been across this basic route many times over the years, and it felt really good to be back in the US after the recent hiatus. We basically cruised across from the border to Bangor Maine via Hwy 9, then followed Hwy 2 on into New Hampshire. Not much leaf colour yet, but a nice twisty drive in places.

Next day we carried on into hilly Vermont. As we approached Lake Champlain we drove across a favorite RV-test road, hwy 17 in Vermont. This is a significant hill from either east or west, a long climb up and a long downhill on the other side, with some good curves thrown in. Some RV units we've had over the years found this hill challenging, and we found that if a rig had no problems with this hill, it could handle any hill we'd encounter on our travels. As expected, the van had no problems at all.

The road has a few curves

This GPS view above was from the peak, starting to head down the western side.

Trees are starting to change colour

Down, down down...

We drove through to Canada this day, crossing at the Thousand Islands bridge (Ivy Lea on the Canadian side). We had filled out the ArriveCan app this morning and gave a 5pm crossing estimate. We made that almost to the minute. 

We were quite disappointed that the border agent didn't seem to even look at it, after all the to-do about ArriveCan. She just took our passports and asked the usual questions. 

Once across the border we headed for nearby Ivy Lea Provincial Park campground. It was only about 5:10 in the afternoon, so we were surprised to find the office closed (in spite of signs claiming to be open until 6pm every day)! Tough to get good help these days I guess. There were campers there, and at least one other potential camper turned away while we were there. No helpful information posted at all.

Not bothering to even investigate the nearby KOA campground (they have priced themselves out of our range) it was on to plan B. Kingston has a friendly Walmart Supercentre, and we even got a takeout pizza nearby. 

Thursday we had intended to take the 401 west for a bit before heading up to hwy 7, maybe even all the way home. At 7am the access around the 401 was so chaotic with traffic, lots of big trucks and delays just getting close to the 401, we just headed north from Kingston along back roads to Hwy 7, and home from there via Orillia, a route that is becoming our normal Toronto bypass. Somewhat longer, quite a bit slower, and a much nicer way to end another lovely trip to Atlantic Canada.