Thoughts on leaving Canada

And the baby? He was buried as number 4 with a special headstone but no name, but in 2007 using DNA evidence he was final identified as Sidney Leslie Goodwin. None of his family survived the sinking. They were never found.

We have come to the end of our Canada trip. It happened quite suddenly. One minute it seemed we were making plans to see this or that then the next minute we were discussing where to stop when we got to Maine, what we were missing about the US and when to empty the fridge for defrosting before we get to US Customs. (No vegetables or uncooked meats allowed).

Blam!just like that the end came.

It felt almost like the end of a vacation. That feeling that you must leave this behind and get back to the real world. Funny really because it wasn't a vacation, just a side bar to our bigger adventure.

So what have we missed about the US? Being able to buy alcohol in a supermarket for one thing, the Provinces in Canada have Liquor Control Boards and the government runs the outlets. Virginia has something similar but only for “Hard” liquor. Not only do the governments run the stores but in doing so they eliminate the competition and charge top dollar for it. They also control what gets sold and there is some AWFUL beer on the shelves. We're pining for a bottle of Negro Modela, our favorite dark beer and a decent microbrewery with a good brown ale.

Breakfast biscuits! We like throwing a couple of them in the microwave when the morning is cool. They don't stock them in Canada. Apparently everyone is on an all waffle diet up here because the stores stock very little else. My goodness, we've had to resort to scrambled eggs and bacon sandwiches at times!

We've been using Barbara's T-Mobile phone for calls, texts and WiFi in Canada and it's worked out well up until a week ago. I installed Google photo on our phones and Google Backup on my laptop. What I didn't realize was that Backup starts backing up all photos on your hard drive every time it finds an WiFi signal. It gobbled up all our data for the month in a couple of days so we've been limping along on public WiFi at campgrounds and malls etc., As soon as we cross the border we can turn our ATT phones back on and have TONS f data to play with.

And gas for less that $4 a gallon! Although it has dropped in price this week. The past 2 weeks in the run up to Labor Day weekend gas went up from 99c a liter to $1.07 a liter which is just about $4 a gallon. We've kept the tanks low on the rig and the Fiesta, just enough to find a gas station on the other side of the border.

Oh before I forget, we miss cash back at the grocery store too. They don't seem to do that up here so we have been pounding the credit and debit cards. They don't take Discover cards here either so we can't get as much cash back on it either.

Finally we've missed the Elks Lodges. We love to stop at them and visit. It's a real friendly organization and we feel like we're visiting friends when we go into one. We'll have to visit lots over the next coupe of months.

So we're not criticizing Canada, just comparing it to what we've grown used t in the US over the past 35 years. We've enjoyed the people. The Gaelic and French languages. Different customs and values. The scenery and atmosphere in the different regions. We've enjoyed the experience, but the autumn leaves ARE changing and it's making us want to move south. Like the geese and the ducks, we've got the urge to fly south for the winter, and like them we're not intending to do it all in one long trip but to stop and graze along the way. We'll visit some more friends meet some relatives from UK, and enjoy the journey.