Northern Trails And Tales

I’m writing this e-mail in Petawawa, Ontario at Pine Ridge Riverside Campground on the mighty Ottawa River. It’s a nice place, but there’s no internet connection. Same story last night when we stayed at Brennen’s Campground on the shore of Lake Ontario about a mile from the Golden Fish Restaurant in Pulaski, N.Y.—- familiar I am sure to the many salmon snaggers on the blog/e-mail list. Tomorrow (Thursday) I hope to stop along the highway somewhere and send this. Anyway, yesterday brought no surprises, except I guess for rookies. For instance, the toll for the trailer on the New York Thruway was $26.00. And the mileage for this rig is running a little under 10 MPG when we had hoped for 12 or even a bit more. Please send donations!…. The weather was hot, hot, hot with a high of 96 degrees, and still in the upper 80’s in the evening. The good news is that the air conditioner works, and we were only 100 feet from the water so things did cool down….. Today, we had our first adventure. Going thru Customs, we were told to “go around the bend and pull over by the orange cones.” (For those of you already laughing over the Ft.Lauderdale airport incident, this was Dave’s hearing, not mine.) There was a bend in the road up about 200 yards, but no cones. We were now headed across the St Lawrence with no place to turn around. Very briefly, as we turned around at the first spot possible, we were flagged down by a cop and had to go back across the bridge to Customs where we were greeted like Osama Bin Laden. The Customs guys were fairly obnoxious. This “bend” was to make a virtual 90 degree turn across three or four open lanes of traffic and into a parking lot full of trucks. The cones were approximately 200 yards back in the lot. Anyway, this cost us about two hours of time as they checked the trailer for radioactive material, ran our ID’s thru Interpol or whatever, threatened to confiscate the trailer, and generally acted like State of Connecticut bureaucrats. Just a minor communication problem…. The rest of the day was uneventful and the Canadians, excepting Customs, are unfailingly friendly and helpful. ….. There is something of a problem finding campgrounds in the area and this problem is going to continue for the next few days…. So far, so good. Will be in touch again soon if we’re not deported…. Take care….