Monday, June 16 - Saturday, June 21
Oh, Canada!

We headed further north up through Michigan's East Upper Peninsula and into Canada, traveled across the top of Lake Huron and over to Toronto, Ontario.

Snapshot of week's route

Monday, June 16:

We packed up and left St. Ignace and headed to the Canadian border and then on to Sudbury, Ontario (251 miles).  The weather was great and the drive was (mostly) relaxing and enjoyable.  The scenery through northern Michigan and southern Canada was pretty, with forests surrounding large rivers and lakes and occasional shores of Lake Huron.

We found a nice place to stop for a picnic lunch.  Yes, that is Becky sticking her tongue out at me.  I must have deserved that; at least that is what I am told.

Our lunch spot

Of course the backstage looked a bit different.  Guess who got the view of the lake and who got the view of the backstage?

The backside of our lunch stop

After lunch, back to relaxing and enjoying and then…

This one was the right rear.  It tore up the fender and bent back the lower trim.  This time, I decided to change the tire myself.  Luckily, I got the roll-on tire lift at the last Les Schwab.  It took about one hour and I still had to use my hydraulic jack to get the wheel up high enough to get the spare on, but it worked.

We pulled into Sudbury, checked into the RV park, and then took the trailer to Canadian Tire where I wanted to get the tire replaced and also replace the right front, the one that had the screw in it and was patched.  But, they said they couldn’t work on the trailer.  I checked a few other places they suggested but they were closed.  We took the trailer back to the RV park and got set up for the night and then I took the tire by itself back to Canadian Tire (they are open until 8:00 PM) and they will replace it and I will pick it up in the morning.  I will have to deal with putting it back on later.

Tuesday, June 17:

Off to Canadian Tire to pick up the tire and then back to the trailer.  While the trailer was parked, I decided to replace the remaining older (but still good?) tire on the right front with the new tire.  This is the last of the original older tires and I moved it to the spare.  Now all four tires are new.

We packed up and headed to Milton, Ontario, a ‘burb of Toronto (247 miles).  Originally, we were planning to spend a day or two on the way to Toronto to sightsee but there is nothing to really sightsee along the way.  The drive is pretty and there are a lot of recreation areas but not sightseeing.

We are now parked at a nice RV park for four nights!

Wednesday, June 18:

We need to take care of chores: clean inside of trailer and laundry in the morning, food shopping and clean outside of trailer in the afternoon, and kickback and recover in the evening (and the oven worked again for dinner).

My job is to vacuum. Central vacuum cleaner; rough life.

Thursday, June 19:

It is time to head out and see Toronto!  Ready, set, stop-n-go.  It took us over two hours to go the 34 miles to downtown Toronto.  The “express ways” getting into Toronto are like Southern California.  The streets in Toronto are worse than NY or DC.  The street and condominium construction has lanes blocked off almost everywhere.  Congestion is unbelievable.  We were told it is a little worse than normal as the city is getting ready to host the 2015 Pan Am games; larger than the Winter Olympics and the largest sporting event to hit Canada ever.

So, we did get downtown, parked (not easy for the truck), and got on the hop-on, hop-off bus that takes a two-hour tour around the downtown area to see the sights. 

Hop-on, hop-off bus

What did we see?  Stuff and more stuff.

 

The Toronto CN tower used to be the largest building (structure) until Burj Dubai opened in Dubai.

Included with the bus ride, we took a 45 minute boat tour of the Toronto Bay, which is part of Lake Ontario.

The Toronto skyline

Well, it was 4:15 PM by the time we got back to our starting point and time to head out.  Can you say “rush hour traffic?”  It took us about an hour and forty-five minutes to go the 34 miles back to the RV park.  If you have never driven to Toronto, congratulations!

We thought about returning to Toronto Friday to visit some of the attractions but we decided that we had…

Friday, June 20:

We decided to take Friday off and relax and get caught up.

Saturday, June 21:

Off to Niagara Falls!