Around the world in 4 states...

June 25, 2013 Day 5 Tuesday

Back in Canada!  Yipee!  There is no place like home....even if it’s Windsor, Ontario!

We had a full day of travel “around the world” in 4 states (Illinois, Iowa, Indiana and Michigan) where we passed by exits to the towns of Princeton, Cambridge, Peru, Moscow, Ottawa, Marseilles and Holland!  

It was hot and muggy today - highs were 33 degrees, however the humidity makes it not seem so hot, to us it feels more like Hawaii, except for the smell of course.  In Hawaii you smell flowers once you get off the plane, in this part of the states you smell...well ....industry really.  In fact you could smell and taste Gary, Indiana.  

Our one quick stop today was to dip our feet into Lake Michigan - our goal is all six feet and 30 toes to be dipped into all the great lakes.  We found a perfect place to spend the day on the beach at the Ogden Dunes, near Gary, Indiana, but alas we were here only about 20 minutes.  We stop long enough to get a couple pictures, dip our feet in Lake Michigan, which was not that cold, pick up some rocks and shells, say hi to the locals, put shoes back on and head out again.

Much to our surprise, the traffic today was not bad at all - we passed by the outskirts of Chicago around noon which was our goal, and even though traffic went crazy fast and exits and on ramps were all over the place, it moved relatively well, and smoothly.  Jill (our GPS) got us through it all quickly.

Our other goal was to cross the Detroit/Windsor border crossing after 6:00pm so we would avoid the heavy traffic-after all, this crossing is the #1 busyest crossing to Canada.  The freeway goes directly in the middle of downtown Detroit.  Happily there is an express lane for the downtown, which we follow, and we sail through without a hitch, through the city and then across to Canada via the tunnel, no delays, and very light traffic - in fact we only encountered 3 vehicles going the other way.  The only slow part was at the border, where we find ourselves behind a US vehicle coming into Canada.  I was supposed to remind Phil to get behind a Canadian car when we cross (oops!)  The American car from Illinois was only stopped for about 3 minutes, all the Canadian cars were stopped for literally seconds.

We will miss the cheap gas prices in the US , where we paid between 89 cents  to $1.02 for a litre of gas.  In Canada we’ve paid as high as $1.449 per litre this year.

We are happy to be in Canada again after 4.5 days of heavy traveling, and now we can get on with what we came out here to see...forts, historical events and re-enactments, old houses, and whatever other “stuff” there is to see and do.