Getting ready for our long drive

By the time most of you read this, we will already be across the bridge into Canada and on our way to Ruth's father's house in the little village of Galetta, Ontario.

From Sault Ste Marie, Michigan, it is a 740 km (463 mile) drive that we are prepared to do in one day. Depending on what we are told when we cross, we may be able to do it in two days. We will see.

We are doing this because the Canadian government still has a 14 day mandatory quarantine in place for anybody (including Canadian citizens) entering the country for non essential reasons.

So, we are to drive directly to our place of quarantine, which will be at Ruth's father's house where we have to remain without leaving the property for 14 days.

On Friday, we got ourselves ready for the drive. Once we arrived in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan we went to the Walmart where we sat in the rig and had breakfast.

Then, Ruth went in to do the shopping. The idea was to pick up as much as we could to do two weeks of isolation, although we do have her nephew or our daughter to do some running around for us if it's necessary. Also, we had to keep in mind that there is only so much room in our motorhome fridge!

On a side note, it was our first time in a Walmart since the company made a mandatory mask rule last Monday. We think they should have done this months ago.

The only problem with buying all this food is that some of it is technically not allowed into Canada. Hopefully the border guards see the conflict between ordering someone to do two weeks of quarantine, then telling you that there are certain foods that you're not allowed to bring. I guess we'll find out when we cross. I think they won't even ask about it... they'll be too concerned with the whole Covid thing.

Next stop was to find propane. Sherman's tank was below 1/4 and although that would still probably last two weeks, it is difficult to buy motorhome propane in Ontario when you have an older rig. They have the strictest regulations in North America, and most places interpret the rules wrong and will refuse to fill a tank over ten years old without it being re certified. Motorhome tanks are ASME horizontal tanks and don't have the same regulation, but the guy who took the courses and is certified to refill propane tanks usually doesn't understand the difference,

So, who knew... but it turns out that most Tractor Supply Co. stores do propane refills, including on motorhomes. And, at sort of reasonable prices... today's purchase was at $2.79 a gallon... still expensive, but far better than the $3.75 a gallon they wanted near Marquette the other day.

With that done, the next job was to find a dump station. I stopped at an RV repair place where they recommended the municipal RV park near the river. Sure enough, we drove over there and did a dump and fill.

Now, we were ready to relax!

We parked right downtown.

Now, downtown Sault Ste Marie, Michigan isn't that big. The city has a population of about 13,000 people. Compare that to the city of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario on the other side of the river at about 78,000 people... a much larger city.

But, they even had metered RV parking on the side of the road right where the big ships go through the locks. and at $0.25 per half hour we didn't bother looking for somewhere free. Although we should have... there was a large lot almost opposite where we parked that was free. (In fact, that's also where we are spending the night!) But, we didn't notice it until after we had put the money in the meter.

Big ships using the locks.

They kind of look like typical ship workers, don't they?

Not that I know what a ship worker is supposed to look like.

Look how much the ship has dropped as they drain the canal.

And this one closest to us is rising...

Up.

And now it's ready to carry on.

We went for a walk around the park.

Sherman looks like he is almost under the bridge to Canada, but it's actually half a mile away.

Now the ship is all the way down.

Sault Ste. Marie courthouse.

Another big ship going through.

Huge!

I think we have watched a total of five ships go through this afternoon. It's a busy canal, and they are actually in process of building another one at a cost of 1 billion USD.

One of the ships that went though was huge... and 1,000' long. They had some kind of name for it, something like "super tanker" (maybe super-freighter?) except that it wasn't a tanker. Most of the ships going through here carry agriculture products or iron ore.

We then drove Sherman over and filled the fuel tank. First, I went inside and prepaid for $41.19 worth of gas... that's the amount of USD cash we had left over! Then, I topped it up with credit card. At $2.26 USD per gallon, it's the most expensive gas we've filled up with since we entered the country at the end of March. But, it's still cheaper than Canada.

Well, that's enough for now... we've got some driving to do. Full report tomorrow morning!

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