I am a little cheesed off that he
has posted the blog and I have not thrown my 2 cents worth in. Patience of a gnat, or he thinks he is working
for the Washington Post and has a deadline to meet!!! Not happy Stan!
On this trip we have been to stay
at so many places for overnight stays it has become increasing obvious that I
now have an extremely good education on how plumbing works all over the
world. This time after being puzzled by
why the tap didn’t worked, boy wonder is dispatched to the office to find out
how it worked. Just pull it out was the
response! Great now I’m really feeling
like a dill. My low enthusiasm for the
hotel only made me look for mistakes. Moral to the story, try harder before you cast
aspersions.
Our next travel was a round trip from
Washington to Toronto via Chicago and then back to Washington. Before you start, I know, Chicago is not on
the way to Toronto but, have hire car we will travel. The countryside was rolling hills for the
first 5-6 hours and then once we hit Ohio it was generally flat. One in Canada, we got more hills and many
lakes.
The trip involved catching up with friends
throughout the NE of the US and around Toronto.
Some of the road signs were a little
confusing.
Co Rd – the final
sign has what it really is, County Road
Twp Rd – the final
sign has what it really is, Township Road
Falljng rock – why
just one falling rock. Why don’t they do
something about that single falling rock?
Deer – saw many
sleeping (dead) beside the road
Bear – saw none
Roadkill has included deer, badgers, hares
and other flat pieces of stuff. I’m on the hunt for Chipmunks now, not as road
kill!
Driving on the wrong side of the road takes
some getting used to, and once again everybody appears to drive well above the
speed limit. My spatial awareness took a
while to sort out the left hand driving as I tended to drive on the line to the
right of the car. Finally, I have it
nailed after several thousand kms, but still pull out occasionally on the wrong
side. Denise is hesitant to drive as she
will need to go through the same learning curve. I am hoping when I get back home to Australia
I will stay on the left. I find I want to drive on the left side of the road.
We have seen a few Hicksvilles, and drove
through some banjo territory, but everything is good. I haven’t been looking too closely, but so far,
I haven’t seen anybody carrying a gun, and I really hope it remains that
way. We did get one place that so far
has been the worst hotel we stayed in.
Smelt of cigarette smoke, and animal smell in the room and the people in
the next room had a dog. Not too bad you
say, but this dog insisted on barking until about 21:30 and started up again at
06:30. We were glad to get away.
The interstate roads carry heaps of
trucks. It looked like every second
vehicle was a truck for many hours. Once
we got past Milwaukee the truck numbers dropped to just a few, if any every so
often. The roads are everything from
excellent to terrible. We have hit
several huge potholes and many normal holes as well as rough roads. I am glad we have a hire car.
Although 55MPH seems to be standard, we have
had many dual carriageways with speeds of 60 and 70MPH, and some up to 75MPH.
Driving through Chicago I heard what sounded
like a delaminated tyre so on stopping discovered a piece of fencing wire in
the tyre. After pulling it out, I then
had a slow leak. Change the tyre. That would have been fine if the hire car had
a spare tyre – it didn’t. Instead it had
a pump and a can of goo. I decided to
Google puncture repair places nearby and found one about 4kms the wrong way. On arrival I asked if I could get it fixed,
but nobody spoke English. They spoke
Spanish and were from Mexico. The area
looked dodgy as well. Anyway, 40mins
later and $12 it was fixed and we were back on the road again. Don’t buy a Kia Forte. Now that isn’t very
nice!
When we got to Canada I needed to convert
from MPH to KPH, but the electronic dash didn’t have that option. Like a dog with a
bone he delayed our trip until he figured it out but still hadn’t 30 minutes
later. On this trip I have discovered why cars are so cheap in the
US. All the safety feature that are
standard for the rest of the world are not included in the US. Things like parking sensors, auto
deceleration sensors, lane guidance, and many others. I am a little surprised they haven’t made
seatbelts optional.
We have managed to have some great
meals, but they are gigantic; then you have the scary ones that are full of fat
and making you put on weight just looking at your meal. Thankfully, there is Subway here and we can
choose, what to put on the sandwich.
We have just arrived in Toronto and are on
L35 (who needs CN Tower to see Toronto?) overlooking the lake and Rogers
Centre, the home of the Toronto Blue Jays (baseball). For
All the places I book, I seem to get into trouble because, heaven forbid, I don’t
type as fast as Papa Bear. Now may I
just say I have jagged some impressive places. Unfortunately, I don’t get things sorted as
fast as he, who thinks is boss, wants me too.
I would just like to thank all the people we
have stayed with on this little trip.
You have all been so welcoming and it has been a real pleasure catching
up with you all. Yes, the friends we have made on this trip is amazing! We can’t thank you enough, for your hospitality.
So just to give you an idea of where
we will be next! We will be heading back
to Washington to get a flight to Seattle.
So I will sign off for us.
Take care
Denise and the boy wonder.
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