Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Last few days in Canada… Back to the USA…

Prospect Hill Campground site

St MarysWe left the KOA campground and took a route that would take us through the farm country in south central Ontario. The drive was very relaxing and took us through many neat little Ontario towns. I love the mixture of architectural styles that is found here in Ontario. You can see much of the European influence in many of the buildings.

The drive was about 120 miles and our destination for our last few days in Canada was Prospect Hill Campground near the town of St Marys. The web page said the park has large grassy sites available to accommodate everything from pop-up campers, to 40ft rigs. Well that may be true but there are some very tight Stratfordturns one of which required backing up to make a sharp U-turn. There are also many trees to contend with that will no doubt “touch” the RV if you are of our size. But once we found our spot we loved it… There is a lot of seasonal folks in the park but we found them to be very friendly. Our site is number 125 which has only 30 amp hydro (Canadian for electricity for those that don’t know) and water on our site. We also have a small fire pit and a picnic table. But the best part of this site is we are parked parallel to a nice little flowing creek. Perfect for a few days stay!!

Stratford Another great thing about this park is that it is one of the Canadian Passport America Parks and the total cost for each night comes to $22.05 which includes Canada’s hefty 13 percent tax. We used up the last of our Canadian dollars to pay our last nights rent leaving me with only three Canadian dimes. I also get to enjoy our neighbors bird feeders where the orioles and goldfinches have to battle the different colored morphs of fox squirrels. I have seen all black ones before but there are some here that are black bodied with a brown tail. Fun to watch them in the morning as they love to play with the chair cushion of a pink chair belonging to one of our neighbors. Great morning entertainment!

Stratford There are several interesting looking towns nearby that we visited during our two day stay. The first day we stopped at the closest town of St. Mary’s and really liked the look and feel of this quaint little town. A mixture of nice architecture and culture seemed to exist here. Further out is the town of Stratford which is larger than St Mary’s yet had the same look and feel but even more culture.. We stopped near the town center and took a leisurely stroll while admiring the buildings built in the late 1800’s along with all the beautiful greenery.

The next day we traveled over to the small town called Lucan which turned out to be not really worthy of the drive over to it. It was a small town with no real energy felt by us… Next up was the largest town nearby called London. There are about 1/3 of million people living in this city. We drove all around but never had a good feel for this one as well. No energy and a city that appeared to be struggling with its growth. Not a place we would likely want to visit again in the future. Oh well you can’t always win them all.

fox squirrels   fox squirrels

Earlier in the day I had an email from Susie and George of the blog Our Awesome Travels as they were within 40 miles of where we were and they invited us to come over to stay at the place they are.camping. Had we already not had reservations (which is why I hate making them) we would have changed plans and zipped over there to experience the camaraderie of the upcoming Canada Day Holiday. As uneventful as our drive was over to London and Lucan we thought we would have been much better off visiting George and Susie… Oh well, next time…

fox squirrelsfox squirrels

We are now off to Michigan where we will cross the border at Sarnia and hope that the customs folks don’t take all our food…

6 comments:

  1. Those certainly are some unusually colored squirrels!

    ReplyDelete
  2. My comment was going to be exactly the same as Judy's. . .very cool looking squirrels. . .

    ReplyDelete
  3. Too bad you did not get out this way but maybe next time. So much more real neat things to see. Enjoy Michigan some beautiful shoreline and Frankemuth is a scenic town to see if you have a chance. Mackinac Island is also a nice day trip if you are in the area.
    Usually at the border crossing they are concerned with fruit and veggies, in all our crossings.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I like the bottle Sharon is holding in the first photo. I will be there for dinner tonight.

    A while back another blog I follow was in St Mary. What a lovely town indeed with lots of character.

    ReplyDelete
  5. And that's why I never made reservations whenever we were our in the RV. Just didn't know where we'd end up. Only got burnt one time, but the park just a few miles down the road had spots, so it wasn't a hardship.
    Nice to see you enjoyed your time in Canada. As similar as it is, I'm sure it can be a bit of a culture shock (or maybe just a mild jolt) after you come over that border.
    Hopefully your return crossing in uneventful.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. we enjoyed a brief stay in Canada and I can only wish our crossing was uneventful... more on that in the next blog...

      Delete