Yes, we stayed in a driveway! A nice driveway, in a nice neighbourhood, but a driveway nonetheless. For those that don’t remember these types of stays, this home was part of Harvest Hosts. HH are places we can stay with either no, little, or all services available to us, but at a cheap rate. This was a lovely couple with a great set up in their driveway in Amherstburg Ontario and it was only 25 minutes from the U.S. border, so a perfect place to stop.

Tomorrow morning we leave early; it’s a big day of driving! Heading to Bloomington Indiana to a pig farm (another HH) called MKONO Farm. Lori has booked a pig cuddle, because……why not?

It is that time of the year where we are planning our next U.S. adventure. We leave on November 10th, a little later this year, but hopefully before the snow flies!

Our current itinerary, subject to adjustment as we rush down to warmer weather:

Nov 10th head from Milton to Windsor just by the border to get a head start on the 11th into the U.S.

Nov 11th we head to Indiana, then Missouri, Little Rock, and then Dallas. Once in Dallas we will stay for a few days and relax and see the sights. After that we hope to hit Austin, Corpus Christi, South Padre Island, and then inland into Texas for Christmas as Barb flies home to be with her family.

Once the holidays are over, we will continue our adventure exploring the West Coast.

Barb is enjoying all the last minute October fun before heading south. Prepping the gardens for the winter, raking all those leaves, storing patio furniture and so so many cushions!

Now the fun stuff of course is celebrating Thanksgiving with family and getting the house decorated for Hallowe’en. These are Lilah’s first so they’ve gotta be great!

Here are a few pics.

Winston had a great time travelling and living in the RV this past year and a bit. He was able to see lots of places in Canada as well as the U.S. and made friends along the way.

Unfortunately Winston was also getting old and was having trouble with his hips and back. So a hard decision was made to put him to rest in October prior to us heading back south. Winston will be missed in our travels as he was really great at helping us meet people in the RV parks and frankly anywhere we stopped.

Some pics of Winston’s adventures

A girl’s weekend away for Michelle, Vanessa, Lilah, and me to Bayfield Ontario. Michelle lined up a great AirBnB for us. It was chilly however we still managed to get out and do walks, mini hikes and spend some time at the water as well as in town.

Many of the pics below are from Pioneer Park in Bayfield, which boasts great sunsets.

Michelle was working and needed to have alone time at the cottage, so during the day when Lilah napped, Vanessa and I would sneak away and do yoga or go shopping. The town of Bayfield is very quaint and has some lovely shops. An incredible baby gift shop along with a fabulous bookstore – we bought stuff in both. Vanessa bought Lilah a little ‘comfort’ blanket (her first). When we got back and gave it to her she immediately loved it.

Quite a while ago, Elaine and I decided we needed to use up a Viking Cruise credit (well it was actually decided for us given there was a deadline to use it) so we booked a Mediterranean Cruise for October.

I flew into Venice Italy from Toronto, and Elaine flew in from Scotland. We met on the ship, Elaine arriving first, attending to the room requirements, and of course people watching whilst sipping on a glass of Prosecco (which she was very kind to send me a pic of as I waited for the Viking shuttle at the airport…).

Once on board we got our bearings and headed off to dinner! Overall the trip was very good, weather was excellent and the port stops were good.

Our itinerary: Venice Italy, Piran Slovenia, Zadar Croatia, Dubrovnik Croatia, Kotor Montenegro, Corfu Greece, Olympia Greece, Santorini Greece, and then Athens for a day then home.

Venice was just a port to leave from so I didn’t get to see anything. Piran was a scenic medieval town (aren’t they all in Europe?) set along the Adriatic Sea. This town remains an important producer of salt, with the salt pans having produced the precious mineral since 804 A.D. Go figure.

Zadar was an interesting port, not from a scenic perspective, but the acoustic tubes embedded beneath large marble steps at the sea wall which sing the song of the city with every lashing wave and burst of wind. It was truly incredible and you could sit there for hours listening to the sound and watching the sea.

Dubrovnik Croatia was equally incredible. While I had been there before with Sharon, we didn’t have the opportunity to do a tour. Elaine and I found the tour wonderful and if you get a chance to visit the old city within the walls, you won’t be disappointed. The playwright George Bernard Shaw famously called it “paradise on earth”.

Corfu is an island off the northwestern tip of Greece. It is a beautiful picturesque island, again if I had pictures to prove it….

Olympia Greece was a great tour of the birthplace of the Olympic Games. It was surprising that we were up close and personal with the ruins, even able to sit on old fallen stone.

Santorini Greece is just like the pictures you see in the travel magazines. The white washed walls and vibrant blue domes of the churches didn’t disappoint. The only complaint was the crowds, too many people for our liking.

Athens, our final destination, was a modern city with historical buildings throughout. The Parthenon and the Acropolis to name a couple. We toured the museum which was full of statues and relics. Our tour guide was very good and you could tell she loved talking about the rich history of her city and country. The photo of the statue where I stated it looks like his feet are both resting on the stone pedestal…….well the one foot is actually not, you can (the tour guide showed us) slide a piece of paper under the whole foot. Pretty cool, and very famous.

We drove from Cornwall to Prince Edward County. One of the nice things about driving around the country are the spots you come across that make you smile. In this case it was Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, a First Nations Reserve on the Bay of Quinte. If you travel enough you know the one thing about these spots is “cheap gas”!! The average price of gas is usually around 14 cents cheaper per litre and with a rig this size, you want to catch these when you can. There is also cheaper CBD products if you so indulge. So when we stumbled upon this little nugget of an alley (at least 5 gas stations and twice as many cannabis stores), we were thrilled. We were at 1/4 full, so we filled up and saved A LOT. We also ventured into the cannabis store for a little “sniffing around”. Once we finished up there, with smiles on our faces, full of joy we headed off to our camping destination. Turned a corner and out of Lori’s mouth was, “what the $^%$@!” The road ahead you could tell had had construction, but it looked like the road was a bridge that had lifted up to let a boat pass under. That is how high it looked!!! Hence Lori’s swearing (a few times given her dislike of bridges). Here are some relatively poor pics that don’t do the height justice. We carried through all right, but seriously, what a scare.

Ended up in a really nice RV park, called Smugglers Cove, right on Lake Ontario. Our site is at the end of a row with a nice view of the lake. Lots of activity in the park given it’s a Friday and we met some great people.

Tomorrow we are off to a winery to do some tastings and have lunch at their farm-to-table restaurant. Below are pictures of the park as well as Winston enjoying a little dip in the lake!!

We are on our way home and one should never pass up an opportunity to visit relatives, so we re-routed our drive home to stop in Cornwall to see Lori’s Aunt Danielle and Uncle Tom. We had a great visit, and in fact ended up experiencing a tour literally in their backyard.

The Moses-Saunders Power Dam is on the St Lawrence River and straddles the border between New York State and Cornwall Ontario. We were really surprised at how little we knew about this dam’s construction, impact to the communities along the St Lawrence Seaway, as well as the importance it played in opening the seaway up for the transport of goods to & from the Great Lakes.

We spent an hour there with an incredibly well-informed employee at the visitor centre, as well as watching a 15 minute movie that was filmed in the late 1950s during the dam’s construction. Very fascinating and a must-see if in the area.

Then off to Lori’s Aunt and Uncle’s to sit in the backyard and catch up for a couple of hours.

We had booked ourselves into the Bolton Spa for a luxurious day of pampering, because…well we deserved it after getting in shit yesterday at the abbey. We got to our campsite which was 12 KM from the spa and we were really excited to go there the next day.

We got up early because we were so excited. We packed our bags and proceeded to order the Uber, only to discover that there were no Ubers in this area. In fact there were no taxis to be found in the area. So now what the hell do we do? We are NOT missing the spa. So Plan B was concocted and executed!! We paid a worker in the campground to drive us AND pick us up at a pre-determined time at the end of the day. Marie was lovely and more than willing to help out some clearly distressed and stressed-out travellers. Barb was also able to really practice her French while Lori zen’d out in the back seat.

The spa was extraordinary. Outdoor yurts for massages. Different temperature pools and 4 types of saunas all along a wonderful waterfall. There were also two buildings that were quiet spaces, one very modern, the other a large tent with a wood-burning fire inside.

Note – the spa was founded, and is still owned, by Claude Provost Jr. who dedicated it to his father Claude Provost Sr. who played for the Montreal Canadiens from 1956 to 1960 and won 5 Stanley Cups.

Some other pictures of the waterfall and river

Normally under an hour drive, we took our time in order to visit a dairy producer and abbey.

The dairy producer was called La Pinte located in Ayer’s Cliff. They made plain milk, chocolate milk, cream, and yogurts. We tasted the chocolate milks and ended up with the one with the most fat…….of course. Then we went onto their yogurts, once again liking the full fat version. We ended up purchasing a strawberry, blueberry, and pumpkin/apple (which is currently our favourite). The Jersey milk has more butter fat and contains more protein, which is probably why it tastes so good. Here are some great pics of the place.

Our next stop was the Abbey of Saint-Benoit-Du-Lac. Founded in 1912 by a monk who was sent from France to set up a monastery. Today they keep the grounds and building operational by growing, producing, and selling their products. They sell apples, jams, salad dressings, cheeses made on site, cider (again made on site), as well as pasta sauces. The Abbey is open daily except between 11:00-12:00 when they have their daily mass.

We had to be quiet while inside, despite Lori’s concern that we shouldn’t have parked in the main car parking lot. Barb loved the challenge of guiding Lori into the spot and felt we should celebrate an incredible parallel parking job. As our tour ended we were walking back to the RV and a man came up to us in the parking lot and exclaimed ”are you the owners of that RV?” Proudly we said “yes’. he then went on to tell us the head priest sent him out to find us and tell us to move the RV as it wasn’t allowed to park there and it should have been in the lower parking lot for large vehicles. We apologized profusely and then went in to the RV and laughed our heads off for getting in trouble at a very prestigious abbey.