Homeward Bound......

Homeward bound
We are now
Homeward bound
Home is where our thoughts are escaping
Home is where our music's playing......
Liberties taken with the original by Simon & Garfunkel from 1966


We changed our minds about travelling west along 401 / 402 through the border at Sarnia and then south around Lake Michigan just south of Chicago. That portion of 401 is often referred to as 'Suicide Alley' and last time we drove it, it scared the daylights out of us. A steady stream of semi-trailer trucks in both lanes, leaving no room between them made it hairy-scary to be a little car wedged in between and suddenly one truck ahead of us a ways fish-tailed and caused the ones following to slam on brakes and go out of control. The corridor south of Chicago is another grid-locked highway that is not fun at all. To top it off, the customs officer at Niagara Falls when we entered Canada, told us that the Sarnia border crossing was an exceptionally busy port. That settled it; we decided to drive north to Sudbury, follow the north shore of Lake Huron and cross the border at Sault Ste Marie.

We did not take that expensive toll road out of Toronto but chose local highways which made it a slow exit. So we didn't drive too far that first day....just to Parry Sound. A friendly Walmart, a cup of steeped tea at Tim's and a bit of geocaching made our evening pleasant.


It was a great drive, not much traffic and the road surface fairly smooth except for around Sudbury where the mining trucks and equipment play havoc with the blacktop. However, when we got to Sault Ste Marie, there was a major detour on the main highway that took us off the route to the border bridge. At a stoplight, Fernie called out his window to a city truck asking how to get back on track. They said 'follow us' and pulled ahead guiding us through the narrow winding streets all the way to the bridge entrance. Such a courteous and friendly thing to do.

The border was quiet, just a few vehicles ahead of us. Perhaps that's why they decided to search our motorhome for verboten fruit, plants and veg, having time on their hands. They took my mother's day flowers and three oranges......totally missed the grapefruit, lemon and limes. But they did it in a friendly manner explaining how even though the oranges were grown in the USA, after they co-mingle with Canadian produce, they can bring in contamination. We Canadians are so dirty! They didn't even care that we had ham and bacon......and I thought the 'swine flu' would have them extremely paranoid about pig products. Go figure!


The town across the border in Michigan is also called Sault Ste Marie and there's a large native reservation meaning of course – a casino. We stayed there for the night and never even entered the doors except to talk to security about parking. We geocached instead – it's far cheaper. I was so dismayed that my Verizon stick had no service. I guess it's because the town is almost surrounded by Canada – on three sides. That must cause the locals problems.


Escanaba, Michigan is a pretty town on the west side of Green Bay, an adjunct to Lake Michigan. They have miles of parkland and trails along the lakefront. It started to rain and the wind came up as we were traipsing over to a geocache on the end of a long dock but we had our big umbrella with us and we hunkered down behind it and fought the gale – we geocachers are hardy folk :) The storm abated as quickly as it started and we were able to carry on. Escanaba also has a friendly Walmart.


The terrain changed as we left the isthmus between the lakes and crossed into Wisconsin with larger trees both evergreen and deciduous and a rolling landscape. We skipped through the state on peaceful secondary highways, stopping for the night at the Rhinelander Walmart where Maggie overlooked a beautiful cemetery all dressed in finery for the Memorial Day weekend and another stop at Turtle Lake, St. Croix Casino where we had at least five acres all to ourselves.


We geocache at every stopping point and in Turtle Lake which is a tiny hamlet surrounded by wild land, we ventured out to the forest but Fernie refused to go into the woods.
“Uh, uh” he stated stubbornly “I don't want anymore tick encounters”.
“Don't be such a baby” I jeered sneeringly and I grabbed my walking stick and bag and headed off through the long grass, through the swampy terrain into the woods after the cache. I hadn't got very far before I heard him thrashing along behind me. What a good man! (and what a harridan I must seem to you all). It only took us about a half an hour to hike in, grab the cache and head out again. Next stop was a cemetery cache and being Memorial weekend, there were quite a few cars and visitors there. As Fernie pulled the car to a stop, he slapped his hand out the window knocking something off it and yelled “Tick!”.
“No, it can't be” I said thinking he was making a fuss about nothing and I got out of the car. Suddenly, I noticed some brown spots on the legs of my pants and I was aghast. Fernie was right and I was wrong (It's so hard to have to admit that) I was horrified and picked them off as Fernie was wriggling and slapping his neck as more of them climbed up towards his head. Then I felt something on my neck and by now I was feeling quite frightened about the apparent horde that were attacking us. I picked off several from my neck and then pulled up my pant legs to find four of them clinging on tight to my flesh. Eeeeeeekkkkkkkk! We were both gyrating and shrieking and pulling up our clothes and I wonder what the poor folks who were visiting their dearly departed were thinking. That was it, we had to get back to the motorhome quickly and get out of these clothes. Luckily, Maggie was parked in a quiet location where I hope nobody saw us both disrobe (except for underwear) outside the door, leave our clothes in a pile and jump in quickly. We checked each other over thoroughly finding several more before putting on clean clothes and going back outside to inspect the discarded bundle. We were horrified to find a half dozen or more clinging to the inside of our pant legs and more on our tshirts and jackets. We picked and picked and then still afraid we might have missed some, put all the clothes into a garbage bag, inside a garbage bag, inside another garbage bag and put them in the back of the car. We brushed our hair thoroughly outside before having hot showers and washing our hair. That wasn't the end of it though because the next day, a few of them who had dropped off in the car, attacked us as we were driving. For the next few days, we checked each other for more ticks because we seemed to be constantly itchy but we didn't find anymore. Altogether, we had about twenty five ticks each on us. I will never go in the woods again! Well not here anywayz and not in the south.

Across the St. Croix river to Minnesota, we skirted the northern edge of St Paul/Minneapolis to reach Monticello the home of friends (C&W) that we'd met on our snowbirding forays to Arizona for several winters. They had invited (actually they insisted, which was so welcoming) us to park Maggie at their place and visit with them as we passed through Minnesota on our way home. The Mississippi River runs by just at the end of their street and I expected it to be just a stream seeing as it's not all that far from its source but it was already a good sized waterway. We stayed for two nights and we had a lovely time, getting to know them so much better with lots of reminiscenses and laughter. We had a wonderful meal with them; Fernie is still ecstatic about the baked ham, potato salad, corn and homemade yeast buns topping it off with rhubarb pie – all his favourite things. “C” even packed up some ham and buns for us to take along on our journey when we left.


So now it feels like the trip is over more or less....and we're just going home. We half heartedly explored Fargo, North Dakota on a cold and blustery afternoon. The spring floods in the Red River Valley had finally receded and road crews were busy holding up traffic interminably while they repaired and repaved. The town itself echoed the dismal atmosphere of one of my favourite all-time films “Fargo” and as we wandered aimlessly past the dark brick buildings, I pictured Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) sitting in one of the crumby bars.


North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington and home - all will be passed in a blur. It'll be good to see “the green green grass of home”.