Borders and Repairs

 

Our appointment in Hamburg for the Flying Scotsman was at 1PM on the 4th of September. The picture below is of the N.E.T. campground and the beginnings of a nice sunset as seen from the observation deck of the bus.

 



So on Tuesday we rolled out of that park down some nice two lane roads toward the border with the US. We've crossed over the Welland Canal on the QEW highway many times but this time we went under it. This is a major shipping canal between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario and has several locks along the way ... really neat to go under the canal!

At the border we went through the Nexus line but noticed that every vehicle in every line was being inspected in detail ... every trunk open, etc. Our agent told us to park the bus and go into the building. Inside we waited a bit until called, went up to the counter, handed over the keys to the agent, and in about 10 minutes he came back and said, "Have a nice day." We think the original agent who had us park didn't know what to do because the inside agent just shrugged ... some confusion maybe.

Anyway we were across the border about noon and arrived at the Camping World about 20 minutes later. Our first plan was to leave the RV there for two days and explore Buffalo but it was 95 degrees and 80% humidity so we asked the repair place if they could hustle up our job and we could leave that evening. The big boss agreed and by 6 pm we were on our way with two new tires and a new slide topper awning. Below is the copilot finding us a place to rest for the evening and Bandit is chilling by her feet.

Finally we came to rest in the Westfield KOA which is right on lake Erie about 50 miles to the west of the Hamburg-Buffalo area.

This was a typical KOA and had some really friendly folks that took us to our site and the big diesel came to rest at about 7PM ... late happy hour!