May 8 – To Marquette, Michigan

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We got packed up and left the cottage about 11:00 am today. It was bright and sunny but suddenly today the bugs were vicious so Jennie stayed inside and my brother Jim helped me back out of the driveway.

We got to Sault St Marie about 12:30 and headed over the bridge across the Soo Locks.

US Customs was empty and we drove right up to the booth. The agent was actually quite friendly. She asked where we were going and for how long. She was surprised by the answer and asked how we had the time. I just said we retired early. She asked about fruit and vegetables and I said we had none. She also asked about meat and all we had was some curry chicken and some pork dumplings. I guess that was OK because she said thanks and have a nice trip.

The first thing we did in the US was to get gas. It was $3.85 US a gallon which works out to somewhere around $1 Cdn a litre. All along the highway in Canada it was $1.46 a litre.

The first hundred miles across the upper peninsula of Michigan is VERY boring. The road surface was good but it was just a tunnel of trees and very straight as you can see from the map above.

Once we got to the interesting part along the shore of Lake Superior it got colder and foggy. Oh well.

Tonight we are “Wallydocking”, staying in a Walmart parking lot. As I said last year, Walmart has a corporate policy to allow RV’ers to stay free in their lots, unless the local community forbids it. Its not very level and kind of noisy but we need to replenish all the groceries that we got rid of to cross the border.

I also bought a prepaid card for our Verizon mobile broadband stick but we seem to be in a coverage hole and I can’t connect. Luckily the MacDonald's in the Walmart is a free WiFi hotspot which we can connect to from the parking lot.

The adventure begins…