We bid adieu to our very friendly and helpful campground host and headed to Canada. It is now required by Canadian law that all travelers complete their passport and immunization information online using an app called ArriveCAN. We started the process at home: passport and vaccination status; completion requires reason for travel, address of where you will stay, location of border crossing and date and time of arrival. Identification, passport and immunization records can be uploaded any time, but destination, ETA, etc. must be done within 72 hours before arrival. Sadly, the app, like so many apps, is not always cooperative. Peggy couldn’t finish loading all her data and, while I could load all my data, the app refused to submit. As a result, there was a very long delay at the border while very pleasant Canadian Immigration people helped us fix Peggy’s app and complete the application. Since they couldn’t fix mine, they were able to load my data onto Peggy’s app and submit it that way. All in all, it was about an hour and a half delay in the journey which could have been avoided with dependable software.
The next stop was to find a bank from which we could withdraw some Canadian currency. After a few wrong turns in downtown Ottawa, we finally found a cooperating bank, withdrew the necessary cash, found our way back to ON 417 and headed west to Algonquin Park under beautiful blue sunny skies.
Road through Algonquin Park
It was a beautiful drive (about 6 hours) filled with wonderful scenery to Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario. It is a large park (about 3,000 square miles) filled with lakes, bogs, hiking trails and many campsites.
Pog Lake Campground, Algonquin Park
We have a wooded site and setting up camp is still a little new to us but we got the tent up fairly quickly and went off in search of food and saved the final preparations for afterward. We’ve decided that we will eat out on travel days and cook at the campsite on rest days.) The fish and chips at one of the park cafes was quite good. Fortunately, our site has electricity so we were able to charge devices, all except the air mattress battery which Peggy didn’t think needed charging. Unfortunately, it did need charging so we waited up a little longer for that. (After a 5 year camping hiatus we are relearning.) Happily, all went well and we read for a while before the sandman claimed us.