Days 4 and 5

Day 4
We traveled 400 miles today starting in Saut Ste. Marie and ending up in Collingwood, ON. Today may not have been as spectacular as yesterday but we still had a great time. The weather was gorgeous, blue sky and mild temperatures in the 60's. The terrain was mostly rolling hills and farmlands, with many rivers and lakes between. There were some very scenic gorges and some neat cliffs and rock outcroppings too. We had many glimpses of Lake Huron, before eventually pulling over at Wasaga Beach to put my feet in for a quick photo. We checked into the Holiday Inn Express for the night. We decided earlier in the day that it would be fun to check out the different food chains in Canada. We had seen so many "Tim Hortons" that we just had to stop. It is similar to Wendy's, and are often found sharing a building with Wendys. They had sandwiches, coffees, teas, tea biscuts, etc. I had a "hot smoothie" which was essentially a whipped hot milk steamer with a shot of caramel. Very good but on the sweet side for me. We went to Montana's Cookhouse for supper. It is also a chain but more like a Perkins with a Joe's Crab Shack feel. Everything was decorated in northwoods theme. Timbers, old canoes, moose, bear, caribou and snow shoes were everywhere. There was even an old pickup truck mounted up high with Montana license plates. Gas is running around $.95 per liter. We found 11 geocaches along the way.

Day 5
We woke up a little early this morning in Collingwood, ON so we decided to get a few caches in the area. The first one took us to an Aboretum and boardwalk along the shores of Lake Huron. We saw a pair of nesting swans and the usual plants and birds that are in our area. If you didn't look at the ski hills on one side of the town, you would have thought we were in Wisconsin. As we traveled south we encountered rolling hills, and small farms growing soybeans or corn, one field even had a few wild turkeys. As we got closer to the Niagra Escarpment the hills began to gain greater elevations. The farms turned to orchards and vineyards and the cities became larger. Burlington and then Hamilton with a population 505,000. Good thing we had the Nuvi to help us find the Queen's Express Way, QEW. It ran along Lake Ontario, through industrial areas with locks and gigantic ore ships that were dwarfed in the scheme of things. The QEW eventually brought us to Niagra Falls. After a few turns past huge buildings, casinos and shopping malls we found a place to park near the mid point of the falls on the Canadian side. The sound of the falls, the mist in the air and the screams of sea gulls was almost surreal.First we walked to the edge to over look the falls and try to grasp it's immensity. Snapping a few photos we decided to head down to one end and find the virtual cache first. Stopping to take photos for strangers and they reciprocating with our camera.Next we back tracked along the top and eventually made it to the store. As most tourist traps it had numerous things with "Niagra Falls" stamped on it. We bought a few things, looked at both sets of falls one more time and headed back to the car. By this time it was nearly 2:00 and we realized we had not had lunch. The temperature had gone up to 77 so first I changed into shorts, then I made our sandwiches.It took one more spin around the block to get the right exit to the "Rainbow Bridge" taking us back to the USA. Even though there were over a dozen entry ways open the lines were long. We waited as each vehicle drove to the border, on a platform that tipped the vehicle to the right. You had to stay a good 50 feet behind the car going in and wait to be waved in. Then the officer needed to see the passports, asked questions on how long we had been there, what we had purchased and why we were coming into the USA. He made me remove my sunglasses and he had Jim roll the backseat window down to see what we had back there. Then he let us pass.Our first stop was for a New York Cache. A little ice cream stand a few blocks from the border. After a few more caches we filled up with petro at $2.77 a gallon and started heading east. We did get to see the escarpment from the state side too, we just did not get up real close.We are now at a LaQuinta just out of Rochester, NY, 257 miles from where we were last night. We ate at a nice family restaurant called "Stonies" where we had baked halabit for dinner.