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Sep
19
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Category: Travel to USA & Canada

It has been another lovely sunny day just made for bike travel. Not too cool to start and not too hot to finish. Bit of a Cinderella ride really albeit with not a lot of photo opportunities spending most of the ride on Interstates but at least that meant we had plenty to occupy our time and attention so there wasn’t any likelihood of being mesmerised and needing to have a nap before we got here. Where we started in Canada was obviously an English settled location with London and then Chatham Kent Windsor and Blenheim (and they’re only the names I can remember) all being passed through. We saw heaps of interesting truck configurations and suspect these are known as Michigan Mules (within the industry anyway, if you need more weight add an axle principle). They look a bit bizarre to us but apparently do the job so some shots of those. We got in by 3.30pm so Norm is tidying up the bikes as we will be returning them tomorrow for storage, so he wants them looking good for the handover. A bit sad the journey is close to finishing. Boo hoo on that front and yippee on getting home to catch up with family and friends but especially new grandson snuggles!

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Lots of roadworks early in the day, narrow lane between concrete barriers for the other direction. All 80kmh.

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Norm was on a mission when we stopped for coffee to talk to a driver about the axle situation, this is the truck he was driving.

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So, the trailer is a triaxle with 1 single axle in front of the tri and 2 single steer axles (1 at the very back of the trailer and 1 just behind the legs). All up this allows him to carry a payload of 40 tonnes.

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And obviously circumstances / different freight tasks call for different configurations.

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And again.

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And again.

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Flat and windy and many wind turbines here amongst the corn.

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Ambassador Bridge. A privately-owned bridge so our toll transponders wouldn’t work. Glad it was dry when it came to fish for cash.

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And it's crossing a big body of water with serious shipping underneath.

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And back into the USA we go.

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We love the many and varied water towers at all the towns, this one in Summit Township.

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Pumpkins and flowers for sale. Have seen lots of these coming up to Halloween and they vary from being quite professional like this and plenty with them lined up on cardboard under trees as well.

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And some interesting things for sale for would be collectors.

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Our hotel for the night the Holiday Inn Express & Suites. This is where Norm cleaned up the bikes so he could remain in the shade.


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Sep
19
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Category: Travel to USA & Canada

To start, I should announce that my phone was ringing when we got into our hotel room last night and we were shocked to see our daughter Rosey with a newborn baby, she was supposed to be induced today but ended up with an emergency caesarean. Little Arlo is in the special care nursery but doing well and will hopefully be out of there very soon. It goes without saying that he is perfect!

Back to the trip. We left the long johns in the case today figuring that we weren’t going to have any mountain riding like yesterday and that most of the hills were behind us and we were right with mostly undulating to flat land throughout today and comfortable temperatures throughout. We rode through heaps of corn fields and all sorts of agriculture including orchards, berries, pumpkin and vegetables of all descriptions, some of which we were struggling to identify. We have been in Canada since the first few minutes of our trip and have found the housing quite different to the USA. Overall there appears to be very little marginal housing and more brick being used as well as various timber finishes rather than vinyl cladding and consistently good quality along Route where we travelled. The big highlight was to visit Niagara Falls

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And there we are in Niagara Falls.

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One of the Fall faces.

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And the other, the horseshoe.

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And all together.

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Some of the manicured gardens at the falls.

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Our parking ticket and the infringement issued when we had 30 minutes left! Norm tracked down the Policeman who was apologetic. $12 to park was enough without a fine on top when we weren’t out of time.

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And it’s all happening back from the falls.

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And again.

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Farm autumn colour (since we are in Canada) and wind turbine. Have seen a few throughout our trip.

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Another barn.

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80km straight roads nearly all day is mesmerising …. nap time.

And some work shots. Rigs in yard.

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And again.

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And what exactly is that???

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Some more nice real estate.

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And again

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And tonight, is a highlight staying at the Idlewyld Inn & Spa in London Ontario. All kinds of lovely including a delicious dinner and a buffet breakfast will start our day in the morning. The only downside was a slowere mthan ideal Wifi but I guess you can't have everything.

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And a view of the bikes from our dinner spot which is the front of the little round room on the right above. Heavenly.


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