I had heard you had to use the ArriveCAN app to make getting through the border from the US to Canada without being chastised. It replaced the old paper forms route. So I downloaded it on my phone and set about adding our passports and visit information while we were stopped at one of my parents’ houses in the Chicago suburbs overnight before making our way to Detroit, Michigan, where we made the crossing.
We had more questions on the US side than we did on the Canada side. At this point, I had ordered insulated covers for all our windows (after the Florida heat) and we just left the ones over the rear freight doors in all the time since the side mirrors were sufficient for driving visibility. When the CBP uniformed men peered in and realized they couldn’t see, they came around. “What’s in the back?”
“A toilet. Would you like to see it?” I giggled. They declined. And we were off. With the ArriveCAN app, we breezed through the Canadian checkpoint and headed straight for the shores of Lake Erie through rural farmland where we waited for a restaurant I had heard of to open.
The fries box at Garfields most definitely did not disappoint. I was in absolute poutine (and more) fries heaven. It also fed me for days.
We continued on to Toronto, where there was one choice for a campground. I managed to book it for two nights, but nothing was available over the weekend. This was the only “nature” available in an urban jungle and it filled over the weekend. We caught up on laundry and I set myself up to work remotely.
During Covid, I had learned to employ a nice solid curtain behind me as a background. It gave nice ambience (better than a plain white wall or an array of stuff in the background) and made a consistent background. Once we returned to the office, I actually mounted it on the wall there as well. So when using the bug tent, I made sure I had absolute privacy, but still mounted the curtain and clipped the edges to the side of the tent to maintain the background (and privacy).
I had to stand in for my boss during a meeting with our big boss. We have a culture of camera on, but I knew the odds of me needing to speak were very low. This particular day, it was very gusty. As we were in the meeting, a big gust of wind blew through and ripped the clips from my curtain which proceeded to envelope me. I was wishing there was a voice command for, “TURN THE CAMERA OFF!!” Both my arms were holding back the sides of the curtain while I debated trying to use my toes to work my trackpad to the “Stop Video” button. Instead, I waited for the wind to abate and hit it with my hands. Whew. Nobody noticed that, right?! OMG.
After the work day, our daughter came to pick us up in her car. Yay, reunited! We hadn’t seen her in quite some time. We spent the next couple days meeting her friends, attending a street fair in a funky part of Toronto, and moving around in the van. Since we couldn’t stay in the campground over the weekend, we did two nights at a Harvest Host brewery in an industrial area (most things closed over the weekend, so we were the only ones in the parking lot).
Nervously, we attempted street camping on our last night there. We found a semi-busy road and parallel parked in front of a church across from a shopping center (with “no overnight parking” signs or we would have parked there). We closed all our blackout blinds and hunkered down, worried about getting “the knock”. But no one paid us any mind and we moseyed on in the morning.
