Thursday, June 7, 2012

June 7, 2012 Catch up

We arrived in Berlin PA on May 2, and hit the floor running.  We did the 'open the house' stuff which will become ritual - you know, turn on water, turn on hot water heater breakers, swish the walls down with wall brush, vacumn, mop, dust, open windows, wash windows, put in screens, check freezers, then unload the necessary stuff from the motorhome, etc. 

David left for Grand Junction the 9th of May to attend Kaeleigh's graduation on the 15th, and while he was gone I really started cleaning out cupboards and getting ready for the 1st yard sale of Kitchen, canning, Decor and more.  I picked him up at the airport on the 18th, and we had the yard sale that weekend.  Did pretty well, got rid of almost everything!  Now, just in case you were wondering, I kept plenty of stuff, but my Mom never met a kitchen gadget or pot n pan that she didn't like :)  she also was very into the Home Interior stuff so I decluttered and managed to get rid of some of that!  I think I might try my hand at Ebay...with some of the more 'antique' things!  Many thanks to my cousin Donna who helped me tremendously with the yard sale!!!

David said he wanted to go see Niagra Falls, the Canadian side, so we left June 3, stayed at a very nice campground called Footerest on the way up.  We got an early start for the border, and arrived there about 1 - OMG what a time!  We went across the Peace Bridge, the young lady looked at our passports, took our money, asked us if we had any weapons/guns to declare, we said no and she directed us up to a pull off.  Five guys came out, told us to get out of the vehicle with Cinder.  Their first question was:  Where are your guns.  We said we didn't have any.  They asked if we had guns in TX - we said NO, they said 'If you have any guns and don't declare them, you will be in serious trouble', we said Nope, no guns, then one of them said 'So, you're one of the 10 people in TX that have no guns?', we said yep, no guns.  They directed us to go sit on a bench in the cold and rain...all of them went into our motorhome, was in there about 15 minutes, came out, gave us our passports and a yellow sheet of paper and directed us to the building...so, after standing in line for 20 minutes we got to go through all the questions AGAIN.  Finally we were free to go - we got in and took off.  When we got to the campground and checked in, we started looking around.  They had gone through every thing in the MH, moved stuff, pulled out the bed, pulled the sheets out, rearranged a bunch of stuff, but the thing that really ticked us off was that on our desk, we have hook and cup latches to keep the drawers from sliding out when traveling - they apparently pulled on a drawer and when it didn't open, they jerked it hard enough to break the latch out as well as the wood!!!  That was simply uncalled for, and we didn't appreciate all the negative remarks about Texas either!!!

Niagra falls is beautiful, Canada is beautiful, both are VERY EXPENSIVE - .79 a lb for bananas, a burger and fries, $11.95 and that was NOT a nice juicy pub burger, that was just a burger!!!  In Niagra you pay to park everywhere - if you want to go into a restaurant and eat, you pay $15 to park - plus the cost of the meal!  You can go broke there in a hurry!  We managed to find a handicap spot at the police station that we parked at the first day, we purchased out people mover 2 day pass (about $50 for both of us for 2 days), the second day we parked at the Whirlpool area FREE and used the people movers.  We drove to Niagra on the Lake and found the same thing - very very expensive.  If you park on the street, there are electronic parking robots - you put in your license plate number, state, and credit card - it is $3 per half hour!!!

We saved the best for last and took the maid of the mist boat trip up to the falls - it was awesome, but again, very expensive for a 20 minute boat ride! 



All in all, when we came back into the USA today, I wanted to kiss the ground.  We had no hassles, they didn't even come into the motorhome, we were through in 5 minutes with a Have a Nice Day!  Whew, it's good to be home!!!

Tonight we are once again at Footerest campground in Kane PA, enjoying the quiet...