After a heavy stack of pancakes, Erin and I set out for Canada. Erin knows the Canadian national anthem, and I insisted that she teach it to me. But I was too dense to learn it before we arrived.
At the north end of Lake Champlain we crossed the line to the Richelieu River, passed under a bridge and beside a fort to find ourselves in French Canada. A sign on a buoy in the middle of the river directed us to pull over at customs on the jetty ahead.
The customs officer asked us all sorts of questions: what would be our address during our stay in Canada? How long would we be staying? How did we intend to return to the U.S. when we were done? Was I bringing in any weapons besides the knife on my life vest?
I’d like to think our answers entertained her. When we were done and our passports were stamped, she let us take a picture of her and the jetty from my boat.
Welcome to Canada.
My cell phone lost reception even though I had paid Cricket extra to make sure that it would work.
Besides no reception for American phones, just north of the border we discovered horse flies, aka zebra flies and black flies. They’re slow, but if you’re not paying attention they’ll bite a chunk out of you and leave a trail of blood and pain.
We pulled up to a marina to make camp, and were welcomed by it’s talkative owner to pitch our tent on a grassy field. The marina nextdoor had showers and wifi, but not his. Also, he thought our route would take us the wrong way. He knew a kayaker a while back who did a trip similar to ours, and went a different way.
The marina nextdoor kindly let us use their showers and wifi. I spent some time on Skype with Cricket trying to get my phone to work, to no avail.
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