2005/04 Hamilton trip - Return to Columbia |
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Tuesday March 29th
We were up before five, and said our goodbyes to Julie, and to her two cats, who still didn’t really know what to make of us. Then we joined the happy commuters and umpteen lanes of traffic for the 40 miles drive to Pearson Airport, on the edge of Toronto. This time we were flying via Detroit and I’m happy to report that Detroit has at last got rid of its horrible little airport, with its jam-packed corridors. On a Friday afternoon it used to be like commuting on the Circle Line. The replacement airport is airy and spacious and, of course, you have to travel miles to get between connecting flights. They not only have moving walkways, but also a high speed tram to get from one end of the concourse to the other.
The commuter jet from Detroit got us to Columbia in late afternoon. We took a cab to Provan, where we could see our camper still being worked on. According to Dave they’d fixed everything except the awning, which should still work even though there are bits missing from the plastic end of the roll. It looked like they’d fixed most of the problems, but somewhere in the process they’d turned the fridge off, so last week’s pork chops were a bit the worse for wear. They had fixed the bodywork nicely, and replaced a number of faulty parts. We were less optimistic about the water leaks. Dave the Salesman told a very different story from Dave the Repairer. “One-piece roof to keep you dry” had become “It’s really difficult to keep the rain out of these units”.
We quickly reloaded the fridge with a few essentials at the local Winn-Dixie store and then rushed across town to Sesqui state park before it closed for the night. Sesquicentennial park with its artificial lake and rental boats is more like a city park than a state park, but it has served our purposes well. It must have had some heavy rain while we were gone as the campground roads had gone from bad to much worse, with enormous craters and potholes.
We were planning to take about two and a half weeks to get home. The route would take us north to the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, through the mountains to Kentucky’s Cumberland Gap, and then down the Natchez Trace Parkway from Nashville across Alabama and Mississippi to Louisiana. We hoped to get to the Kisatchie Forest when the wild azaleas were blooming, and then make our way back home through Arkansas and Missouri without retracing our outward steps. That was the original plan, taking advantage of forest and state campgrounds, but Sandie had perked up at mentions of North Carolina and Arkansas, and had added trips to a few sapphire, emerald, and crystal mines to the route.
The story of this Deep South trip was meant to be in two parts, but I realized that the antics in Hamilton would be more interesting than our groveling in the gunge at some mine halfway up a mountain, so I deferred the saga of the gunge to a new part three.
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