Our vacation in Germany flew by. We spent a lot of time with family and friends and welcomed our fourth grandchild. That's why we were a little wistful when we boarded the plane back to Las Vegas after almost seven weeks. After a night in the hotel, we take MOMO out of storage and stay at a campsite to install the various spare parts we have brought with us.
Coming from Flaming Gorge, we spend the night in the National Forest, where we always find nice pitches that are kindly free of charge. We continue via Vernal to the Dinosaur National Monument. At the main entrance there is a visitor center and a museum with a dinosaur quarry where the sandstone with its exposed and preserved dinosaur fossils is protected by a glass building. In the museum are two dinosaur skeletons made from real and reconstructed bone parts.
The border crossing to the USA goes smoothly. There aren't many people here in the solitude of the prairie anyway. Everyone is nice and friendly and nobody wants to look into our car. We are through in 15 minutes. Montana is as big as Germany, but only has 1 million inhabitants. For the time being, the landscape remains the same as in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, endless fields of grain and steppe grass. 150 kilometers later we arrive in Malta, the first town worth mentioning on the route. We stock up on US dollars and replenish our supplies. Fortunately, the prices are somewhat lower than in Canada. It is scorching hot and we drive 30km out to a reservoir. There we can camp for free on BLM land right by the water. However, we can't swim because the lake is totally shallow and musty. But a nice campfire and a great sunset make up for the lack of swimming fun.
We cross the provincial border into Manitoba and 60 km before Winnipeg we find a great place to swim at a quarry pond with crystal clear water. We would have liked to stay another night, but after our morning swim we were bothered by thousands of flies, so we decide to drive on around midday. MOMO needs another oil change and we find a German mechanic in Steinbach who moved to Manitoba from Bremen a few years ago. He also does an inspection and fixes a few small oil leaks. Thanks to Karin's unsurpassed research, we are once again very lucky to find such a competent garage.
We stay in St Malo Provincial Park for two days, go swimming and go for a bike ride in the surrounding area and have a good time.
We leave Montreal and enter the province of Ontario. The federal state has an area of over one million square kilometers, making it larger than France and Germany combined. Although Ontario only accounts for a good 10% of Canada's total area, it is the province with the highest population density in Canada at 11.2 inhabitants per square kilometer. In comparison, Germany has an area of 358,000 square kilometers with a population density of 236 inhabitants per square kilometer.
We make a stop in Cornwall to do the laundry again. We also need a stable internet connection for the German team's game in the European Football Championship. We spend the night at the marina and go for a stroll around the town in the morning and want to have a real American breakfast, with lots of calories and coffee. In fact, next to the well-known standard fast food chains, we find a diner that really looks like it has fallen out of time. The interior and staff are from the mid-1950s and the prices are fortunately the same. We continue on the Trans Canada Highway (TCH) along the St. Lawrence River to Upper Canada Village, a museum village that brings to life the structure and facilities of a typical rural small town in 19th century Ontario. Crafts such as sawmills, bakeries, blacksmiths, flour mills and much more are recreated by locals in period costume.