On North American Soil

Mike and I are finally back home, though our journey from Halifax to Toronto via the U.S. didn’t go quite as planned. We landed in Halifax on the same day our RV arrived, much to the annoyance of our shipping broker, who pointed out that we weren’t supposed to retrieve it for three or four days. Naturally, we wanted to get it as quickly as possible. We had major problems with customs, who ended up sending someone to search our RV to find out what we hadn’t declared. We’d assumed we only needed to declare items purchased in Europe with duty due, but the customs official wanted a list of everything we were bringing back. This wasn’t exactly easy, considering we had the equivalent of a small apartment’s worth of stuff collected over eight or nine years.

Then came trouble with our e-bikes, which had originally been bought in Canada and shipped to Europe. We had to prove this in the customs office, which caused a few more hiccups. Next, customs questioned why we hadn’t declared the bike bags, which were well-used gifts by now and barely worth mentioning. At this point, Mike was on the verge of going toe-to-toe with the customs officer, which probably wasn’t helping our case! Finally, a few hours later, we were allowed to leave – after paying $10 to customs, yes, ten dollars.

At the port, we hit another snag: our broker in England hadn’t processed the paperwork for us to pick up our RV, and they were closed for the night. With help from the shipping company itself, and a few more hours lost, we finally retrieved the RV and headed for a local campground. One windshield wiper had managed to go missing somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, and, of course, it started to rain just as we arrived at the campground in the dark.

On a brighter side, I managed to get a great deal on a rental car at Halifax airport. Most rentals were around $200 CAD per day, which really surprised me. Eventually, I found a car-sharing app that offered one for $120 per day, but I had issues with the app and texting on my phone. Luckily, Hertz came through with a $61-per-day deal, on the condition we’d take any vehicle that they had to give us. As it turned out, they gave us a Tesla! With our limited driving, we didn’t even have to pay for fuel. Mike wanted to charge it just to try out a Tesla station for the first time. Here I was, expecting some cheap compact manual transmission, and we got a Tesla instead.

Once we arrived at the campground, reality set in. Back in Europe, our 37-foot, 2014 RV turned heads – people were always taking photos and even lined up sometimes to have a look inside, which was a fun way to meet folks. Let’s just say it’s a different story over here. I’ll admit we might miss that European admiration a little.

At the campground, we quickly realized that traveling without a car, with our e-bikes hard to access, and being in the middle of nowhere left us pretty much stranded—not a great feeling and definitely not something we were used to. You might recall we had to leave our car in Europe because the shipping company wouldn’t let us bring our hybrid back along with the RV which had been our plan all along. Besides smaller items, the car was used for storing our 8-hp boat motor in the trunk and our two e-bikes in the back seat. Now everything had to squeeze into an already packed RV.
As you can see from the photo at the top, we had to box up everything inside the RV before shipping. I labeled most boxes either “Condo” (to leave untouched until we’re home) or “Halifax” for essentials we’d need to live comfortably over the next few weeks. First on that list? My coffee pot! The photo just above shows how crowded things got. I have multiple bruises on my legs from stepping over the e-bikes while we were driving.

With most campgrounds closed after we left Halifax, we ended up staying in places like Walmart and truck stops. While they’re great options to have, most of them don’t offer electricity or water. If we’d had the car to get around and explore during the day, we would’ve taken a lot longer on our drive home. That had been our original plan. Instead, it became a routine of driving to the next stop, spending the night—usually far from any town center—and then moving on again the next day.

Once home, we’ll get our car modified to be towable behind the RV as soon as possible. Being in a larger motorhome, without easy access to roam during the day and come “home” to the RV every night isn’t our style.

As you can see, we’re now home. Our RV is in outdoor storage about 20 minutes from our condo, and every box we packed up is now in our apartment. We’re gradually working through them, realizing we accumulated quite a few unnecessary items over the years.

Our first order of the day is to decide whether we are going to buy a new RV to replace ours. We don’t want a 45 foot one or anything like that. Something between 36 and 40 feet and much newer would be great. Our other option is to invest in sprucing up our current motorhome. It could use a little attention: wood scratches need staining, some grout around the ceramic tiles needs replacing, and there are a few custom projects I’d love a carpenter to handle. We’ll see where we land on that soon.

Give me a couple of weeks, and I’ll post a summary of our 2024 European adventure. I considered writing a full recap of all eight years on the road—the highs and lows—but Mike thinks that might be overkill, so I may take the easy way out.

We plan to start traveling again next spring. Right now, the idea is to continue posting about our travels in North America, though that’s still up in the air. Stay tuned for the 2024 summary coming soon!