June 2022

Until now we have visited two KOA (Camp of America) campgrounds in Canada, the first in Montreal and the second one in Quebec. As I learned they have three service levels, the Journey being the simplest, the Holiday offering more services and the Resort being the best version. All of them are near or on Highways so it is very easy to reach them with bigger rigs (without issues with low bridges).

Even the first one in Montreal was all good for us. Clean and new toilets and showers, well maintained flower gardens and grass, easy to access spots (pull-through for convenience). The power and water connection was reliable, there was one power outage due to a major thunderstorm which was really force major, outside of their control. So we enjoyed our stay there and I was especially grateful for the storage of our trailer and car after my initial drive from Delaware US was completed to Montreal.

The second KOA we visited was in Quebec, which is one category higher (Holiday) and about twice the size of the one in Montreal. It has a nice childrens' playground with real chickens, a gold washing game and a large jumping platform. The most enjoyed part was the pool and the hot tub which we used with the kids all times. It was still before the main season so the pool was open until 4pm and the water was a bit cold to my taste, the kids had no problem playing in it. The staff on duty was very kind and although the hot tub is signed 18+ only she recommended to warm up there with the kids. So we kindly used both facilities, going back and forth from one to the other every ten minutes.

The laundry was fine at both locations and we made good use of them. So overall we are happy with the service KOA provided so far and we plan to use them throughout our journey. Tomorrow we try a longer leg for the first time: about 500 kms to cover. So far we did only 180-200km per half days but we want to try and see a longer one heading to Nova Scotia. The goal is to reach a microbrewery so I am quite motivated! Will see how well the kids will cope with the long day. We plan several longer stops every 2 hours so might be a late arrival.

Enroute to Quebec we stopped at La Mauricie National Park which was a small detour from the highway. It is a nice forest campsite, all spots are spread out in the forest and we liked the simple, clean and modern facilities. It was the first backup place for me and it was almost perfect for the first time navigating in. The only negative was the lack of leveling on the site. After the first night and accidentally spilling two coffees on the stove I wanted to do something about it. So I place two levelling raises under the wheels on the left side and pulled the trailer onto it. It became perfectly level.
We did a short excursion and found a nice dam built by beavers. We haven't seen the animals themselves but their marks were on the trees nearby.

Beavers dam

Today was the day we expected our dog to join us in Montreal. The day before we left Budapest we handed him over to Kutyagondnok, who took care of our dogs earlier. She had to take him to a vet for a health check and official documents before takeoff and she dropped him off at the airport on the agreed time.

I was driving from the campsite to the airport in the afternoon and there were several announcements on the radio about an approaching thunderstorm. I did not worry that time but it had a big impact on us. When I arrived to the airport so did the thunderstorm and just after I entered the building it was raining like cats and dogs. Exactly the animals we wanted to pick up with a few fellow owners who waited in the room. Two of them had cats, two of us waited for dogs.

When I talked to the ground handling agent she said there is good news and bad news. The aircraft landed just before the thunderstorm but due to heavy lightnings the whole airport was closed and none of the incoming aircrafts were unloaded. So we had to wait until the storm left the area and the airport was reopened. It took several hours from 3pm till 8:30pm. Luckily we decided in the afternoon that I go for the dog alone, our first plan was that we all go. With kids this long delay would have been unmanageable so I was glad we changed our minds. This extra wait time was almost as long as the last leg of the flight our dog took.

FInally the moment came when we reunited and I can say he was very happy! Just like us.

This weekend Formula 1 visits Montreal again after a two year COVID-break. The city is fully booked and excited about the GP as am I being an F1 fan. Earlier I was lucky enough to watch an F1 race in Hungary and I also rode the Monaco track with a motorbike. So I had to give it a try in Montreal although tickets were sold out long ago. Therefore our Montreal sightseeing tour's highlight was our random trial (and success) to check out the F1 racetrack.

Our Ford Expedition was a great camouflage and although we had no passes we were let in without any hesitation. We parked our car on the Northern edge of the racetrack and walked through the empty grandstand tribunes right to the 180 degree corner of the racetrack. It was amazing to see the Ferrari Challenge cars which were being packed into trucks after their event was finished. Enjoy some photos and a short video about our guerilla action.

We have safely arrived to Montreal and before we left home we had a great chat with a Canadian-Hungarian podcast called Kanada Banda. They have asked great questions about our trip and I came up with equally great answers! Listen to it on this link (Hungarian language content)

There were many questions in my head when we started dreaming about a longer term road travel period. Lots of operational questions we already started to solve as the dream become more and more our reality. One quite fundamental question remained: how can we make our travel more responsible in terms of the environment? To preserve our planet was important to me for some time as I realised that we just borrowed this planet from our children.

So in the past ten years we already made some quite big decisions to limit our impact on the environment. We renovated a house instead of building a new one. It was done in a way to become almost totally energy efficient. We used a heat pump, extreme insulation and heat recuperating ventillation system so our former home reached the top level of the local energy efficiency category (AA++). We also installed a solar panel and switched to a PHEV vehicle so we did 90% of our kms on solar power last year. We are quite conscious shoppers focusing on bulk packaged items and generally we limit waste quite well.

The coming year with a large vehicle towing a large trailer will be definetely a step back in that respect. We will take at least two intercontinental fligths which we did not do in the past ten years. So the question was how should we compensate to some extent this increasing environmental damage? After some web research I found out that there are organisations helping to fund project which carry on very important tasks in the field of reduction and prevention of environmental damage. They fund tree planting and nature protection projects globally and other CO2 reduction activities. So we decided as a first step to compensate our fligths and our 20.000 km drive CO2 equivalent via www.carbonfootprint.com

The process was very simple: first we calculated the CO2 emissions caused by our activity which resulted about 13.6 tonnes of CO2. Then we browsed the options to counteract this emission trough activities funded by this organisation and selected the Global Portfolio of Verified Carbon Reduction Projects.

On top of this small commitment we will do our best to limit our environmental impact during camping. We will also work with our kids to make them understand the importance of protecting the nature and limiting our impact while exploring the world.