Day 17: Back into USA and Voyageurs NP

Well today was probably the toughest day we’ve had on the trip. We again woke up super early and headed for the closest gas station on our route because yesterday all of the gas stations near our campground had either turned up to be only for truckers or nonexistent. We “knew” there were a few on our route today. Well, none of them existed…or they weren’t open yet (despite checking hours last night). As we got more and more anxious, the dashboard gas light came on and we just went to the next (closed) gas station, which was still 25 miles away, to wait for it to open since it was a full service station. We would have to wait 1.5 hours but had no other choice. When we got there, it said that their new hours on Sundays meant they didn’t open until 10am so that was another 2 hours or 3.5 hours of waiting at the tanks. As some glimmer of luck would have it, I read another sign saying that their new pumps were 24 hours. Well at this Co-op gas station, since it is a full service, you have to have an authorization card to get the pumps to work. When we finally realized this, then we had to go through an electronic “training” and get an authorization code. Then we used the code to select the pump and amount of gas we wanted. Well the code wouldn’t work. We kept swiping our card and trying again and again and different cards. With some combination, we finally got it to work, and we were on our way—close to an hour later.  Since there was no wifi service in the area we went back to the main road to figure out where to go from there. We went about 8 miles down the road to get service and turn around and come back, to get on the route again. Once we did that, we weren’t far from the US/Canada border, but being only 7am, this small border crossing was closed. Soooo we turned around and went back the way we had just been to get to the bigger border patrol station (that our maps app had originally not recommended). Meanwhile we saw a black bear cross the road in front of us in the same spot twice. Luckily the border crossing went easily, but then we got a fraud alert for one of the cards we had just used. So yeah, we cancelled that charge and spoke to the bank, but now I need to keep an eye on the other cards we used too. Perfect. 

Anyway, we made it back to the states, we’re safe, we have gas, and instead of continuing on the northern shorter route that takes us back through Canada from Michigan straight across, we changed plans and booked a campground in Indiana for the last night instead.

Throughout all of this, we were still able to make it to Voyageurs National Park for a quick stop to see the views and get a rest. We also got views of Lake Superior along the way, which was great! Overall it was a 20 hour day and we’re very much looking forward to our own beds (and state) tomorrow night!






Lake Superior 


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