Thursday October 12th
I needed to hand the van back, then make it to the Newark airport for a flight to Ontario then to Prince Edward Island, leaving at 11am. It was technically an international flight, going from the US to Canada, and I had to get my luggage in by around 10, so I was aiming to arrive by 9.30. I had pre-arranged with the Escape Campervan people that someone would be there at 8.30, and booked an Uber for 8.45, because they’d said it would be pretty quick to hand the van back.
In the morning, while getting ready, I ran into a man from the south, I forget which state, who was very talkative and friendly, and told me that southerners were more friendly than northerners. He was chewing tobacco the whole time, and every so often turned away and spat out some tobacco juice. I couldn’t talk for long because I was needing to get my flight.
I threw out my remaining rubbish and I checked out of the RV park, making sure to sign out. For some reason they were particular about that. If you didn’t sign out you’d be charged an extra fee which was significant. I went next door to the Escape Campervan place, and parked opposite. There was someone in the office, which was quite small, and I handed back the keys. He had a quick look at the van, then went back in, and brought up my details. He said I’d done 9,500 miles, I think he said it was the second longest trip of anyone handing a van back there. I had bought 10,000 miles, and he was trying to process the refund of the miles I hadn’t used.
The figures weren’t working out, and he had to ring someone to find out what to do. I found out that the reimbursement had also been processed, of the money I’d spent on coolant, repairs and service. I was chomping at the bit a little, with the Uber expected pretty shortly. In the end he said to leave it with him and he would sort it out. I found the Uber driver was having trouble finding me – he had ended up at the RV park, but we found each other before long.
It was a fairly quick drive to that airport. I was glad it was also in Jersey City, not in New York. He told me that it could take three hours to drive to JFK airport, with the horrific traffic, and that Uber drivers were paid only by the miles they drove, not their time, so it was not a popular destination for Uber drivers. He dropped me off, and I checked in with plenty of time to spare. It was one of the best appointed airports I’d seen, so far as the lounges were concerned. Each seat had a charging socket, it looked like they all even had USB-C, whereas in most places you were fortunate if each row of seats had one socket, or there would be one much sought-after power point on a pillar somewhere.
I got used to showing my passport and boarding pass every time I boarded a plane, and sometimes also just to line up to go through security. It was sunny when I left, and I got some good views of New York City and the harbour as we went up. Air Canada are not big on meals. We generally got a tiny packet of pretzels or maybe a couple of small biscuits as snacks, and a drink. We flew over the Great Lakes to get to Toronto, and I tried to spot the column of mist at Niagara Falls as we went that way.
In Toronto we needed to go through customs, and I got to go through the Canadian citizens area, which was probably faster than the non-citizen line, as with the long wait in the non-US line in LA airport. They had a lot of terminals where you scanned your passport, then answered some questions on the screen about whether you had anything to declare, then you were issued a kind of ticket with your answers on it, which you showed to an attendant, then went on to a station where someone had a look at the passport and asked a few questions.
I had about two hours layover, which went quickly once you factored in getting off the plane, going through customs, collecting the luggage, then boarding the next flight. They never moved luggage on automatically to your connecting flight if you were entering a different country. They generally seemed to print all the destinations on your luggage ticket though, and I was able to just take the luggage, follow the signs for people connecting to another flight in Canada, and hand the luggage to someone to check in again. I got some lunch at the airport while waiting for the flight, then boarded again.
We had more views of the Great Lakes going up again. It was fairly cloudy, but I was able to see some scenic views of Prince Edward Island from above as we came in. It was pretty special to be flying into my birthplace again after 39 years. Charlottetown airport is like a country airport, it looked like there were just a couple of gates, and we walked along the tarmac to get on and off the plane. My cousin Crystal had offered to drive in to meet me, which was lovely. It was so nice to meet in person after such a long time.
I had hired a car via a company called Turo, which I was to pick up at the airport. They are rather like AirBnB but for cars, where people can rent out their cars, and they get ratings on the car and their service and the like. Car hire wasn’t cheap in PEI, and Turo wasn’t much cheaper than the car hire, but there weren’t the inevitable restrictions on not driving on dirt roads, which I thought I might be doing, and in fact did. Most of the time I didn’t really need the car as it turned out, because Crystal had taken some days of leave, of which she had only a few, to go around with me. This was so sweet, and I really enjoyed the time we spent together.
Once the plane landed and we could turn off flight mode on our phones, I had made contact with the guy who owned the car, and sent a photo of myself and of my driver’s license as he asked. The car parking at the airport was just a single level car park, with free parking for about half an hour, which was very surprising. We found the car, and I rang him, and he unlocked it remotely. Crystal had suggested we have dinner in Charlottetown, and I followed her to a restaurant called Maid Marion, where she had come quite a bit, and they knew her.
We had a good meal there, and then I went with her nearby where she was looking at a bed head that someone was selling. It was in a garage, and she could just go in and look. We parked, and nobody was home, but we found the garage and looked at it, and she was happy with it. We were able to manoeuvre it into her car, and get it to fit.
After that, I followed her in the dark back to Caledonia, and it was a bit of a thrill to see the Caledonia sign as we came in. We parked and met my uncle Mickey and cousin Caroline, and also I think a cousin of Mickey and his wife who were there. It was a cool evening and he had the wood stove going, the same stove that they’d had when we visited in 1984!
It was nice and warm inside, and lovely to talk with everyone. My room was on the second floor, and I wondered who had slept there in earlier days, perhaps my Mum when she was young, or one of my aunts. It was amazing to be able to stay in the house where Mum had grown up, and see it again. They were planning to sell it eventually, so I was glad to see it before it was sold.
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