Gas Station Pizza

September 5, 2024 – Day 5

Letchworth State Park, Castile, NY — KOA Niagara Falls, ON, Canada

Oh, Canada! Ok, we’re jumping ahead — but Canada! It’s today!

We had two choices of bridges to cross into Canada, the Peace Bridge and the Rainbow Bridge. Peace is the southern one, near Buffalo, Rainbow is right by the falls. The Rainbow Bridge was a city route. Paul really wanted to do the Rainbow bridge because it looked more direct. Susan wanted to do the Peace Bridge because the wait was shorter. Plus, once we crossed into Canada the drive was mostly farmland until very near to the KOA. First we needed to find a place for for lunch.

Why is lunch in important? We needed to find a place where we could eat all the forbidden foods! Just like our crossing into California, there are foods you can’t bring into Canada (and foods you can’t bring back into the United States.) This time we didn’t have friends we could pass things on to. So we’ve been traveling in “bare bones” level for the fridge. We needed a lunch spot to eat up the rest of the verboten things, including Paul’s homemade pickles!

(susan here: Tangerines are a big nope, so we ate those. Baked goods are okay, so that meant the breads were safe. Obviously the corn and salads got gobbled up – I got that taken care of. Meat is specifically called out as something they’ll take and toss–that’s a couple deli sandwiches for Paul. The dairy and eggs was anybody’s guess. Depending on what blog you read it was a go or no go, and some blogs seemed to suggest it was at a whim of the customs people. We knew better than to bring tomatoes because SEEDS…can’t trust those seeds!) And Paul’s homemade pickles were a definite no-no, so we ate them, all of them over 2 days.

The town of Perry had a nice mural.

Next we saw our first Canada sign. Canada, a half mile! (susan here: Our shiny new passports would be put to good use!)

And then the GPS got into the game, “Country Border.”

Funny thing is, Paul carries a leatherman pocket tool which has a knife on it. He lost it a few weeks ago but hadn’t planned on bringing it anyhow, in case they thought it was a weapon. He had found it this morning in the RV’s toolbox! So what to do? He just put it back in the toolbox. It isn’t a weapon anymore than the kitchen knives are. And in the toolbox it would be easier to argue it’s a tool if we ever got searched.

Heading across the Peace bridge we noticed that US Customs was really backed up. We made a mental note of that, and checking further during our time here we noted that the US side is ALWAYS backed up. The Canadian Customs had like 5 vehicles. They only wanted our passports, registration, asked where we lived, how long we were staying, if we had any weapons and if we had any alcohol or more than $1000. Easy questions to answer. They had an attendant there, I think to help with tourists who didn’t know what an EZ Pass was. We asked if we would fit, the truck lane was about 5-6 lanes over to the right, he said the big RVs went through all the time. Then he asked if we wanted spotted, yes sir!

It was a real tight fit and we made it with less than a foot on either side. That sounds like a lot until it’s you that’s driving. Trust us, it’s not a lot of extra room. Next time we’re taking the bus lane if it’s empty.

Soon we were spudded in at our site. We had the site across the road but it was full sun. We asked if we could have this shady site, and yes! we could. For reasons we can’t figure out it was $10 CN cheaper a night. Oh, and the third day was free since we were KOA Rewards members and this was Members weekend. Who knew?

Next up a trip to the grocery store to buy all the food we didn’t have. They had a fantastic selection of Latin, Hispanic, Asian, South Asian and other ethnic foods. Aside from our tiny, but well stocked International Market, we don’t have anything like this in Keene. We bought some naan, pre-made Samosas, rice, chicken and a Butter Chicken simmer sauce. Yes, we can get that stuff in Keene but there were so many other things we could have purchased that we had no idea what it was. We did come back with items we’d never seen. We got back well after 6pm and Susan decided she’d had enough of the day’s activity. It was takeout pizza time. We Yelped and found a nearby pizza place that looked promising. We got a medium Hawaiian and a Chicken Shawarma pizza, with two dipping sauces, sweet and spicy red sauce and their homemade green sauce. You read that right. Pizza, Indian style (and they had others to chose from too). Neither of us knew what the green sauce was but we’re game. Our first bad sign was that the GPS was directing us to turn into the left at the Canada Petrol station.

We just bought gas station pizza, more or less. (susan here: With dipping sauces. Dipping sauce for pizza? Turns out that they needed it to cover up the dry bland pizza we had just purchased.)

Now, to be fair they only shared the space with the gas station. Petrol Canada had their usual convenience store stuff and then a wall, and City South pizza. But it was still gas station pizza.

It wasn’t very good, which was odd since they were clearly made to order, the crust was okay not great. But the pizzas themselves were dry and curiously, they both tasted almost like each other! But as a wise cousin of Susan’s says, bad things are just great stories for later on. We can now say that we’ve had Chicken Shawarma pizza. Who knew that was a thing.

Daily: 93

Total: 415

Driving Miles/Day: 138

Overall Miles/Day: 83

mpg: 6.28