Day 16 - Grand Rapids

11th and final leg: 589 miles.
total miles on the road: 3,696.

There was a light rain and gray overcast as we packed our car, checked out of our final Hampton Inn for this road trip and jumped onto I-81 heading for Canada.

The border crossing was smooth and took but a minute or so and we were speeding along the 401 west. Near Toronto we switched to the 407 ETR (express toll road) and made an easy and quick bypass of the city, returning to the 401 just east of Toronto. Aside from a couple of stops at the Onroute service plazas (very civilized way to build highway systems) we made good time to London where we changed to the 402 and pushed on to Sarnia.

At the US border -- a quaint anachronism to be sure, as if Canada had something to hide from their north American neighbors -- we sat in line for about 20 minutes before passing through to the land of semi-free and the home of the totally weird.

A quick stop at the Michigan Welcome Center and we were on way to Grand Rapids,. We made good time, notwithstanding a serious traffic crawl around Portland in Ionia County, and pulled into our driveway at about 5:30 in the afternoon.

We were back.