8/12/2018. Good to be back in the USA. How cheap is to cheap. Make sure you read all the way to the bottom :-)

Late this afternoon we arrived back into the United States.  I must say “Thank Goodness”.  Canada is a beautiful place and the people are great, but after 4 days in Quebec with everything French (music, TV, people, street signs etc...), I was more than ready to come back to the English speaking U.S.

In addition there are the little things:

• Walmart charges 5 cents for every plastic bag.  We use these plastic grocery type bags for trash.  Since we are cheap :-), we carried out everything by hand without the plastic bag :-).  We became smarter later in the trip and brought our own bags
• Canada charges 10 cents per plastic bottle.  Therefore if you buy a 24 pack of water, you are charged an extra $2.40 just for the bottles.  For a 1/2 gallon of OJ you are charged an extra 10 cents just for the bottle.  We quickly adopted to refilling water bottles (don’t tell our daughter because they will have a fit) and buying OJ concentrate that we can mix ourselves.  Apparently many of the Canadians do the same thing as there is a much bigger selection of concentrated juices in Canada.  (Actually NY and Michigan I believe do the samething. You get your money back when recycling the bottles, but for travelers moving state to state the campgrounds recycle the bottles and it goes to their bottom line.)

Grocery Stores have limited options.  You cannot find:

-  Ballpark hot dogs

-  Betty Crocker Brownie mix

-  Many other things that we take for granted

-  Limited options of fruits and vegetables

Grocery prices are high and taxed out the wazoo.  Now I know how they pay for their Socialized Medicine

  -  Fruit and Vegetables are very expensive

-  Chocolate Milk $4.50 a 1/2 gallon in Walmart

Fuel:

-  We paid up to $1.40 per Liter.  Our Cow has a 100 gallon tank (which is almost 400 Liters).  I was putting $250 in the Tank each time we stopped and that only gave me a little over 1/2 tank.  On the other- hand Diesel is cheaper than Gasoline in Canada

I am going to get shot for telling this next story, but those of you that know Sandy  will understand this one.  

We need fuel.  We are not going to make it to a Gas Station in the United States.  She wants me to put in just enough so that we glide into the United States on empty.  Therefore we can buy fuel in the U.S. by the Gallon instead of the Liter.  Fuel by the gallon in the U.S. may be $3.60 per gallon.  Fuel by the Liter is roughly $5.60 per gallon in Canada.  

We also had $19.35 of Canadian change plus an additional $54 in Canadian bills.  So-o-o Sandy being Sandy wanted to make sure we left it all at the last fuel stop so we didn’t have to go through the exchange rate hassle and loose a couple of pennies on the exchange rate.  

So-o-o guess who had to go into the Flying J gas station with a huge handful of Canadian change and a couple of bills to put in $250 worth of gas.

“Me, Of course”

In I walk and guess what, they all speak only French.  Here I am using hand language, body language, pointing, and my best English language skills trying to explain why I am trying to use this two tons of  change of $75 to pay for $250 of fuel.  In the end I got it accomplished.  

To all my Accountant friends out there, I am sure you are saying to yourselves. 

 “WHAT!! What is wrong with this strategy!!  

Now keep this in mind, we have now used all of our Canadian Money!!  We have Zilch Canadian dollars and still 150 miles to the border.

You guessed it, we still had one more Canadian Toll Booth to go through and NO Canadian money.  Yes, we had to use US dollars and No, they did not give us the exchange rate.  

Of Course, being the guy I am, I did rub it into my Accountant wife that “IF” I did not have to use all of our Canadian Money we would have had the proper change for the toll booth.  Because of this we lost $1.20 in exchange rate.  That could have bought us 24 plastic bags at Walmart :-)

All I heard was some grumbling from the other seat.  Payback is a B__tch. :-)