So on Friday 6^th June (D Day Landing Anniversary) we were reunited with Frankie. A very soggy hour spent marching around downtown Halifax to the shipping logistics company and then customs. But really an incredibly easy process of collecting van via couple of offices in town then taxi to shipyard.

It was beyond exciting to see her safe having crossed the Atlantic. Much relief that our bikes were still safely in place at the back of the van – possibly the 9 padlocks may have helped. And not a scratch on her!!

So with very wide grins we drove out of the shipyard and began our road trip.

We didn’t exactly put in a lot of miles for our first stop – just over the water to Dartmouth where we had booked a quiet campsite in which to ‘find our feet’.

One of our biggest concerns about Frankie ‘working’ in the US was the power. (Not going to pretend to understand anything about it – but think it is something to do with different voltage over here?!?)

We’d bought and installed a generator and a ‘step up transformer’, had plugs and adaptors ordered and posted to hotels and all manner of other things in the hope that we could find a way round the problem.

So it was with small amount of trepidation that John plugged in the power only to find ……. Nothing!! It just didn’t work.

Luckily being a handy sort of chap he eventually diagnosed a broken fuse holder in the transformer and mended it. Much to all our relief and delight!

So we settled into the campsite for a couple of days. As planned we pulled out all the boxes and see what we’ve got.

Think we may well end up giving dad a bag or two to store for us. Overpack? Us?!?!

As predicted our 28’ van that gets us more than a few funny looks over in Europe is a baby out here. So we sat, surrounded by some of the biggest RV’s and Fifth wheels we have ever seen. Slight inferiority complex.

The kids seem delighted to have their things around them once more. Every ball has now been inflated and all the sports stuff strewn around in front of the van. They made friends with some sweet Canadian boys and spent two days playing ‘soccer’ with them.

Once we’d finally got straight we ventured out of the campsite and tried out Charlie’s new bike.

The park at the campsite had bike tracks around a lake, which allowed us to have a really pleasant easy ride without the stress of any roads.

Anyway we’ve had a good couple of days. The van is all straight and we know (roughly) where everything is. We will no doubt rearrange the boxes and storage at least 50 more times before we’re done but that is par for the course I reckon.

Suddenly exhausted. Relief of having actually pulled this off and anticipation of what lies ahead.