Our last night in Canada was spent in a heavily over chintzed room at the Owen House Inn, can't say we were sorry to leave that but we were sorry to leave Canada. We had an amazing seven weeks, we did so many wonderful things, saw so many fantastic sights and met so many friendly, generous Canadians. But we couldn't be sad for long as we start the next part of our North American adventure. And we were definitely excited to be crossing into USA.

It's probably true to say that we couldn't have found an easier place to deal with USA customs. We drove over the bridge that joins Campobello Island to the USA mainland at Lubec, Maine, stopped at the checkpoint, said we were entering USA for the first time, were invited to park the car and go into the office for 'processing' (yeah, that did sound a bit scary). No queues, no grumpy customs officers. Processing did entail giving the USA customs office more personal information than our own government holds on us (including ten fingers fingerprints) but that's the deal if you want to enter the United States, at least we were processed by a friendly guy with time to engage with us as real people not just legal aliens! There was a dodgy moment when Dave's fingertips couldn't be read by the scanner - blame the sunscreen, fingertips too greasy - but sunscreen seems to be an innocent reason to obscure your prints so we were ok.

Then onto the drive to Castine. This was as ever on pleasant quiet roads but the speed limits are weird. Back to mph from kph was helpful, especially as our hire car was from the USA and its speedometer displayed mph but there is no consistency to the limit in regard to the road that we can discern. It takes extra concentration to be sure we know the speed limit for the stretch of road that we're on: we've seen all limits in 5mph steps from 15mph to 55mph. It does seem that Americans pay a little bit more heed to the speed limits than we saw in Canada but we've not been on an Interstate Highway yet, may differ there. We stopped for coffee and in Dave's case milk shake in Ellsworth and decided we should get some American dollars out so looked around for an ATM. We found a bank but couldn't see an ATM, we were just preparing to queue (get in line) for a teller but still were wondering to each other about an ATM when another customer said there was an ATM at the back of the building. So grateful for his advice, we went outside to..... walk up to a Drive-thru ATM! Is there nothing the Americans won't drive to? We just imagine obese guys cruising in their cars in an endless loop via Dunkin Doughnuts, McDonalds and the ATM.

The house in Castine turned out to be lovely, as all our house swaps have been. Shelley and Don never lock their doors so it was a little odd just walking into someone's home, felt like we were intruders until we'd found the note welcoming us to their home. The door thing is difficult for us: confident we'd not be burgled but also know should anything be stolen that our insurance company wouldn't understand the culture of not locking the door. There is a bike propped up at the end of our road with a for sale sign: it's not locked to the fence, writing this entry several days after we arrived we can tell you it's still there! We're probably safe to leave the door unlocked!