Fort Erie is in Canada, which is a whole 'nother country. As such, I was forced to wait in a line of cars stretching o'er the Niagara River in August of 2015, looking at the emptiness ahead of me on my GPS (as I was too cheap to spring for the "Canada" map on my Tomtom), until I had the privelege of withstanding the intense, if brief, scrutiny of a steely-eyed Canadian border agent (at least I assumed he was steely-eyed: Dude was actually wearing mirrored sunglasses).

That relatively minor (and wholly understandable) inconvenience behind me, I found Ontario, Canada to be a pretty swell place, seemingly different from the United States only in the numbers on the signs.

The metric system and Canadian Dollar are of course the entities to blame for these discrepancies, and once I gave up even attempting to figure them out, travel in this province was a pleasurable experience.

I spent the night at a fairly crappy motel, whose chief advantage was its proximity to the fort, so I was able to pop up at Fort Erie's visitor's center bright 'n' early. This gave me the dual benefits of a number of extremely polite reenactors being in place (it being the height of tourist season), and of a fort mostly devoid of other visitors. Admission to the fort was $12.50 for adults (about $10 US) and $8.15 for children.

Fort Erie's Visitor's Center was very nice, a long, weirdly-shaped building that contained a café, theater, museum and the all-important gift shop.

The fort's museum was a relatively small but bright, friendly, touchy-feely kind of place, with several creative opportunities for the visitor to imagine him- or herself in the boots of those who defended the fort. I did my best to appreciate the museum, but there was a starfort right outside in need of fondling.

And what a starfort it was! It's unlike any other, which isn't unusual in the world of starforts, and vive la différence! The barracks buildings were chock-full of authentic-looking stuff and excellent signage.

Please click on any of the images on this page to see its full-sized counterpart, and read more about my visit to Fort Erie!