Today is going to be another short post. After two days of long driving we decided to take a day of rest. We slept in late and enjoyed a quiet day poking around the campground. After a couple of weeks of bad weather today was warm. One of the good things about all of the rain is the trees and flowers are in full bloom. One of our random observations that is probably not true in reality is that the song birds in France sing more and are louder than anywhere else we have been.
I finally coaxed Ton out for a short walk. Her heart was not really in it, so we never got out of the industrial area next to the campground.
The reason we have taken a 4oo mile detour in the wrong direction is right before we left for this trip we received a notice that we owed a substantial fine to the French government. The problem is this is the first notice of this fine we ever received. It is not a fine that you would get for a speeding or parking ticket but for something more substantial. We have no idea what we could have done to get such a large fine, or why we received no prior notice that we had done something wrong. After sending an inquiry to the office we received the notice from we still are not sure what is going on. We received some more information that it was for failing to identify someone who had been speeding, but this is the first time we have never heard of this issue, and never received a ticket or notice that we needed to identify someone to the police. The tax office which is responsible for collecting the fine told us that we needed to go to the police in Sens to find out more about what we have been fined for. So tomorrow we are off to Sens to try to understand what is going on. We have showed our documentation to a couple of people who are fluent in French, and they are also equally shocked about the amount, and also cannot figure out what exactly we are being fined for. Wish us luck.