The Road Goes On…

Category: Ontario

  • Canada 2017 Trip Summary

    Coming home gave us the feeling as though we are living between two worlds. Before we enter back into our everyday life with all its responsibilities we look back on six weeks of excitement and adventure. We’re happy we wrote the blog so that we don’t forget all the things we saw and experienced.

    What worked well:

    Roadtrek 190 Popular: We love our Roadtrek! It is small enough to go virtually anywhere and has everything you need – kitchen, bathroom, fridge, furnace, air conditioning, etc.

    InReach Explorer+ Satellite Communicator: We bought one of these units to be able to communicate with friends and in case of emergency in areas where there is no cellular service. It worked like a charm and has the ability now to request weather reports as well.

    Public Mobile: We were travelling through areas where our cellular provider (Freedom Mobile) doesn’t have their own network so instead of paying roaming charges we chose to get a Public Mobile pay-as-you-go subscription with 6GB of data for the 6 weeks we were on the road. Public Mobile uses the TELUS network which covers western Canada very well.

    Freedom Mobile’s Unlimited US Roaming. We’ve been Freedom Mobile customers for a number of years now and their price just can’t be beat. For $15 a month we had unlimited voice calling, texting and 1GB of data for the days we were in Alaska. This allowed us to keep in touch and look up things on the road.

    Good Sam Membership: This RV club membership cost $25 a year and give you 10% discount at member campsites.  It definitely paid for itself.

    Garmin GPS: We love our Garmin nuvi 2689LMT GPS system.

    Allstays Camp and RV App: We use this app on our iPads all the time to look for campgrounds. It shows the location of campgrounds and gives information about their rating, facilities and distance from your current location.

    Visitor Centres: These are always a source of great information and have invaluable knowledge of local conditions and opportunities.

    Here’s a map of the entire trip. This is an image grab from Google Earth as it wasn’t possible to use the entire GPS track on a live map.

  • White River, ON to Six Mile Lake, ON

    We got up at 7:00AM, gassed up the van, and had really fresh breakfast at the A&W next door. Now we were ready for a long drive.

    Today the weather was a lot better, starting cloudy and then turning into a great sunny day. When we saw Calm Bay on Lake Superior we decided another swim was in order, this time in calmer waters and with a sandy beach. It is so great to have a van that has a built-in change room.

    The drive through northern Ontario was stunning and we promised ourselves that we would come back and spend some time here again soon discovering, hiking and kayaking.

    The road had lots of construction which slowed us down a bit and in one place a rock slide had blocked one lane of traffic.

    After Sault St. Marie the picturesque rocky area was behind us and we moved through forest and farmland. A road sign promised a farm market so we turned off and found a Mennonite farm area. The farmer’s wife was dressed in very traditional garb and even her two little daughters showed up in floral bonnets. We bought some blueberries, tomatoes and pickles.

    The last stop was at French River for a milkshake and a look through the gift store.

    We are spending our last night on the road at the Six Mile Lake Provincial Park with a waterfront site. The water is about 50ft down a rocky slope, but it is waterfront.

  • Ignace, ON to White River, ON

    So much for the planned swim. Today it was raining cats and dogs and the mosquitos were taking cover under the window flaps on the van waiting for fresh blood.

    We decided to spend the day driving as far as we could but we still had some fun and we did get to swim. Think of a cold stormy, windy, rainy day. Then imagine Lake Superior looking almost like the North Atlantic ocean. To us it looked like a cool challenge. We glanced at each other, nodded in agreement, put on our bathing suits and headed into the big waves. What hilarious breathtaking fun it was.

    After this exhilarating swim and a couple of hours of driving along the shoreline of Lake Superior we deserved a nice dinner. Nothing in our fridge was tempting so we stopped at Drifters in Terrace Bay and had their Sunday night $12.99 pizza special. It was delicious but we only made it through half of the pizza. Lunch for tomorrow.

    We continued on to White River, arrived at 9:30PM, and decided to camp by the Visitor Centre with a couple of other overnighters.

  • Falcon Lake, MB to Ignace, ON

    On our trip we’ve been woken by Pepsi, trains, a guy driving around the parking lot honking his horn but now it was a rooster’s turn. We got up and had a shower. Martin got to go first to check out the facilities and came back with a big smile and said the shower was very clean. Not more was revealed but he did suggest taking a camera.

    We left this kind of awkward campground as soon as possible and drove to Falcon Lake where we had camped on our outbound trip and stopped for gas, groceries and the dump station. Now we were ready to make it to Ontario.

    We stopped at a beautiful rest stop at a lake and made grilled cheese sandwiches which were served in the skillet on the picnic table outside.

    We drove to the Sandbar Lake Provincial Park where we spent the night and are looking forward to a swim in the morning.

  • North Bay, ON to Falcon Lake, MB

    We woke up to some rain and after breakfast planned the day’s route. Pepsi had her say but got bored pretty quickly and left for some interesting activities.

    Our lunch site was right at picnic area adjacent to a waterfall. We took some time to enjoy the scenery and photograph.

    We just made it back into the van when it started to rain. And that rain was just the tip of the iceberg of what was to come. The downpour was so bad that we couldn’t see the road anymore and had to pull into a rest area where we were pelted with hail. Once that stopped we continued on our way only to get hit with a second rain storm and another stop by the side of the road.

    We crossed the Manitoba border, stopped at the visitor’s center and raced the 14kms to the Falcon Lake campground to get the last electric campsite.

    The “resort” at the complex featured Wayne Morris, a magician and hypnotist from Alberta who was performing that night. The venue where the performance took place was filled with pool tables, slot machines, a dance floor and bar. The only dinner choice was chicken fingers and fries. The show was informative, classy and worthwhile and it was too bad that so few people showed up for it.

    On our way back to the campsite we peeked into the bakery to see what breakfast options are available and talked to our camp neighbours about their tractor trailer, trailer and Smart car combination.

  • Kapuskasing to North Bay

    In the morning we woke up to the usual Walmart scene – a bunch of RVs and a truck with idling diesel engine.

    Our drive today took us through some amazing scenery from rocky wooded areas with beautiful lakes to vast plains to spectacular mountainous areas.

    On the way we stopped at the Geraldton Information Center to learn about the history of the area, starting with the native people to the gold miners to the forest fire fighters of today.

    We stopped at the Trowbridge Campground for the evening and took Pepsi for a walk to investigate the campground and were surprised to find a number of vintage cars and trailers at some of the campsites. We spoke to a couple of the owners of the cars and discovered that they were all part of a coast-to-coast old timers rally and were driving from Victoria, British Columbia to St. John’s, Newfoundland over a period of 70 days. Cars included an old ambulance and fire truck. Definitely a sight to behold.

  • North Bay to Kapuskasing

    Today was our first full travel day. We got up early, had breakfast in the van because of the helicopter sized mosquitos, dumped and filled all water tanks and headed north. Yesterday we had passed a sign that said we were half way to the North Pole (45 degrees North) and today we made to the 49th parallel.

    Highway 11 was our best friend. It took us to Temagami where we almost bought a prefabricated bunkie lego-like kit for $8000. All we needed was some land to put it on!

    A short stop at the Information Center and Native Art Gallery followed. The snack bar next door was still closed and so we were deprived of our ice cream, but the moose with the Canadian tie had to do for now…

    A short drive up the road we came across the Thornloe cheese factory where we stocked up on a fine selection of local cheeses and a small strawberry milk shake each.

    Our next stop was to be TImmins where we wanted to take a Gold Mine tour. Fortunately, thanks to the wonder of the Internet, we discovered this attraction had closed in 2013 so saved ourselves the detour.

    We continued on Highway 11 through rain, hail and wind and only briefly stopped at the abandoned Smooth Rock Cafe…

    Our home for the night is the Walmart in Kapuskasing, about 600kms from tomorrow’s goal of Thunder Bay.

  • Markham to North Bay

    Breakfast was an hour long three course feast with lots of conversation followed by a short walk for Pepsi’s sake. Then we were off on our six week adventure. This time we chose to use the northern Trans-Canada highway which took us to North Bay. We stayed at the same little campground that we’d stayed at last year. This gave us the opportunity to just march out the side gate to the Champlain Park and go for a swim in Lake Nipissing. The water was a lot warmer than the North Sea had been in Denmark two weeks ago but still felt refreshing on this beautifully warm sunny day. A BBQ chicken dinner at the picnic table followed and we ended the day by re-watching the last two episodes of House of Cards Season 4. Now that we’ve refreshed our memories of what had happened last year, we can move onto Season 5, all downloaded on Martin’s iPhone.

  • Dundas to Markham

    We had arrived home from our Denmark/Germany trip and went into a mad rush to get the laundry done and pack for the Canada trip. In the morning we finished getting the van ready, picked up dog food at the vet, Pepsi at Holly’s Pride where she had spent the two weeks while we were gone, got our hair cut and had a lovely lunch at our friends Pat and Palma’s house. Well fed and with best wishes we were sent off. The trip wasn’t a long one – we only drove to Markham to spend the afternoon and evening with Martin’s dad. We went for fish dinner and talked for hours before settling in for the night in our van parked in the driveway. Pepsi was really happy to see us after being in the kennel for two weeks.

  • Canada 2017 Overview