The Road Goes On…

Category: Canada

  • Mont-Tremblant, QC to Maskinonge, QC

    After updating our blog and a great breakfast, we left our campground and headed towards St-Sauveur, another ski resort in the Laurentians. The highways in Quebec can be pretty rough and in some places the potholes are deep enough that Pepsi could comfortably hide in them. We gave up on the scenic route and instead opted for Autoroute 15 which was much better.

    Our first and only stop today was St-Sauveur. During the time that Martin lived in Montreal, he can remember going to a small bakery in St-Sauveur with his parents to buy freshly baked buns. The bakery is still there, but now has other shops in the area where the wood fired ovens used to be.

    Right next door to the bakery is the Cotard chocolate shop, the winner of the best Canadian chocolate award in 2015. Here we were greeted by a chocolate wolf and bear. Scarily delicious!

    Lunch was at a fabulous Greek restaurant called Souvlaki 7 where we had souvlaki in a pita.

    Our home for the night is a rest area, especially for big trucks. We made it just in time before a severe thunderstorm with torrential rain hit. We battened down the hatches watched some Netflix until the rain and thunderstorm got too loud. After the storm passed, we finished the episode.

  • Cantley, QC to Mont-Tremblant, QC

    Today was a very hot day and we had a lot of fun. We left the Cantley campground and drove to Gatineau where we went shopping for groceries and then sat in the van, Pepsi panting, and Martin downloading Netflix episodes while we were in good cell coverage, the free Walmart Wi-Fi having blocked our downloading intentions. Ruth claims this process took hours and many sips of water, although lunch was also provided during that time.

    Finally we were enroute to our first destination, the Fairmont Chateau Montebello. We’ve always wanted to check this resort out for a possible stay and today was the day. Wishful thinking set in and we asked ourselves, “Wouldn’t it be nice to spend some time in an air conditioned, luxury resort?” We went in and booked two nights for the end of our trip to celebrate our anniversary.

    After driving the bumpy and partly gravel roads yesterday on our way to Cantley, it was a pleasure to have a fast and smooth drive on a much better two-lane highway. Our destination was Mont-Tremblant and our first stop was the “Big ?”, otherwise known as the Information Center. Here we found out about the Camping de la Diable campground, the Blues Festival that was happening and the free bus rides to connect the two. We BBQ’d delicious hamburgers, left Pepsi in the air-conditioned van and ran to the nearby bus stop.

    After a somewhat long and scenic tour of Mont-Tremblant town, we arrived at the resort village and were immediately greeted with live blues music.

    We took the gondola to the top of the village where a loud funk blues band gave it their best, but we were mesmerized by a little girl playing the piano with her index finger. A future star for sure!

    We walked back down to the lower part of the village, enjoyed some Starbucks iced drinks because it was still hot and were on the way to the bus stop when Ruth heard one of her favourite songs and broke out in dance. Soon she was accompanied by an equally enthusiastic young lady.

    Our bus ride home didn’t seem as long because we met a nice couple and talked in a combination of French, English and a little bit of German until their stop.

    Our fun day ended with a mopey dog who felt she had missed out on some of the fun.

  • Algonquin, ON to Cantley, QC

    The morning started with housecleaning and a shower to make ourselves presentable for the next leg of our trip. Time to leave Ontario for Quebec. The goal was to stay at the Gatineau Park campground but, alas, we discovered the Pepsi and her canine friends were not welcome in the campground.

    We were directed to another campground and we ended up at the Cantley Campground. There was no swimmable lake, but there is a fishing pond with ducks and geese (or geeses as the sign said). The campground is on a huge terrain and has many playgrounds, walking trails, mini-put and many more amenities. The breeze was very welcome on this hot and sunny summer day.

  • Dundas, ON to Algonquin, ON

    Wow, how time does fly when you have leisure time! Scrambling on Thursday night (July 4th) to get ready, we left around 10:30PM and headed for Markham to stay overnight in Martin’s dad’s driveway and have breakfast with him at Cora’s in the morning. Then the adventure began. We headed straight to Algonquin Park stopping only for a well deserved ice cream at Kawartha Dairy in Minden. We were lucky and got a great spot in the Lake of Two Rivers campground, about half way though the park on Hwy 60. Four glorious days of relaxation, sleeping, swimming, kayaking, eating, reading, knitting and did we mention, sleeping.

    On two of the evenings we drove a short distance to the Visitor’s Centre and listened to two presentations – one on the life of loons (did you know they can hardly walk because their legs are near the tail end of their bodies, they can live 20+ years and a family of four can eat 900lbs of fish in one season!). The second presentation was on the life and mysterious death of Tom Thompson. There are a lot of myths and questions remaining on what happened to him and where his body is actually buried. We went to bed that last night feeling a little sad to be leaving this wonderful campground and Algonquin Park, but adventure awaits!

  • 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.

  • Moose Jaw, SK to Falcon Lake, MB

    The Walmart parking lot was a busy place. At least 20 campers, some looking like they were there for the long haul, and hundreds of seagulls.

    Now we were ready for the Tunnels of Moose Jaw adventure where history comes alive. We took two of the tours of the underground network of tunnels of the thriving Moose Jaw of the late 19th and early 20th century. We visited the secret city of Chinese living beneath the streets of Moose Jaw and learned about the difficult life of Chinese immigrants working in a laundromat. Then we became bootleggers in Al Capone’s empire and almost got caught for seeing and knowing too much. We truly enjoyed these two staged and interactive tours and highly recommend them to anyone visiting Moose Jaw.

    We were not permitted to take pictures on the tour, so you’ll have to come and take it yourself!

    After so much fun we had lunch across the street and briefly explored the historic downtown area.

    Al Capone was definitely following us…

    We thought it better to quickly leave town before we beginner bootleggers got caught and shot so we raced all the way to close to Falcon Lake in Manitoba and hid in a secret campground off the highway.

  • Lake Louise, AB to Moose Jaw, SK

    After a luxurious breakfast, with heavy hearts we looked out of our hotel room window at the Chateau Lake Louise one last time and departed eastward.

    The second farewell was to the Rocky Mountains which very quickly turned to plains. The day was mostly driving with only a stop for lunch in Calgary at the Old Spaghetti Factory.  We were very determined to make it to Saskatchewan and we did. We made it to Moose Jaw and noticed some attractions that enticed us. Maybe something for tomorrow morning?