The Road Goes On…

Category: Canada

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.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

July 20, 2017
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.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

July 19, 2017
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.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

July 18, 2017
Canada 2017 Overview

© OpenStreetMap contributors

July 15, 2017
Southern US Trip Summary

This morning at home we feel 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 and a half weeks of excitement and adventure. We’re happy we did write the blog so that we don’t forget all the things we saw and experienced. It definitely is a trip to remember and does rival our Route 66 trip from two years ago.

What worked well:

WIND Mobile’s Unlimited US Roaming. We’ve been WIND 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 while in the US. 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.

America the Beautiful Pass: This $80/year pass gives you free entrance to US Parks and other recreation sites. It paid for itself as well.

Garmin GPS: We love our Garmin GPS system. At the start of the trip we had the RV/Trucking dezl 760 model but it was stolen in Albuquerque so we bought a nuvi 2689LMT to replace it. These GPS units have campground locations pre-installed and provide lots of information on arrival times, traffic conditions, etc.

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.

NOAA Weather Pro App: This app for the iPad and iPhone shows a map with weather conditions. It also has the ability to send alerts to your phone when severe weather is nearby.

Visitor Centres, Park Rangers and Bureau of Land Management offices: These are always a source of great information and have invaluable knowledge of local conditions and opportunities.

Frugal RV Travel Guides: These guides have great route information as well as tips on inexpensive places to stay overnight.

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

August 26, 2015
Cloverdale, Indiana to Dundas, Ontario

This morning we were all excited to go to Indianapolis to see Kevin Raber again and visit his new gallery. We’ve known Kevin since our 2009 Antarctica trip and our PODAS trips to Death Valley and Iceland. Kevin used to be the Vice President of Phase One USA and is now the CEO of Luminous Landscape, a great online resource for photographers.

Kevin has a lovely gallery/workspace in the Stutz building in downtown Indianapolis. Stutz was a car manufacturer and some of the historic cars are on display in the building today.

Ruth loved the old freight elevators and we all enjoyed a nice lunch in the building’s restaurant. Thanks for lunch Kevin.

After a great visit we decided to drive the remaining 700 or so kms home rather than spending another night so close to our final destination.

It was an amazing trip and rivals our Route 66 trip.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

August 25, 2015
Dundas, Ont to Allegany State Park, NY

We should have listened to “On the Road Again”, what a great feeling! Departure was 3:00PM but we still had a stop at MEC to return a brand new InReach SE satellite communicator that had decided to no longer charge. Not much use as a safety device if the batteries run out.

Despite our late departure we still drove 250kms. We had a very smooth border crossing at Fort Erie, Ontario although we almost lost our driver side mirror because an impatient pickup truck driver felt the need to squeeze into an already occupied space.

We configured our GPS to avoid toll roads which routed us along beautiful country roads and quaint rural towns. A traditional stop at Walmart supplied us with some much needed groceries since we didn’t bring any across the border.

Pepsi assumed her also traditional position in the van patiently awaiting our return.

Now we were ready to find a nice place to spend the night – and it wasn’t Walmart. We use a terrific app on the iPad called Allstays Camp and RV that shows a map with parks and campgrounds in the area we are travelling in and what a place we found. Allegany State Park was created in 1921 and construction of the Red House adminstration building was from 1927 to 1928. In 1929 the beautiful lake was created by building a dam. The park now has a beautiful campground as well as cabins and a few rooms in the adminstration building.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

July 12, 2015
Portage, IN to Dundas, ON

After a great sleep, we had 7 hours left to go on our drive home. We had an oatmeal breakfast at McDonalds and got on our way.

The highways we took were quite rough and there was lots of construction.

For lunch we had our leftover ribs and Pepsi got to enjoy the left over bones.

Customs was no problem and we declared our Tillamook cheese, souvenirs and clothes and were sent on our way.

It was nice to be back in Ontario and we looked forward to finishing the final stretch and to be back home. At 5:30PM the RV was parked and the unloading began.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

August 14, 2014
Dundas, ON to Gaylord, MI

After a frantic packing session, we were ready and left at 2:20PM. Our plan was to make Harbour Springs in Michigan but this wasn’t going to happen. We made it across the US border at Port Huron after following a horse trailer that had been tagged with contraband by a customs officer who was training their beautiful and talented sniffing dog who succeeded in finding it without any difficulty whatsoever. The dog was enthusiastically praised by its handler. We were next in line and where waved on after answering a few questions.

A couple of hours later we were getting hungry and looked for a place to stop and discovered we were near Frankenmuth. The German hearts began to beat heavily and we took the detour to check the town out. The town is pretty, touristy but has charm.

Our favourite store was the Woolen Mill, Michigan’s oldest operating woolen mill.

At this point we were really hungry and stopped at Zehnder’s Famous Chicken Dinners.

We had a great meal with raspberry lemonade cocktail. An endless supply of delicious relishes including a very special cranberry salad, cheeses and pate was followed by fried chicken, mashed potatoes, buttered noodles, stuffing, green beans and gravy. Needless to say, there was only a small amount of space left for a very small ice cream dessert. All this for $19.95.

Frankenmuth cost us 3 hours and we didn’t make it all the way to Harbour Springs that day but called it a night in the Gaylord Walmart parking lot.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

July 20, 2014
Bourbonnais, IL to Dundas, ON

This morning Martin had a wonderful idea! Since we missed out on the Drive-In Movie Theatre experience on Route 66 he suggested to go to a 50s Drive-In Theatre on our way back home in London, Ontario. Therefore, the driving day home was not all desolate but had a great ending at the drive-in with hot dogs, fries, coke, popcorn and two movies. A lot of fun and early Saturday morning we will be home.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

June 21, 2013