(I am posting this late because I have had ZERO service and I’m tired from driving)
I’m back for another trip! A year after I left for Greece (a year, can you believe it), I’m heading across the country to Whitecourt, Alberta. Here, I am taking a reporter job (yay me)!
I decided that I am going to pack up my car and drive the 3500+ km from my small town Ontario to another small town Alberta. After some great deliberation, I realized going by myself was not going to happen. Driving long distances may not be my forte. I like short drives and scenic drives, but long distances make me sleepy. My dad, thank god, loves driving. He has driven across Canada nine times and two of them were family trips when I was younger.
After stuffing my car, which fit a lot more stuff that I thought it would, and a rough estimate of driving times, distances, and stops, we left home. (Okay, mom and I hugged for a really long time. And I’ll miss my cotton ball dog.)
I took the first shift driving 300 k to a small gas station in Pointe au Baril. The views were absolutely stunning. I can really see the inspiration that Northern Ontario gave to the Group of Seven
There was a lot to see up that way. It is where the edge of the Canadian Shield starts. Then, just west of Sudbury, the OPP decided to shut down the TransCanada Hwy BOTH WAYS due to a head on collision. While one person was quickly airlifted to the nearest hospital, the OPP closed down the highway from 7:30am to 2:30pm, when we finally got through. You could imagine the line of cars, a line 10km long.
(Side note: while I respect the police and everything they do (parent are/were cops), I think it is completely unnecessary to close down that major highway for that long of a time. Imagine if there was a truck with livestock that dies because of the heat. It is their prime duty to direct the flow of traffic during a collision, not disrupt thousands of drivers to investigate the non-fatal accident)
We then finally got a glimpse of Lake Superior (named for its superior awesomeness). We came across Chippewa Falls. So what, you ask. Well, it just so happens that Chippewa Falls is the halfway point of the TransCanada Hwy. That’s right from east coast to west coast, the middle of the TransCanada is not even the middle of Ontario.
From there it was a scenic drive up to Wawa. Because of the two and a half hour delay, our planned stop in Marathon was changed. At 9:30pm, we pulled into the tiny Mystic Isle Motel in Wawa, ON. (Hey, that motel was actually a surprisingly friendly, clean, and a comfortable sleep)
We travelled a good 930 kilometres on day one. Not as far as we wanted to go, but hey, Canada’s a big place.
UPDATE: I have added pictures AND A MAP!
