MeAnd’Er have made it Across Canada

Well folks, we’re in our home Province - Beautiful British Columbia!

A few miles down the road we stopped in Field to have lunch with our friend Joanna.  So nice to connect with her between trips 🤗. Now we know a lot of you have driven past Field, but have any of you actually ever Been to Field?  Population 195, nestled in the beautiful Rocky Mountains, it was established as a settlement for construction workers for the CP Railway, but with some clever marketing and hiring of experienced Swiss guides in the 1880’s it quickly attracted wealthy tourists to explore the parks.  To protect a small area around the townsite from development the Mt. Stephen Dominion was established and later renamed to “Yoho”, a Cree expression of awe and wonder.  It’s beautiful there, but mostly goes to sleep in the winter.  

If you look closely at the picture you can see our red car nestled up to the EV charging station.

Stopped at the Roger’s Pass Discovery Centre in Glacier National Park and bought a couple more books!  This arch is a bit of a Welcome to BC landmark

Revelstoke was busy - soccer tournament and cycling event, and we took some time to visit some of the art work in Art Alleries (again more detail in a previous post).  One of my favourites is A Simple Joy by Kyle Thornley.  If you look down the brick wall you see bits of the seed bloom.

The Fable Bookmobile in First St. caught our eye, inviting people to step in, pick up a book and rest a while.  When the bookmobile retired for the summer they opened The Fable Book Parlour and it’s a lovely independent bookstore with a selection of new and used books, vinyl records and music accessories.  It’s a lovely store for sure, and nice to see new ones starting up!. 

Day 126 - After shopping at the Revelstoke Farmers Market we travelled Hwy 97A through beautiful farmlands like the Wild Flight Farm in Mara, a 20 acre certified organic farm.  And through Armstrong, original home of Armstrong Cheese.

Grindon offered up Gordon’s (& Daughter) New & Used and Farmer John’s where Roger picked sunflowers.  Scenes from Tomorrowland were filmed here.

On to Blind Bay to visit friends Pam & George and enjoy a wonderful lunch and visit on their patio.  We shared stories of Mission and Matsqui, forest fires and evacuation, and life in Blind Bay.  Their new life is treating them well and they seem to be enjoying it immensely.

Did I mention we were in another parade?  That’s 3 now, this one in Salmon Arm; we seem to just blithely slide into these things!  Others were New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

The drive from Blind Day to Kelowna alongside Okanagan Lake was beautiful - orchards bursting with apples and fruit stands everywhere.  Speaking of Okanagan, you should hear how Siri Australian Lady pronounces it - I had to look at the screen to figure out what she was saying!

Day 127 - Last Day of our trip!

The Westside Road in the Okanagon is closed from Summerland (rock slide) north (forest fire devastation - for the 2nd time in 3 years!) so we had to drive back up Hwy. 97 to Vernon and down the west side from the north to get to our friends Cal & Sharon.  We had another great visit, even pulled out the map of Newfoundland and started planning their next trip!  Retirement looks good on them as well, I think we have to take note on time management when we get home.  Cal left us with wise words “be careful what you say yes to, only do what you want”.  

A visit with Cal and Sharon was our 1st stop on a journey we started 4 months ago!  

We were there at 216km, and again today at 26,437km.  

Leaving here is where it hit us both - we have travelled Across Canada and now we are going home.  

Back on to Hwy 97 through Falkland in the Columbia-Shuswap District, Falkland with its giant Canadian flag, and the Falkland Stampede, one of Canada’s oldest.  Route 97 Diner was pretty tempting, but we’re feeling all weird and it’s hot so we didn’t stop.  That will have to be a BC road trip.

We passed right through Kamloops, onto the Coquihalla Highway through to Merritt for an EV charge.  

We got off the Coq at Hope, at the confluence of the Fraser and Coquihalla Rivers (pop. 6,181) and the site of the filming of the Rambo film, First Blood.  Hope is also the Chainsaw Capital with over 80 chainsaw carvings around town, including one of Rambo (Sylvester Stallone).  It is estimated that 15,000 to 20,000 visitors come each year to see this.  They are pretty impressive, and I also like the birdhouses on Park St. 

 

A quiet and retrospective drive along Hwy 7, across Seabird Island, into the sunset. 

“Steeple” for the Abbey

and there you have it - we have MeAnd’Er-ed Across Canada and back

It’s over - we did it!

We’re Home 💕

To all the people we have visited and all the people we have met - Thank You for sharing in our journey.  You have made this trip very special and you will be in our hearts forever. 

Please keep in touch!

And to those of you how have read our MeAnd’Er Across Canada blog, Thank You!  Sharing with you has made it very special

And to family - thanks for waiting so long for us to get home!  We missed you, and we missed the entire summer 

Trip Summary: 

Distance = 26,851.3 km

Days = 127 days

Hours driving = 425 hours, 25 minutes

Cost to charge = $1,256.24 

Different beds = 70 different beds

These are pictures of our town, Mission, BC . 

Wednesday, 13 September, 2023

        Unpacking has been fun:

Hair conditioner from a tea house in PEI

Shampoo made with iceberg water from Newfoundland 

Deodorant from a refillery in Orillia Ontario

Bamboo toothbrush from Tamworth

Pictures gifted from family

Too many books to count

An interesting selection of CD’s

A Mummer

A bottle of Screech

and a little piece of sea glass I found in my pocket ✨

MeAnd’Er-ing our way Home

 

Day 120 - It’s September 3rd and we have travelled 24,000km and 375 hours.  Yesterday the Kona hit 60,000km and she’s still purring along. 

Last night we checked into the Howard Johnson in Winnipeg, right across the street from the Hyundai dealer.  So we walked on over, asked Crystal if we could plug in for the night, she asked Doug and Revel and they were more than happy to have us plug in, and also to hear our story about travelling across Canada in an electric Hyundai Kona and take a picture!  

Excitement all around.

Then off to visit with Rob and Fran at The Leaf in Assiniboine Park for a wonderful time discovering and exploring the Tropical and Mediterranean biomes, the Butterfly Garden and the Display Home area filled with topiaries and an amazing living wall.   We spent the night with Rob and Fran in St. Boniface and had a great time catching up on what each of us are doing, how are families are, and what’s what in Mission.  

Day 121 - It is Labour Day and quite fitting that we should come across this mural on our way out of Winnipeg.  The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 was one of the most famous and influential strikes in Canadian history.  The main goal was to improve working conditions and continued for 6 weeks.  More than 30,000 strikers brought economic activity to a standstill in Winnipeg and the federal government believed the strikers wanted to start a communist revolution and called in the Royal North-West Mounted Police to stop it! 94 strikers were arrested, there were 2 deaths and 30 injuries.

We headed out the Yellowhead West, again through back country and there is no traffic!  Seriously, it’s a long weekend, don’t people have homes to get back to?  They must all be in the malls!

We went by Simplot Canada, a potatoe processing plant near Portage La Prairie that has an annual capacity of more than 300 million pounds! (135 million kilos) of frozen fries and packaged potatoe products.  So that’s what’s in all them thar fields!  

We took a pass on Gladstone because it was out of our way, although I really wanted to have my picture taken with Happy (Glad) Rock (stone), reminds me of Bill’s (Williams) Puddle (Lake) !

It’s pouring rain again!  But we drove 558km today, a long day for us, averaging 14.3kWh/100km should be using less than that but the speed is keeping it high even with back roads.  We pretty much drove straight through from Winnipeg, through Moosomin into Saskatchewan, and when the rain stopped the fields were beautiful, but in some places the smoke from the N.T. and B.C. fires was pretty bad.  We stopped at Whitewood for the night - both charging stations were down (PetroCan and Co-Op), the restaurant in the hotel was closed and the toilet in our room was plugged - and it’s raining again!  😖

EV charging has become somewhat of a problem with so many of the chargers being down, and the cost is all over the map (pardon the pun).  .37¢/minute, Ivy. 22¢/minute Hydro, and .50¢/minute at Petro Can.  It’s a rip for sure - we’re paying Premium prices and getting Regular product at some of these places.  We expect there will be an uprising as more EV people get on board.  

Day 122 - Back to school for a lot of our family.  From Whitewood we travelled north of Hwy 1 along Hwy 11 - Louis Riel Trail, through Dubuc, Grayson, Abernethy- most places like the Motherwell Homestead are closed for the season, but the towns and fields still showed us their bounty.  The fields are being harvested, wheat merged for bailing and some were ploughed already. Lots of fields of what appear to be soy beans, and some of the areas killed off to make for easier harvesting.  

 The drive through the Qu’Appelle Valley was breathtaking and took us through Fort Qu’Appelle where we stopped for coffee and a long visit to Becky’s Place Arts, Crafts & Creations where I picked up a few things, including a couple of Mother Earth sprays that I hope liven up the car, which is beginning to feel a bit like an albatross.  Fort Qu’Appelle has a lovely post office - 

We stayed with Sylvia in Buena Vista and caught up on travel, her trip to the UK, and the fires in Hay River.  We were here on our way east back in May - Mileage was 3,402km and this time was 24,666km - that’s 4 months and almost 21,000km ago!

Still minimal traffic, not even a school bus.  And almost no motorcycles.  

This whole area is in the Palliser Triangle, a semi-arid steppe occupying a substantial portion of the Western Canadian  Prairie provinces and the agriculture suffered from frequent droughts.  Before European settlers the area was inhabited by Aboriginal people such as Cree, Sioux and The Blackfoot Confederacy and lifestyle was centred around the buffalo hunt.  Writing on Stone and Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump and the Cypress Sand Dunes are in the this triangle - pictures of which we posted May 12, 16 and 20th.  Parts of Alberta we went through benefit from the Taber, St. Mary’s and Bow River Irrigation networks, through a system of canals to enable them to grow crops.

Day 123 - That’s it for Saskatchewan, we’re on our way to Alberta through dirt roads north of Hwy 1 again.  We stopped in Moose Jaw for an EV charge then south to Route 363 through coulees and valleys - 

Did you know that Canada has a Coyote Capital?  It’s Hodgeville, Saskatchewan.

We keep saying that there’s a lot we didn’t know about our wonderful country, and this is proof of just one more thing we have learned.  Who knew?

We’re deep in the Badlands here, no charging stations but Roger made sure we have lots of juice to ward off any Range Anxiety and get us from Moose Jaw to Swift Current no matter how Bad the Lands are.  Stopped at Starbucks in Swift Current and I had to text Lori and ask what the floating things are in my drink.  Turns out it’s dried pineapple chunks!!

Burst into Alberta at 4:45pm through Walsh and headed straight to Medicine Hat.  We had stayed at the Villa downtown in May and were quite happy to be back.  

At this point Roger pipes up with the idea of getting a camper and doing a trip like this through BC.  Are you kidding me?  Please don’t even suggest that to someone who has been sitting in a car for 400 hours and hasn’t slept in her own bed for 124 days!!

Day 124 - Today was a lot of fun.  Before we left Medicine Hat I wanted some Kombucha for the road, and a Google search (is it still called Google?) sent us to Your Preference in the industrial area where they brew Kombucha, Water Kefir and Shrub.  Ken (owner/operator) and Bruce (general manager) greeted me and I was given the tour and learned that they use organic and locally sourced whenever possible - no powdered starters here!  

And most exciting is that they now are contracted by Co-Op to produce kombucha under the Co-Op label, so keep your eyes open for Kombucha and Kefir Water brewed in Medicine Hat, Alberta!

6 pack in hand we headed south of Hwy. 1 on Hwy. 3 to Seven Persons to visit the post office there for our friend Neil, who passed through here in 2010 when he cycled across Canada!  Sadly, Seven Persons no longer has a post office, it’s been swallowed up by Medicine Hat and this is all that’s left.  

Now my alter-ego Don Quixote has another windmill to tilt: Bookstores, Coffee Shops, Bakeries, and now rural Post Offices! 

   

Then north of Hwy 1 on Hwy 879 and 524 through Hays, (pop. 196) where we spent about an hour visiting with John, self acclaimed Mayor of Hays; born and raised there, 65 year old bachelor, who worked driving in the oil fields, having his own coolant business, farming hay, raising horses +++, while we enjoyed goodies home baked by Susan who owns the Hays Cafe & Country Store.  Well worth the stop, that’s for sure.  

Then we were welcomed to Bow Island, 100km north of Montana, by Pinto MacBean, in the town known for the Dry Edible Bean Industry.  Bow River also has the longest summers in Alberta with an average of 2500 hours of sunlight.  Population 2,036.

We’ve gone from lighthouses to silos, and throw in a few oil derricks pumping away in a wheat field - it’s beautiful!  

And then you come upon Lomond and they’re selling live bait!  (Lake McGregor) and anti-wind turbine signs.

And it keeps getting better when we re-visit Vulcan, site of the Starfish Enterprise, the Vulcan Tourism & Trek Centre, and hometown of Sharon C.!  We plugged into the EV charger and wrote postcards to the grandkids so they could get the Vulcan postmark.  Very cool.  We wrote about this in one of our blogs in May.  

There was an interesting cemetery in a field that is the Reid Hill Cemetery for the pioneers of the area. They appear to plant and harvest around the site. 

We keep talking about how little traffic there is - and then we hit Calgary!!!!

Day 127 - Leaving Calgary on Hwy 11 & 1A Crowsnest Trail to Cochrane.  Drove past the Ski Jump from the 1988 Winter Olympic Games - it’s still there, but leads into a shopping mall, guess that’s the “end” of that thing - Sure can see how the city has grown!  

We picked up the Bow Valley Parkway at Castle Junction; the eastern part is closed to vehicles May 1-June 25 and all of September to allow for an enhanced cycling experience.  It’s a 3 year experiment and I hope it continues, it’s beautiful along the Bow Valley and is nice that cyclists can enjoy it.  The Parkway winds between Banff and Lake Louise and is a quieter alternative to the TCH, which is what we do best.  

From Castle Junction we travelled west and re-visited the site of the WWI Internment Camp for 600 German & Austrian men.  A total of 8,579 men became prisoners of war in 24 camps across Canada.  More details in blog posted 5/12/23.

Before we leave, we have some Prairie Questions:

- what were all the small wood sheds on the farms used for?  They’re all together in one area.

- where does the oil go from the derricks in the wheat fields?

- what were all those orange yurt type huts near Dubuc, Saskatchewan?

- and in Ontario - what are the quilt design patterns on the side of barns? 

MeAnd’Er-ing West from Ottawa to Manitoba

Sorry folks, this is a long one.  I wanted this blog to finish off Ontario, but this province is Huge and we did so much. 

Day 109 - Ottawa - Alexandria to Ottawa was another beautiful drive along Hwy 7 through  more farmland.  Hwy 7 was once one of Ontario’s major highways until Hwy. 401 came along and offered a faster route with more lanes.  

The car is sending us warning messages about the regen. brakes.  This happened before and we have been told they can’t do anything after the fact, they actually need it to happen there in the shop for them to know what it is and how to fix it.  

Anyway, fingers crossed it’s okay until we get home and before the warranty expires; in the meantime the warning goes away if we restart the car!  

Ottawa - After a lovely walk in Vincent Massey Park with our friend Barbara (who we met in Bangladesh and told you about earlier on our visit at St. George enroute east) we connected with our friends Bruce and Sandra (who we also met in Bangladesh and stayed with them on our way east) and shared a wonderful b-b-q meal in their backyard. It’s been a long time since we’ve had one of those! Barbara treated us to Tiramisu for dessert, Italian for “pick me up” or “cheer me up”, very fitting for the occasion.  

It was so nice to meet their daughters Laura and Lisa and to be with friends.

Day 110 - Thursday, August 24th - Big event this evening, Invincible Kyiv: Celebration of Independence of Ukraine at the Canadian War Museum, organized by our very own Tania Piatkovska, the young woman who left when Russia invaded Ukraine and has been living with Bruce and Sandra in Ottawa.

  

The evening included the full length documentary Against All Odds: The Failure of Russia’s Blitzkrueg, with Director Artem Litvinenko live from Ukraine to speak about the film and Q & A.  Great guest speakers, paintings, crafts and silent auction, photographs and stories.  Bruce and Sandra, and Laura weren’t able to attend but we know they would be very proud of the remarkable job Tania did with this very strong and emotional event.  

                            These are some of the paintings being offered for sale.

We have been posting pictures of post offices along our journey, but in Ottawa we saw the mother of them all!!  Canada Post Headquarters!!

We have also been collecting some of the post mark stamps at various post offices and some of them are quite beautiful.  Maybe we’ll get a quilt made of them ….

Day 111 - nice numbers!!

We left Ottawa and returned to Hwy. 7, Central Ontario Hwy., back through Perth, Maberly, Sharbot  Lake etc. along the Kawartha Lake Region.  The Haneover Farmers Market was in full swing and we scored some fabulous multigrain bread and fresh beans to munch on.  

The clocks clicked back an hour at 58,779km so now we’re only 3 hours ahead of home, and we’re on our way to Owen Sound to visit our friend Sharon, travelling along the Georgian Bay Coastal Route, some of it familiar from our journey east - over 3 months ago !!! , like Summerville - Summer Home of Glen Gould.  

Traveller EV note - Bit of a power struggle at the charging station in Norwood - ‘she’ was plugged in and sitting at 80% and was not going to leave until 90%, meanwhile there was a guy waiting, and then us after him.  She wouldn’t budge, he needed a 45 minute charge, so we pulled out and went to Peterborough. 

A visit to Trent-Severn Lock 33 in Lindsay was a great chance to meet Lexi and Jenna, another 2 exceptional employees of Parks Canada.  After they manually opened the locks for a Sea-doo Lexi gave us loads of information about the lock system and its travellers.  The system is a 386km waterway connecting Lake Ontario and Georgian Bay with 42 lock stations.  We visited Lock 21 in Peterborough on our way east, one of only two hydraulic lift locks on the waterway, all the others are operated manually.  There is a big event happening there tomorrow for recreational water travellers.  It’s going to be crazy!!

And this is our quiet lock in Lindsay.  There are lots of locals who seem to gather there after dinner to sit and visit - reminds me of the uncles in Hume and Griner parks.

  We enjoyed a granola and Bolthouse juice dinner in our room at the Comfort Inn - true travel food!  

Day 112 - continued to drive Georgian Bay Coastal Route from Lindsay to Owen Sound passing through fields of sunflowers, and stopping in Orillia to visit the Gordon Lightfoot tribute at Tudhope Park on a peninsula overlooking Lake Couchiching.   

Golden Leaves - A Tribute to Gordon Lightfoot stands 13 feet tall.  The scenes on the carved maple leaves represent all of the songs from Gord’s Gold..  On either side of the sculpture are 2 smaller maple leaves of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and Black Day in July.  The setting in the park was beautiful.  Gordon was born in Orillia in 1938 and was present of the unveiling of the statue in 2015.  There is also a bust of Gordon outside the Orillia Opera House, one of the first places he performed. 

A beautiful spot for reflection, and to pick up some new tunes for your earworm!  

  

Gordon Lightfoot passed away May 1st of this year. 

Earworm - interesting word.  The Germans coined the word öhrwurm - earworm - to describe the experience of a song stuck in the brain.  I get them all the time, just ask Roger; I’ve been humming The Boxer by Paul Simon for months and it’s driving us both nuts!  Someone told me chewing gum helps get rid of them but that doesn’t seem to work for me.  🤪

Owen Sound - Continued through Horseshoe Valley and Blue Mountain ski areas, Barrie and Meaford, arriving in Owen Sound mid afternoon.  The walk along Kelso Beach at Nawash Park with our friend Sharon is wonderful, sandy beach, amphitheatre, Gichi-Name Wiikwedong Reconciliation Garden and a Fishing Derby, people and campers lined up everywhere.  

  

There has been a lot of work done and still in progress to acknowledge this site as aboriginal territory.  

The silos at The Great Lakes Elevator Company are still very active importing and exporting salt, grain, etc. as well as the Miller Cement Silos across the channel, and the harbour is home to the Chi-Cheemaun  Ferry over the winter months.  

We spent a couple of days in Owen Sound with Sharon, and Niki, her incredibly cute Pomsky and had some fabulous walks.  It’s a beautiful little town (pop. 21,612), home to the Tom Thomson (of Group of Seven fame) Memorial Art Gallery, Festival of Northern Lights and Summerfold Music and Crafts Festival, to name a few.  They also have. a permanent site and structure for their Farmers’ Market, as do a lot of the towns we have visited.  

Charlie at the Owen Sound Marine & Rail Museum took us through the old rail car and caboose and described every detail, another very enthusiastic and informed young man.  

Note to train friend Brian A. - we met a guy in Gander who belongs to a club of train enthusiasts and they travel all over Canada checking out trains, railways et al.  You probably know of them, probably are one of them, and he seemed quite interested when I told him of your dream of a Train Watching Station in Mission.

 

Owen Sound is on the “Turkey Trail”, the east-west route from Georgian Bay along the north channel, up the St. Mary’s River to Lake Superior.  Some say it got its name from the ships servicing the isolated ports wandering back and forth across the channel like a grazing turkey.  Others say from the large number of turkey transported from Manitoulin islands where turkeys were first introduced to control a league of grasshoppers.  Later, thousands of turkey would be brought to port on foot, crated live and sent by ship to Owen Sound, loaded onto trains for destinations as far away as New York city.  Wow, grasshoppers to cranberry sauce, that’s quite a life!

The evening was spent with maps laid out on the table and great stories of travels, family, quilting, battling a Water Moccasin, life in Owen Sound and life in Mission - Sharon is an ex-pat, although by literal definition she did not leave the country, just the province.  Her home is filled with beautiful handmade quilts, complete and in progress and we made a connection with Sylvia in Regina Beach for a quilting consult.  For the longest time Sharon was with the Be The Change Action Circle in Mission.

  

Sharon warns us of Muskoka Rattlers on Manitoulin Island, and also forecasts that we will enjoy some of the famous Ontario fall colours on our journey home - that would be icing on the cake for me!

(News coming in from Hay River and Yellowknife, everyone has evacuated, things not looking good.) 

Day 115 - we’re back on the road, and water, up the Great Lakes Waterfront Route, 1st stop Wiarton to visit Wiarton Willie, the great groundhog who, every February 2 on Groundhog Day, comes out of his home to predict whether there will be an early spring.  “People from around the world” (quoted from Town of South Bruce Peninsula website), eagerly wait to see if Wiarton Willie will see his shadow indicating 6 more weeks of winter, or not see a shadow, predicting an early spring.  2023 he predicted early Spring.   

Joyce-lyn is doing a fantastic job maintaining the Woman and Child sculpture and surrounding garden in the park planted by IODE (Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire) Canada, a national women’s charitable organization dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for individuals through education support, community service and citizenship programs.  Another organization founded by women, like the Quota Club that we learned about back in June when we passed through Orillia eastward bound.  Much like Rotary, but with a foundation of women and founded in Canada.  

     

From there we continue along the Great Lakes Waterfront Route past barns with what appear to be quilting patterns on the side, and signs at ends of many driveways with the slogan “Stop Fish Farming” and “Stop the Fish Factory! “ a movement by Bruce Peninsula Water Watch opposed to the proposed industrial aquaculture factory planned near Colpoy’s Bay.  If built, it will be 500,000 sq. feet, or 11.5 acres, and the company has purchased 200 acres so there is plenty of possibility of expansion.  The concern is that it will have an irreversible damaging impact on the pristine water from which more than 4,000 residents source their drinking water.  https://www.smellsfishy.org/

I am reading Still Hopeful: Lessons from a Lifetime of Activism by Maude Barlow, a linchpin for water justice, and this action by Georgian Bay Innovation Group (renamed GB Salmon) hits the nail on the head when she speaks about the privatization of our water. 

   

Speaking of books - our little ‘Backseat Library’ has expanded in to the wheel well.  I think Roger is going to cut me off pretty soon!

Quick stop at Little Cove Bakery in Tobermory then into line for the ferry to Manitoulin Island on MS Chi-Cheemaun ferry, ‘The Big Canoe’, a 2 hour voyage across Georgian Bay.  It poured rain the entire time so we spent the journey inside the boat, using the time to catch up on my journal!

Mnidoo Mnising, or Manitoulin, is the world’s largest (there’s that word again) freshwater island and has long been held sacred by the Anishinaabe people.  It is really beautiful, although the rain discouraged us from getting out of the car and taking pictures.  We’ll have to steal some from the internet.  

At the Little Current draw bridge crossing we stopped at the Information office and learned from the young man there that people born on Manitoulin are called “Haweaters”, a name given by indigenous people to early settlers who ate hawberries to help with scurvy.  Later the definition changed to those non-indigenous born on Manitoulin Island, and this young man was very proud of the name.  

The Island is part of the Niagara Escarpment, or cuesta, that starts from the south shore of Lake Ontario westward, circumscribes the top of the Great Lakes Basin running from New York through Ontario, Michigan and Wisconsin.  It gives breathtaking views of include forests, farms, huge cliffs of amazing rock, and wetlands.  

We took the most direct route north along Route 6, but if we had more time we would have taken a week to explore the Island.  And how’s this for a name of a fishing/hunting store!  - 

We stayed at the Pinewood Motor Inn in Espanola and it’s like a little cabin with couch, fireplace and fridge - very cozy and clean.  We’re cold and wet, so the fireplace was very much appreciated :)  

Did we mention that it is Raining!!

Day 166 - no, really it’s Day 116 + - begins our journey home, leaving Espanola and travelling back along the Great Lakes Waterfront Trail. Pulled off the side of the road in Spanish (the town) for a Rotary meeting and heard about Elspeth’s 24 Homeless experience, a fundraiser by Mission Community Services to raise $ for the Medical Mobile Unit.  There’s still time to donate to this extremely needed resource in Mission.  https://missioncommunityservices.com/. https://www.instagram.com/p/CwOKCxbSZdG/

In Massey we had our first encounter with horse and buggy, not in a bad way but it took me a few minutes to figure that he stopped in the middle of the intersection to turn left - good thing I avoided the urge to pass him.  

  

We stayed at the Watertown Inn in Sault Ste. Marie again and went down to the locks, charged the car  and watched 3 boats go through the locks.  Remembered our last visit there and meeting Jean and Donna from Brantford.  We drove this route when we were heading east back on June 7th!, but the view is different of course and the trees are beginning to change colour.  

OMG, it’s August 31st already! 

Route 11 has many names, and it gives us a great feeling travelling it and imagining Terry Fox running along here.  

Terry began his journey in St. John’s, Newfoundland, ran along this very route August, 1980 before ending his Marathon of Hope in Thunder Bay September 1st, 1980, after 143 days, 5373 km, 3339 miles. 

The Group of Seven, a group of Canadian landscape painters also travelled this route, but mostly by rail and canoe.  They rented a boxcar and travelled up and down the Algoma Region on a 3-wheeled handcar called a Velocipede, and painted the Canadian landscape from 1920 - 1933.  What a great story.

Stopped at Adawa Crafts in Batchawana Bay and bought this sticker -   Nancy told us about Misshepezhieu, or Michipeshu, a lynx like creature depicted in the nearby pictographs dating back 2,000 years.  Michipeshu caused violent waters that wreck havoc on those unlucky enough to be in the lake when his temper strikes. 

  

Nancy went on to tell us of many places of interest nearby, all mapped out on a plastic litter bag.  There is also a German prisoner of war internment camp nearby in Neys Park, that was used during WW II, from 1941 - 1946. 

 

The walk along the beach at Lake Superior Provincial Park was really nice - I think Roger had some “childhood in Ontario” moments walking barefoot in the sand. 

 Then on to Wawa - as in “Any problems charging in your Me’And’Er Across Canada?”. - “Only in Wawa”, but it says that one of the 2 stations is working so we’ll give it a whirl = and it was!  

Happy Dance!! 

You might remember our blog back in June when we stayed at the Catfish Motel and plugged into their home because Wawa was down and we didn’t have enough charge to turn back to White River.

Speaking of White River, we stopped again to pose with Winnie-The-Pooh.  If you have read the previous blogs there are stories in there about these stops when we drove east in June.  A lot of this part of our journey is in our June 13th blog - MeAnd’Er-ing from Thunder Bay to Sault Ste. Marie if you want to know more about the Terry Fox Marathon of Hope, and the Winnie-The-Pooh connection with White River.  https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/3534926806833732830/1518895677920858418

The EV Charging station in Marathon is also down, but we had a really good Chinese dinner at Wok with Chow!  There is a sunny side to almost everything :) 

 

Roger has an amazing and detailed route for everywhere we go with charging stations marked with such frequency that if there is a problem we always have enough charge to get to the next one.  It’s a little annoying at times, but when you get to somewhere like Marathon where we are spending the night and can’t charge it’s really nice to know we can get to Terrace Bay the next morning.  That one wasn’t in very good form either - seems that the summer has been busy or something because we had no problems 3 months ago.  I bought a cushion at Canadian Tire - 375 hours has left a bit of a dent in the car seats!  

There is a lot of mining going on here in Ontario - the big Barrick/Helmo gold mine operating underground has been operating continuously for 30 years.  

In North-western Ontario there a very large movement to Stop Nuke Dump - a protest against Ontario Power Generation’s proposal to build a Deep Geological Repository to bury radioactive nuclear waste on the shores of the Great Lakes.  This province is huge and has provided so many natural resources for nuclear power and industry and now they’re trying to figure out what to do with the waste.  https://www.stopthegreatlakesnucleardump.com/

When I see these things and remember the struggle we had in Mission to keep our water public, I feel bad for not getting active with the Council of Canadians when Ken C. brought a chapter to Mission. 

 I think it’s time to get active again!

Here’s another “biggest”, “tallest”, “oldest”, “deepest” for you - Nipigon boasts “Canadian Tire, the Smallest Store in Canada”.  

And talking about bragging rights, we see Welcome To … signs everywhere with Home of …. Baseball players, Curling Teams, Figure Skaters, NHL Players, Rhodes Scholars, even saw one for a Midwife today.  Maybe some of my activism will begin at home with bragging signs for Mission’s finest, like Brent Hayden, Kim Smith-Gaucher, Teresa Kleindeist, Eden Donatelli, Carli-Rae Jepsen, to mention a few - hey, we have a lot of people in Mission to be proud of!

In the meantime, the drive is beautiful, the lupines have all gone to seed and the fields are ready for harvest.  There a fields miles long of sunflowers!  

Passed through the Arctic Watershed division again, and crossed the 90* longitude from EST to CST zone (and for some reason my phone didn’t do the change.  Maybe we shouldn’t have turned off for a picture!) 

  

Ontario is Huge - it’s taking forever to get across it, and until that happens I don’t feel we’re on the home stretch.  We hit the 23,000 km mark today, and we’re still in Ontario!!

Day 118 + 119 - We’re on the home stretch and when we got to our motel in Upsala there was no-one there to let us in!  It’s hot (35C) and we’re tired, so we charged up the car and headed to English River Inn - really friendly, clean and a nice outside area on the side of the river.  We’re on route 17 heading north just west of Thunder Bay toward Kenora.  Beautiful backroads along Historic Highway 1.

And from there I enjoyed a visit with my Friday Friends back home 💕

Day 119 - I know this is really long, but we really wanted to finish Ontario before posting, and as I said, that is taking Forever.  But today we did it!  

Crossed the line into Manitoba at 2:22pm., September 2nd. 

Travelled Hwy 17, dubbed The Heart of Canada Touring Route, spanning from Thunder Bay to Winnipeg, flowing through Dryden, Vermillion Bay, Kenora, West Hawk Lake in Manitoba, Rennie , scouched down to Hwy 15 at Whitemouth & Elma, and on into Winnipeg.  This is a fun piece from Kenora - 

It’s HOT -  38C and really smoky, but we’re here!
 

🚘 A few more random tips and thoughts: 🚘

- 🐾 Dog treats are a must to have handy when visiting.  We chose organic veggie ones for sensitive tummies, enjoyed by Grace and Niki.

- Bring your own pillow - by the time we get home we will have slept in 80 different beds, and except in the home of friends and B & B’s where the hosts live in the house, I prefer to use my own pillow thank you very much.

- Farmers Market granola and Bolthouse Farms juice make the perfect breakfast, lunch or dinner.  We have a small plastic container and spoon we brought from home.  Farmers Markets are also great for veggie munchies.

- The glass tray in the microwave makes a great charcuterie board!

Well Ontario - That’s a Wrap!