On the Road Again...

So today we decided that to save money and days, we were going to skip the North Bay-Sault St. Marie leg of our trip and just get up super early and get straight to Thunder Bay. It actually didn't turn out to be that bad with the exception of one thing, but I'll get to that later.

To get an idea of how far this distance is, I'll call upon the great Google Maps for a visual reference:


View Larger Map

Or in simpler terms: 1,128km

We got up early, grabbed some delicious continental breakfast and hit the road. Although we did see a news report about the controlled flooding in Manitoba. I was hoping that would all be over before we got there but we'll be getting there tomorrow and it's still looking pretty bad so we'll see what happens...

The first leg was North Bay to Sudbury. We took a small detour into the Nickeltown to see the World's Biggest Nickel. I thought it was going to be pretty big, but just like the other 'big things' on this trip, it turned out to be mind bogglingly big. If anyone has been in Sudbury and seen this before, they've definitely moved it to the top of this big hill overlooking the town. They built a big discovery center style building all about mining at that hill and it has the big nickel in front of it. This Nickel is at least 15 feet tall, you could definitely find a better use for it than throwing it in a gigantic tip jar. Surprisingly though, it is made out of stainless steel, rather than actual Nickel.

If I had a nickel like this for ever though, we'll I'd probably be dead; crushed by the weight.

After spending some time on that windswept hill we headed back on the highway. There isn't much between Sudbury and Sault St. Marie, so there aren't any pictures from that. Although in this end of Ontario, Gas prices seemed to fluctuate between 1.33 and 1.51, so if it's less than the low end of that price range where you are, consider yourself grateful. 

We switched over at Old Woman Provincial Park. Now you may be wondering to yourself, 'why the heck is it called that?' We were wondering that ourselves, and we looked all up and down the beach and didn't see any particular abundance of women anywhere, old or otherwise. It wasn't until we read the great big interpretive sign that we discovered the significance of the name. A rock formation in view from the beach did indeed depict the profile image of an elderly person, although I guess it could be defined as an old woman. The picture doesn't quite capture it as well as your eyes would, but I think it still counts.

Over here sonny... My eyes don't quite see as good as they used to!

For the duration of the trip I was in the passenger seat, about 500km of drive North to Thunder Bay. There were some nice vistas to look at along the way, along with the beauty of lake superior, but I wasn't quite quick enough with my camera for most of them, so the majority of them are mental memories. Here is an example of what we saw though (Other than lots of hills).

We were barrelling down the hill and I had about .3 seconds to snap this photo

Now, we were about 1 hour away from Thunder Bay, we were racing the sun trying to get into town before that dusk period (Not only to avoid that awful 'almost end of day sunset' that blinds you, but the roads in Northern Ontario are apparently ridiculously Moose prone). Of course, who shows up to ruin this moment but Ontario's Finest, the O.P.P.

That's right fine readers out there, Geoff and I, the most unlikely of law breakers, were brought down by the Ontario Provincial Police Highway patrols. We were doing 118km/h on a stretch of highway that had a posted speedlimit of 90km/h. Now, this highway was actually really wide and would definitely qualify for a 100km/h speedlimit in more reasonable districts, but this is Ontario, where only the 400 series highways get a high speed limit of 100km/h. I know that this road had lots of twists and turns but it was a perfectly fine day and we were just trying to get to our destination before night fell. Unfortunately, these pleas fell on deaf ears, and since we didn't have a pretty girl in our party, we suffered the full extent of the law.

Neither of us had ever been pulled over before, so suffice to say we were both pretty nervous, and immediately they start suspecting us for doing/carrying/supplying drugs to somebody and cracked down even further. It wasn't a strip search or anything, but they were pretty intense with their questioning, it wasn't the whole 'licence and registration' thing it was 'where are you going? Are you working right now? How are you affording this?' Pretty invasive questioning if you ask me. Then they asked if we would voluntarily let them search the car, this is apparently because the Highway 17 corridor is a heavily used road for drug trafficking since it is the only main road link between East and West Canada. I can understand that, but I think they didn't have to come down to hard on two young men whose only crime was driving a little too fast. We complied with all their requests because even though lots of people are like 'oh you should only cooperate with police as little as legally required' but that seems like that would just get you in more trouble that it's worth. So about 25 minutes and a $125 speeding ticket for Geoff later, along with a lecture about speeding and how you should keep proper insurance documentation in your car we were on our way.

We got into Thunder Bay with a little sunlight to spare, ate some Chinese and then settled in for the night. We were both a little shook up about it, but we both laughed it up and chalked it up to youthful experience. Hopefully that will be the last formal encounter with the law we have.

The Ontario Provincial Police: Terrorizing hapless graduates on roadtrips since 1792

Tomorrow we hope to get from Thunder Bay to Winnipeg, which would mean that next week will be Prairie Themed!