Ontario here we come!  From Brandon off we went to Dryden Ontario, in Treaty 3 Territory, home of pulp and paper, 7,000 people and not much else except and a Husky truck stop with; 1) really nice staff, 2) and excellent selection of grab and go South Asian food, and 3) a really bad beef dip. I forgave them the last in favour of the first as the server really was fantastic.  I even tipped despite the food clearly having spent and extended beach vacation under a heat lamp.  

Dryden was chosen for this trip for its position on the map.  It was a reasonable drive day from Brandon.  I did not actually stay in Dryden but swallowed my ethics and went Air BnB (having checked that it was not a lost rental unit but rather an actual suite in someone’s home).  It was just out of town beside Aaron Provincial park on Thunder Lake.  It was truly fantastic.  I had a beautiful suite with AC, a king size bed, all the kitchenette stuff, and a bathroom I would happily replicate at my place.  The suite was level access, everything ramped and it was properly wheelchair accessible, roll in shower with room for a shower chair, space for transferring beside the toilet, lots of room in the room.  The dishes were on a higher shelf but I am sure they put them on the lower one for folks who use wheelchairs.  Best part, they have a trail down to their beach on the lake and back up which is paved.   It would be steep to wheel yourself up in a manual chair but not too much for someone to push or a mobility scooter.  If you are ever in the area and need a fantastic place to stay, Thunder Lake Lodge, hosted by Susan is the place to go.  She even went the extra mile for me and, despite it not including breakfast, made me a breakfast sandwich and snacks to take with me, all packed up in a lunch bag and hung on my door for me when I hit the road.

Next stop from Thunder Lake was Thunder Bay.  Apparently I did not have the correct number for my friend Joan so missed her (but caught her on the way West).  Instead I had a very nice lunch at a place on the waterfront.  I am not sure what I was expecting from the great lakes but it really did feel very similar to an oceanfront.  The water goes forever, huge boats in the distance, expensive hotels along the water with great views.   There was also what I thought was a great waterpark… until I noticed the sign that said no wading in the fountain, clearly being ignored by the multitude of hot kids playing in the spray.  I suspect the sign was just some sort of liability avoidance tool.  The “fountain” was perfectly designed for an all ages waterpark and it certainly serves the city well to have a cooling station along the water.  I will have a night in thunder bay on the way back when Joan is back in town so may explore a bit more. The waterfront at least was considerably more upmarket than I was expecting from Thunder Bay.  It seems this is a bit of a theme of this trip, ditch my assumptions.

I did not really visit Nipigon along the way but I did stop at their observation tower and climbed up to have a look at the area.  It offers a lovely view of the lake from there, but has those grated open metal stairs which are great for getting rid of snow… and getting rid of a lot of skin if one trips on them. I was in my non-hiking sandals so I went up and down very carefully, thinking of Laura’s friend who does not even like to do open wooden stairs where you can see through the risers and thinking she would REALLY not like this.  I managed to get up, get a nice picture and get down with my entire epidermis intact.  Yay me.

From Thunder Lake in the lap of luxury, I went the other way the next night.  McLeod Provincial Park campground.  I found myself a site on the lake which had a very nice view of the sunset and I thought was away from the highway to allow for a quiet night.  It was right beside the day use area so had a loo right there and I figured if a mob showed up to use the day use are the next day I was heading out anyway.  As it turned out I was wrong on both fronts.  While it was away from the highway it was on the side of the industrial something or the other that ran all night, and there was no one in the day use are, or that whole side of the park.  It did feel a bit like I was in the bush alone, if you discounted the industrial noise.  It was still pretty though, and I got my exercise swatting and dodging the bugs that made Cessna’s look like tonka toys.  Macleod Lake actually took the bug crown from the Yukon!

Along the way from Thunder Bay I went through all sorts of small towns, many with big objects… Beardmore (giant snowman), Hurst (giant local animals), Moonbeam (giant spaceship with a cute little alien peaking out the window), Cochrane (giant polar bear), and many with great big towers with their names on which I assume are some sort of telecom thing.  I also took a drive through Kapuspkasing, which I have always wondered about since seeing the Thomson Highway play “Dry Lips Otta move to Kapuskasing”.  I don’t remember much about the play but the name of the town stuck. It is another Northern resource town but it is pretty and has a lovely park along the river and people seemed to be pretty friendly, stopping to chat as I wandered around the park a bit to stretch my legs.

Having dodged the bugs and packed up camp, next stop was Kirkland Lake.  While the town has a rather industrial Northern Ontario vibe the people at the Comfort Inn were welcoming and the bed was comfy.  It is a combo hotel and old school motel.  I had a ground floor unit which I could park right outside.  They even had security cameras to make me feel better after my Edmonton incident (although I suppose that the cameras there did not make a stick of difference).  They host a lot of the road crew folks, but maintain the rules.  I had a nice visit with the various workers staying there over beer in the parking lot/BBQ area behind the motel.  The hot breakfast was no screaming hell but the staff member who made me the omelette to order was super friendly and chatty.  As it turned out, I was glad I stopped there, as I joined the Choice Hotels member club and got free cookies at some subsequent stays.  I ended up staying in quite a few of their various hotels as they all seem to be clean comfortable mid range places with nice staff.  I even found a really nice hotel in thunder Bay in their line, but more on that on the Westbound Ontario blog as I did most of my Ontario exploring on the way West. 

My luck was less stellar in finding dinner.  I went to the local restaurant that the hotel suggested.  I ordered a quesadilla and settled in with my book.   The young woman who had taken my order had to come back a couple of times to check things and eventually wrote it down, so when my quesadilla arrived in what appeared to be “DIY assembly”.  I queried it and she said that yes this was their quesadilla.  Ok, weird, but maybe this is a Northern Ontario thing.  Then she came back and said that as it turned out she had rung it in wrong and said she would take it away and have them make the quesadilla.   I said not to worry about it and that I could eat most of it minus the hot sauce and there was no point in wasting food.  She said OK the went about trying to manage her other tables, some more successfully than others.   Then the bill arrived, and it was much more than expected.  I paid it and then went to check on the menu to make sure it was correct.  It turns out she had rung in fajitas, much more expensive and had then billed me for the erroneous order rather than mine.  She was completely flummoxed as to what to do and finally her bar manager can over and solved the problem by opening the till, handing me $10, the difference) and we called it a night.  I am not sure that the poor waitress is going to have a much longer food service career than me (mine was about 15 minutes helping out bus tables before I realised that my tolerance for people treating me like an idiot was about 17 minutes and I should stop before I felt the need to brain someone with their pasta bowl).

The next morning, well rested and fed I headed out toward Quebec and Mont Tremblant. Again I chose my stop for its position on the map.   Mont Tremblant is a cute little town at the bottom of a ski hill.  When I went exploring the next day it turns out there are basically 3 towns to Mont Tremblant.  The bottom one where I staid had a bunch of different accommodations, restaurants, and some residential areas.  I managed to find a decent bowl of Ramen at a sushi restaurant, mostly by pointing at the menu and smiling as the server had about as much French as I did, and her English was about as non-existent as my Japanese.   I had a wander through town and found and interesting art installation involving.  Up the hill from where I stayed was another little town with what mostly looked like vacation condos and accommodations, and a lake with a swimming area.  Then at the top of the hill is essentially mini Whistler in French.   Apparently the ski area is owned by the same corporation as Whistler, and it shows.  I managed to score a parking spot that was not too far from the base of their gondola and their little village area, so I decided to take a little walk  before I headed East again.  It looked a lot like Whistler on a smaller scale.  I did not go up the gondola to explore their alpine but I am sure it is lovely.  Mont Tremblant is set in amongst several national parks and is surrounded by beautiful scenery.   I had initially thought I would go do some hiking in the parks.  However, flooding had taken out most of the trails and the ones which were marked as “good” condition all involved a lot of altitude gain and many km.  All the short, horizontal walks were listed as “closed” or “passable”.  I decided “passable” was not really what I wanted so I ended up moving on and filing Mont Tremblant in the return another time file. 

From Mont Tremblant I was off to New Brunswick.  I was SUPPOSED to have a quick pop through Quebec on the way to the Maritimes.   My French sucks and it is just more tiring travelling where I don’t speak the language, so much harder to chat with the locals, which is one of my favourite parts of travelling.  The universe had other plans… down I went through Quebec on Highway 1, which is not a great piece of road from a surface perspective, so bouncing along with lots of road noise and I eventually go to the A40, the big divided highway through Quebec.  I made a quick pit stop at one of the most impressive rest stops I had ever seen  (until I came back through Ontario who one upped it even further).  It was located in the middle of the divided highway, had a huge parking area, snack and coffee machines, tourist info along with a nice clean biffy.

 Darn good thing I made the stop too because a little while later, about 40 km from Trois Rivieres I went “BANG, whump whump”.  I had blown one of my back tires.  I managed to pull over with the three lanes of giant trucks and traffic whizzing by me (apparently in French 100 km translates to “if you are doing less that 130 we will run you over). When I got out and looked it was clear that the tire was an absolutely dead parrot, if it were not nailed to my car it would be pushing up the daisies.   Fortunately I had my trusty CAA card with me and was able to call someone to come help.  I am fully capable of changing a tire but doing so in the 35C heat on the side of a major highway was not in my “must see and do list”, so I called for the nice CAA person who could do it in about 3 minutes with power tools rather than me trying to do it with my  little tire iron by hand.   While waiting for the tow truck I got out, and hauled ALL my gear and my deck out of my car (the only down side to having my full size spare in the doughnut space is that it is on the VERY bottom of the stuff), then I got back in the car to wait as I figured if I was going to get hit by one of the passing rockets I would rather have my car around me!  As I waited, a car pulls up behind me and the driver gets out.  I was just about to get out to tell him that I was OK and CAA was on the way when, apparently completely oblivious to the car with gear beside it and a spare tire at the ready, unzips, has a pee on the side of the road, standing on the traffic side of his car… death wish or what.  Then the passenger gets out of the other side, hurls into the grass on the side of the road, and they both get back in and drive off.  In retrospect I am wondering if “alcohol was involved in the incident” as they say.  However, at the time I was trying not to cook like a Christmas turkey in my car, so I did not clock it at the time.   The lovely young person who came to my aid had my tire changed in about 3 minutes.  I thanked him and asked if I could carry on to Moncton, as it was a full size spare.  He said I should be fine.  Then, as he was about to pull away, he jumped back out of his truck and stopped me and pointed out that the other back tire was also stripped to paper thin on the inside too and that there was not way I was going to make it to Moncton on that one.  He suggested that I had two options, 1) try to make it the 40 km to Trois Rivieres or limp it with the flashers on to the next exit and go back 8 km to Berthierville, where there was a couple of tire shops.

I opted for the shorter trip.  I drove down the shoulder to the exit and headed back the way I had some, but on the side road.  The first tire shop I found told me that they did not have the tires for my car in stock, and pointed me toward another place just a little way down the road.   I arrived there just as the shop was about to close.  I found the proprietor and his girlfriend there.  After a hello in French, I asked if he spoke English.  He said “a little”.  I thanked him as I told him my French was terrible.  He then asked “You didn’t think it would be a good idea to learn it?”. I managed to cobble together, in French, that I studied it in school until I graduated 40 years ago but it is very difficult to keep it up or practice in Vancouver.  His girlfriend gave him a very clear look of “so there Mr. snarky pants” and we continued in English and he was very helpful.  He did not have the tires I needed in stock and he was going to be closed for 3 days as he was not open on Fridays.  They suggested that I try to limp the car to Trois Riviers on the side road as there was accommodations there and more tire shops that might be open on the weekend. He also made a good point…. I have CAA so, if I blow the other tire I can call and they will tow me to a tire place anyway.  I thanked him and went on my way.

I cruised very slowly down the side highway, flashers on and pulling over any time someone came up behind me and managed to get to Trois Rivieres.  I found an “OK Pneu” and, as luck would have it, they even had a mostly bilingual staff person…. thank heavens as it would have involved a lot of google translate if I had to figure out how to buy new pneus in French.   They were able to order the tires I needed out from Montreal and, with luck they would get there on Friday.  Now all I had to do was drive as little as possible until they got there, or get towed back.  I found a Holiday Inn about a km away which had a room so off I went to upscale my accommodations from my usual motel 6 stay, basing the cost on avoiding the stress of blowing my  other tire and having to find a tow.   Luck was with me and they arrived on Friday and they fit me in to install them.  Yay, I was back on the road… oops, nope.  I realized that the fact that both tires had been shaved to paper thin on the inside likely meant my alignment was completely screwed (remember that big “THUNK” hitting the rock in the Rockies?  I am pretty sure that was what did it and when the care went for servicing in Grand Prairie they missed it)  and if I went far I was likely to kill the new ones asap. I asked about getting an alignment done and they said they would try to squeeze me in on Saturday if their mechanic was back from being ill, if not it would have to wait until Monday.  Well, I was not going to take my chances as tires are not cheap, and I had to buy 4 because the ones that actually match my spare were on back order.  Off to find another hotel, something not in the middle of tire shops and industrial area so I could check out town while I waited, particularly if I had to wait until Monday.

I was in Trois Rivieres once before, in the late 70s on a school exchange.  I remember it as a small farming community without a lot of people or stuff.  As it turns out, what is now Trois Rivieres is an amalgamation of several smaller local towns.  Of course I was a teen on a school exchange and you see a different part of places on trips like that, and it was a very long time ago, so I really had little idea what to expect.  I found a hotel right downtown that had good parking security and an available room, parked the car right under the security camera and light, checked in, and set off to explore on foot.  Fortunately downtown Trois Rivieres is very walkable.  It’s historic centre has many good restaurants, historical sites, and tourist attractions.  There is a lovely park on the waterfront, a good DIY walking tour, and lovely old architecture.    The only challenge walking about was the fact that it was acorn season and there was a preponderance of murder squirrels.  These little “rats with good PR” would sit in the trees and wing acorns at the heads of passersby.  I only got beaned once but I seriously debated keeping a handful of the fallen projectile to chuck back at them! 

Of course the universe likes a good chuckle and so decided that I should blow a tire in the Frenchest part of the French province, in punishment for my decision to largely skip it for linguistic sake.  In many of the tourist places people would switch to English as I massacred the French language with my attempts, but in many other places I had to figure out how to make due.  I was pretty impressed with myself when I managed to get drinks and dinner entirely in French, get what I wanted and not offend anyone.  One server was very kind.  I started in French, she answered in English, and then said “oh I am sorry, were you wanting to practice your French?”.  I said no, that I was really just needing lunch, and thanked her for having at least one more language than I do.   In the end it was a nice, if unplanned, visit.  I learned a bit more about the history of the area than I know before, got some nice pictures, and had a bit of a slow down for a few days.  Several of the historical sites had excellent displays and staff to offer a snapshot into the life and history of New France and an excellent museum I the old paper mill provided a good overview of the resource history of the area, and even included a chance to make some paper in their education room.  I think it was geared for kids but they had no one there and the staff looked bored… so went and made a piece of paper, from egg cartons which had been run through a blender.   The final tour I did was of the museum across the road from my hotel, which included the old jail, which was right across the street from my hotel.  The museum had a variety of displays about life in Quebec, covering everything from climate change to cultural holidays, and an interactive display about crime and law in Canada, which went well with the visit to the old jail.  The old jail was built in 1822 and was in use until 1986.  In summer they have one English tour a day (Trois Rivieres seems to have mostly French tourists) and, on the day I went, I was the only person for the tour.  The tour guide was excellent and provided some really interesting insights into the history of both the place and the law in Quebec, as I was the only person we also had a chance to discuss the current systems in Quebec and BC and all manner of other things. 

The mechanic was still down sick on Saturday so I ended up staying until Monday, when they did my alignment.  They told me that I needed to re-tighten all the nuts o the wheels after 80 km.  I did not really want to do that myself so I took myself on an enjoyable little tour through the countryside, came back and had them do it, then it was off to New Brunswick, which I will tell you about in another post.