Days 7, 8 & 9

It rained last night. And the thunder ROOOOLLLLED, Garth Brooks. It was so long, I had time to think complete sentences. It was so loud, I felt it roll through me. It wasn't scary, just like the sky was going "Look what I can do!" very emphatically.


At some point, Gord gets up and takes everything except the sleeping bag to the car so it won't get wet in our leaky tent. Also, we were idiots and left our shoes outside the tent, cause god knows you don't want dirt in the tent. So we wake up to soggy shoes, but the sun is shining and we don't have to drive ANYWHERE today. What a freaking relief that is.

We didn't take any pictures, or even really do anything. Wait, we did laundry. Glorious clean clothes, no more bean and chili pants. We feel like kings. We also leash the cats and bring them outside for a while. They don't like outside, or being leashed. A train hoots in the distance, and both cats loose their shit. Ruku bolts into the litter box and burrows in the back, Penta dives into the duffel bag and almost knocks it off the picnic table in panic. The cats are put back in the car.

And for dinner, replay the fire woes from the previous post, minus the eventual fire. Tonight we try toilet paper and a hockey magazine. No go. It's especially embarrassing because there are witnesses in the camp to our right. These people have a camper, a tarp village, a bbq, CHRISTMAS LIGHTS...these people are equipped. These are the people that watch the Canadian Tire commercials for the outdoor air conditioning units, portable showers, and solar powered big screen tv and entertainment units and think, well, now it's possible to survive in the wilderness. I shouldn't mock them though, because the nice man had some lamp oil that he offered to pour on our logs. We had another brief fire, cooked some smokies and went to bed.

Only a light rain that night.

We wake up, and go directly back to sleep. Seriously. It starts to rain, and there wasn't anything else to do.

Second wake up, and we go to the store to get food, because I think we've pissed off the fire gods.
I'm hoping they have bread, and sandwich meat and cheese. They don't. We get:

2 cans of Pringles chips
2 chocolate bars
1 box of Gobstoppers
1 deck of cards
1 Coke
1 Fresca

We eat the Pringles and play cards in the tent for a while and it starts to rain. Again. Only HARD this time, and it's dripping into the tent.

Gord's shoes, that were almost dry, are filling up with rain outside the tent. We send whiny text messages to our friends and wait for the rain to end.

When it does, we reconfigure the tarps so that our tent is completely covered. Screw the picnic table and firepit, they're no use anyway. We sit in the tent in a gentle rain. We have one can of vegetarian chili and Gord snuggles with it for 2 hours to get it to body temperature. We eat in the tent and go to sleep. The new tarp deployment is a success. We hear the patter of rain all night, but nary a drop enters the tent.

I'd like to take a moment and thank Gord for being stuck in a tent with me for almost an entire day, and not only NOT fighting, but making it fun. There are very few people who could sit in a tiny 2 man tent with me for that long and not think standing in the rain is preferable.

Tomorrow...after a year of planning and 6 days of driving, 2 days camping in a leaky tent with fire woes, we will finally get to Montreal.

OR WILL WE?
(CUE OMINOUS MUSIC)

PS. The chili was still in the can. Gord did not smear chili all over his body to warm it up, and we didn't eat lukewarm chili off his naked torso with plastic forks. Just in case you didn't have that picture in your head already ;)

Day 4

We left the Travelodge in Thunder Bay @ 11, went to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast and had the slowest sandwich maker in the world get us the first vegetables we'd eaten in days. Granted, they came with a lot of bread and meat, but some is better than none. On our way out of town, there's a huge line up by the side of the road - some radio station is giving away free gas, and they've got the barely dressed girls out in force to promote it. But the line looks like it'd take about an hour to get through, so we pass.
Then the Mist hits, and we can't see a thing. Is this normal around the great lakes, or have we stumbled into Stephen King territory?By day 4, I am sick of driving, and we're making good time, so we stop often today. There's also more to stop for - lakes everywhere. There are so many lakes, they're running out of names for them. We pass by, in quick succession, Dad Lake, Baby Lake and Mom Lake. A few miles later - Orphan Lake. Perhaps he can be adopted by the parent lakes up the road.

Here's Lake Superior, or rather, a tiny tiny portion of it.

This is 4 photos poorly stitched together.

We passed Winnie The Pooh, not sure why, I thought he came from Winnipeg, but anyway...


We see one deer today, just as we're coming out of a construction zone. He waits for us to stop and bounds across the highway. That's all - there's NO roadkill today!
high 5's: 1
Caffeinated beverages: 5

We stop in Marathon to gas up, and because we want to find a campground tonight, we hit a grocery store.
"I refuse to eat any more bread. NO BREAD, do you hear me?!?!"
"Smokies?"
"I'm not paying thirteen bucks for a can opener! Find pop-tops."
"Where the hell are the forks? WHY don't they sell forks here?...OK, we're buying 200 plastic forks."
"Chili and beans?" "We'll keep each other warm tonight."
That's pretty much how it went.

We wanted to make it to Wawa by nightfall, and we luck out and see a sign for a campground, and end up in the lovliest spot ever.
(Can't for the life of me remember the name of the place....Wawa RV Campground? It's a yellow and red sign, anyway. That's helpful.)

This one is Gord, getting fancy with the photography.

All I know about Wawa is that it's home to one ex-Flame, Chris Simon. You can see why he's so angry when he has to leave it. It is so quiet here, you can hear the river and it is barely moving. Even the birds call a little quieter.

And we're camping. We have a tent. I thought I packed some matches in our 'camping box' that's in the back of the CRV, but I didn't. The good matches are somewhere in the middle of the UHaul, and I'm not opening that can of worms. Luckily, I found an old survival candle from Cosmos, and it has a pack of very old crumbly matches. We have an air mattress and sleeping bags. We have a pack of damp firewood. We have wiener sticks.
So, clearly, we are not prepared to camp. We should have lighter fluid, a bbq, a lantern, a hatchet. We have none of these things. To top it off, we made some silly assumptions, like that there would be a grate over the fire pit on which to put our cans of chili and beans to warm them up. There isn't, but that's not going to be an issue if we can't get the fire started.

And here begins the politest fight Gord and I have ever had. I told him not to start the fire without me, and he agreed. I then started the fire without him. (which was wrong, and I'm sorry). The fire was going. Gord poked and poked until it went out. Gord started another fire. I poked and poked until it went out. We are very polite about poking each others fires out, "Oh, I just want to put this piece...ooh, what a shame. Perhaps if I...uh oh, now it's out. I'm so very sorry, dear." "that's quite alright, I'll just let you start it again?"
We've never shied.....ok, I'VE never shied away from a fight before, so why the reticience? Maybe because we are more than 2000 kilometers from anyone we know. Maybe because literally fighting with fire could cause scarring. Either way, we're both more pissed off and more polite than we've ever been with each other. It's a strange mix.

What finally happens is that, in after school special fashion, the fire that lasts is the one we build together. Aaww. (vomit)

We get a fire going, and I immediately rip into the pack of smokies and start cooking. You can tell they're good by the hiss of grease hitting the logs. There's a lot of hissing going on. We pop the tops off our can of chili and beans, and Gord shoves them in the fire. We think for a second, pull them out of the fire, remove the paper from the cans and put them back in the fire. We take a drink from our coke cans and top it off with rum (which of course I remembered to pack with the camping stuff. I told my uncles I'd remember I was an Albertan, and no real Albertan camps sober.Who needs matches? WHERE'S THE RUM?!)

We eat our first smokies, grease dripping off our chins and fingers. We eat our second smokies, dripping on our pants and shirts. Gord pulls the beans from the fire, and we proceed to drip beans on the picnic table and our pants. The same with the chili. We're going to look like dirty, dirty hobos in the morning, but that was good eats.

We put the fire out and go to bed, and some time during the night realize - the air mattress has a slow leak. Ah well. Those were good smokies.

Gas to get this far:
Calgary $33.00 @ 131.9
Medicine Hat $39.00 @ 130.9
Swift Current $40.00 (I'm guessing, we lost the receipt)
Regina $37.00 @ 139.9
Moosomin $34.00 @ 139.9
Winnipeg $40.00 (again, no receipt)
Kenora $42.50 @ 137.0
Ignace $39.80 @ 143.9
Thunder Bay $52.00 @ 143.9
Marathon $44.00 @ 145.0

Day 3

Again, I forgot to give you the best shot of the day, good old prairie sunset.


Do you see the Nefarious Frog God? He was a portent of the night to come, but did we heed the warning? We did not. Let this be a lesson to all you kids out there - don't cross the NFG. You'll spend a sweltering night tormented by the Judds and mosquitos, and wake to find this:


That's the Cat Sass Tavern. And beside it is the L'agimodiere Restaurant, where you can get steak & eggs for $6.49, and the coffee is heavenly. Its the kind of place where the locals will grab a pot and fill up everyones mug while they're at it. Delicious food. Worth going to Winnipeg for.

Roadkill: 11 (one of which was a moose, which was heartbreaking. Little gophers are easier to take, especially because they all seem to be suicidal)
Caffeinated beverages: 4




High 5's: 3

LIVE ANIMALS!! Gord saw 1 scampering little black bear soon after we entered

Hey, it ain't easy getting the shot from a moving car. No time to stop. NO TIME!
Also saw one live deer. Go Ontario, with your wildlife being all alive and such.

Sign of the day: Woman Abuse is a Crime.

Holy shit, Canada. We need billboards for this? Come on.

So, now that we've left the prairies behind and entered Ontario, we can see why everyone thinks the prairies are flat. They are, but for 2 kids from the prairies, they don't look so flat. Ontario is very pretty, lakes everywhere, and these inukshuk guys:


After driving this far, I haven't really seen any place in Canada that isn't pretty. We have a very pretty country, at least for the mile or so on either side of the Transcanada. There isn't anywhere that I wouldn't consider living, except maybe here:


And we're headed for Thunder Bay, which we make in good time and are able to find a Travelodge that allows pets AND has a room. Perhaps we've shaken the curse of the NFG.
It rained a lot in the last 2 days though, and that's when we notice that the tarp covering the mattress has come loose and the mattress got a bit wet. Damn duct tape. I guess we didn't use enough.

So we get an actual bed for the night, and showers, and internet access...oh, it was good times.



Gas to get this far:
Calgary $33.00 @ 131.9
Medicine Hat $39.00 @ 130.9
Swift Current $40.00 (I'm guessing, we lost the receipt)
Regina $37.00 @ 139.9
Moosomin $34.00 @ 139.9
Winnipeg $40.00 (again, no receipt)
Kenora $42.50 @ 137.9
Ignace $39.80 @ 143.9