Langille Adventure July 17th

Posted by admin on Jul 18th, 2016 in Discussion, Info, Life, New, Thoughts, Travel | 0 comments

After successfully surviving the night without being murdered in our sleep, it was time to go back on the road.

It should be noted that I slept through the alarm, although apparently woke up Kathy, turned it off then went back to sleep. It seems 16 or so hours of driving is tiring. Kudos to Jeff Gordon.

Anyway, this next stop was an important one for me personally. We headed back in the direction we came for a brief visit to a monument posted overlooking the Thunder Bay valley.

Ever since I was little, I had always admired whom I believed to be the Greatest Canadian in the modern history of this country. What he did inspired not just a nation, but a world.

Kathy and my children appreciate him and his legacy for all that he did.

Obviously I’m speaking of the immortal Terry Fox.

It was a perfect monument and tribute to his life and mission. The view was stunning and the statue was amazing. A larger than life honour to the humble Canadian hero.

We were impressed with the amount of activity and people who came to appreciate the statue on a cool Sunday morning.

After the quiet visit, we headed out on the road again.

After our GPS took us for a tour of Thunder Bay while trying to find a Walmart or Dollarama for supplies, we ended up on a back road tour of the Superior Highlands.

While not particularly notable other than a really nice drive for enthusiasts like myself, our first crossroad encounter happened with a young deer.

While I wasn’t able to get a picture, it was pretty captivating to see a deer leap across the road. I can only surmise that the deer wasn’t ready to be roadkill or a hood ornament because of the dollar store wildlife whistle my parents bought for me years ago.

During the otherwise uneventful drive in the morning, we crossed over the timeline and were now coming at you from CST, yo.

Some hours later, no signal, and no humanity except for hunting expeditions and an endless supply of Inukshuk (My god people, enough with the Inukshuk! I thought it would be cute at some point to pull over and get the kids to make their own, but soon after travelling north of Barrie all the way to the border of Ontario, I realized that everyone had the same idea. At every… single… solitary rock formation.), we finally found Manitoba.

It was nice to see all the stickers and graffiti on the welcome sign. Stay classy Peeps! (I’m just jealous I didn’t bring a sharpie)

After finally tracking down a gas station (believe me, don’t pass Kenora without refuelling if things are tight), where we found the most useless old man in the world pumping gas (don’t even get me started on this old coot), we were finally out of Ontario.

In review, the northern half was definitely nicer than the bottom half. Gas was also much more expensive.

Since our GPS had failed us in Thunder Bay, we decided to trust it again in Winnipeg to find us a Dollarama. Shame on us, as the old saying goes.

We quickly learned that Winnipeg is very bilingual (not a big deal, just kinda shocking) and is also a cluster&$k.

Oh yeah, it’s also extremely overpriced. After driving through, around and under the city, we landed at a Dollarama where things were comparatively more expensive than in Ontario.

We finally found what we were looking for (air mattresses after our hard ground experience on Friday night), and decided to trek across the parking lot to this store:

$8 hot dogs seem right to you?

Anyway, after we paid bloated prices, we escaped Winnipeg and made our way to our campsite for the night.

A wonderful spot, Miller’s Camping Resort which for $26 gave us access to a coin arcade, heated pool, clean bathroom and laundry facilities and family friendly camping and RVing. Everyone was so friendly! Felt like we were in PEI. And for that price, we will be stopping here on the way back.