Kenora, ON - Sault St. Marie, ON (via Thunder Bay, ON)
As I mentioned, the terrain is pretty much the same through all of the Canadian Shield. It's quite pretty, though . . . you get a feel for why some people think of Canada as a vast wilderness.
We had a pair of walkie-talkies to communicate between the two vehicles. I can heartily recommend this idea to anyone attempting a similar trip. You can even buy more of the same units and set them to the same frequency if you have more than two cars (we encountered someone with the same walkie-talkies at one point, which led to some confusion, since we weren't expecting to hear a woman's voice on the line).
We didn't quite make it to Sault St. Marie (or "The Sault", pronounced "The Soo", in the local slang, or at least that's what my boss called it). At about 10pm, still a couple hours out, I notcied that our car needed gas. You wouldn't think this would be a problem, but you reach a point where there just aren't any places to stop for a long time. Not being experienced with this particular car (the only time I've ever run out of gas, the gas gauge on the the car lied and was still above empty when the car died), I took the precaution of coasting down the big hills around Lake Superior. This probably didn't help much, but it made me feel a bit better, and there wasn't really much else to do.
Fortunately, when it looked like we were in trouble, we came upon a little motel where we learned that we could get gas in the morning just a couple miles away. Relieved (at least I was - no stopping for gas meant no stopping for bathroom breaks), we stayed in a hunting lodge there that had only been open for a couple weeks. It was pretty well-equipped for such a place, with most appliances you might want in a kitchen as well as a living room to lounge in.
Posted by warcode at July 07, 2003 11:24 PM