Sault St. Marie, ON - Ottawa, ON (via North Bay, ON)
After heading almost straight South for several hundred kilometres to get to Sault St. Marie and finally having made it around Lake Superior (which is massive), we were ready to bend East again.
You may have heard about the bugs in Northern Ontario. From what I could tell, everything you hear is true. Getting out of the car on the side of the road is a dangerous proposition. There are all manner of bugs that swarm you, including these huge horseflies.
It is also moose country. There are warning signs (I'll post those soon), featuring a vicious looking silhouette of a moose in full charge, with the caption "NIGHT DANGER". The sign reminded me of the signs in the Rockies that are a white silhouette of a deer with the caption "ATTENTION". My grandparents used to have a joke about how there was this white deer running around whose name was Attention, who was clearly quite famous since his picture was up everywhere. A similar kind of story entered my mind with this scary-looking moose; he's all black, and when night falls, watch out for Night Danger.
We were delayed a couple hours or so as a result of various construction sites along the main highway. A note for those of you taking walkie-talkies out on this kind of trip: do pay attention to the signs that ask you to turn them off in certain areas, as they may inadvertently set off blasting caps or something (Michal, please).
A further delay occured when we had our first (and as it turned out, only) bit of trouble with the old truck. It turns out you can get it stuck in first gear if you are not careful (not that this thing is exactly a delicate machine). We were driving up a hill as part of a small convoy of one-way traffic through one of the construction zones, and had to pull over on the gravel shoulder to check it out. After twenty minutes or so, involving some cursing and Brian burning himself on the exhaust pipes underneath the truck, my boss took a turn and managed to wrench the gear loose, and we were on our way.
Just past Ottawa (speaking of which, you can tell they've put a lot of money into the roads and other infrastructure around there . . . must be nice having all that federal money), we stopped at a diner where the waitress addressed us in French and then, when we started ordering in English, switched over to perfect English (slight accent). Not something that happens in all parts of Canada.
Soon after eating (it was already quite late), we ended up at the French motel near the Quebec border. The alram was set for 5am so that we could beat rush hour in Montreal early the next morning.
Posted by warcode at July 08, 2003 11:26 PM