Monday, July 10, 2023
Stats: 16.5 hours driving, 875 miles driven, Sault Sainte Marie (Ontario) to Winnipeg (Manitoba)
Happy National Kitten Day! It is one of Aunt Kitten’s favorite holidays (next to National Ice Cream For Breakfast Day.)
If you’ve read Aunt Kitten, you can help me by writing an honest review on Amazon and/or Goodreads. Word of mouth recommendations are also helpful. Thanks so much!
Today has been a looooong day of driving. We are chomping at the bit to get to the Canadian Rockies so we were on the road by 7:30.
I woke up with a horrible sore throat and none of my go-to remedies seemed to help. Hot shower, gargle mouthwash, hot tea, EmergenC, Muscinex, Excedrin… until I did what my “baby sister” suggested – Sudafed. Thanks, Marie!
The first 8ish hours of driving, we had beautiful views of Lake Superior along with tall pine trees and marble rock walls, often blasted away to cut a path for the road.
We are traveling the Trans-Canada Highway which is mostly 2 lanes with a 3rd lane for passing on steep inclines. It reminds me a lot of driving across Newfoundland last summer. Although there aren’t as many semi’s here.
It was a dreary morning in the 60’s with pockets of light rain. After noon, we enjoyed blue skies for several hours until driving to the next weather front of cotton ball clouds which turned into dark skies and on and off short rain showers. No biggy.
The “towns” are few and far between again. Got to love “Limited Services, Check Fuel” signs WAY outside of the last town… with no towns or gas stations in the near distance. Welp.
Few gas stations mean few bathrooms. Double welp.
Today I decided there might be something to be said about traveling in a camper van. We’d have a bathroom, and we might have more options for stopping for the night. I can’t imagine us in a big RV (I can be an anxious passenger as it is without being in vehicle that takes up more lane-space.) But a van… hum…
I’m curious as to how much they charge to rent in Canada. The website I looked at had a daily rate but didn’t mention an additional per mile/km rate. That additional was the killer when we priced renting an RV for our 2015 Lower-48 trip.
I was delighted to find an outhouse at a fancy overlook. I was grateful to find it clean and not stinky. But, I was going in either way. A girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do.
There was another Group of Seven Artists easel and chair like we saw in Sault Sainte Marie. We climbed the staircase up to the top overlook platform (metal with holes in it and slightly swaying in the breeze so my body put up a low-grade argument but I did it!) The view was worth it!
Wildlife sightings have been few: three Sandhill Cranes and one rabbit who successfully played frogger with our car by timing its road crossing perfectly as we were coming up on it. If it were a cat, it would only have eight lives left.
I couldn’t begin to tell you how many moose caution signs we’ve seen. The signs imply to be more cautious after dark. Hopefully that won’t be a problem since “sunset” is after 10:00!
Gregg told me that there is a chance we could see the Northern Lights on Thursday night, from 10pm-2am. It just dawned on me why they are so late… the sun has to set first.
Well, we now have another Canadian Province pin for our world map. We crossed into Manitoba this evening and are staying in Winnipeg. Arriving at 10:50, the sky had just become completely dark.
Bonus: EVs in Canada observations: We’ve not noticed charging stations in each area with gas. The charging stations we’ve seen are mostly Tesla chargers. In spots, we’ve seen a number of Teslas but we haven’t noticed any other type of EVs.
