Winnipeg to Thunder Bay Although we didn’t get to bed until well after 1am, we were up early and out of our hotel by 7:15! When we visited with Cathy’s lifelong friend Mary Jane we
Winnipeg to Thunder Bay
Although we didn’t get to bed until well after 1am, we were up early and out of our hotel by 7:15! When we visited with Cathy’s lifelong friend Mary Jane we found out her parents happened to be visiting today from Ontario. Their plan was to stop by Jane’s house and they were all going out for breakfast. We thought it would crazy funny if Max answered the door when they rang the bell and said they had the wrong house. Our hope was to see how long it took them to figure out what was going on. Max played his part perfectly- but of course, he has a pretty memorable face so the McCallum’s knew who he was immediately. This didn’t take away from the surprize though, they seemed pretty floored we were there. We all went out for breakfast and got all caught up on what everyone has been up to.
At breakfast, Max was talking about how he has grown out of his pants on this trip and Mr. McCallum asked if he also grew out of his hats. Max responded with “you remind me of George”, to which Mr. McCallum almost spit out his coffee. We also all got a kick out of watching Jane’s daughter order breakfast, she asked for one pancake and then ordered maple syrup about 6 times. She has the cutest little giggle. It was a great breakfast and a great visit.
Breakfast was the highlight of our day and the best meal of our day. We hit the road- in our over tired states we made quite a few pit stops to trade drivers and it felt like it would take forever to arrive in Thunder Bay. We had just passed the town of Ignace, with visions of an amazing Italian meal in our minds at a great restaurant in Thunder Bay when we learned the highway was closed ahead. We were about an hour behind a tragic accident. Best guess was the highway would be closed for 5-6 hours. We asked at the barricade if there was any sort of detour we could take and we learned the detour were would add about 2-3 hours of driving time. We did the math and decided at least we would be moving ahead, and even 3 hours of extra driving is better then 5-6 hours of sitting. Ignace is a pretty small town without a lot to do. We started chatting with some other drivers in Ignace about what we are all going to do with the closed road and we learned they were also returning home from the Guns N’ Roses concert, we may have spent a few extra minutes chatting about how great the concert was.
We backtracked to a secondary highway and saw a new bit of Ontario. Lots of beautiful tree’s and little lakes. We went to Aikokan which is the canoe capital of Ontario.
We also saw the Atlantic Watershed. This is the spot where all rivers and streams start flowing towards the Atlantic instead of the Pacific or Artic. The ground was really dry where the sign was. (Hee Hee).
Finally- around 10pm we made it to our hotel. Although the detour was a bit of a hassle and we didn’t get our yummy Italian supper we are very thankful and feel very blessed to have had such safe travels. We ordered a pizza and passed out!