Sunday, January 29, 2012

Border Hopping


Day two and further into and we are further into Northern Ontario where there are trees, trees, and a couple more hundred thousand trees. Also a few rocks. We stopped in White River and got pictures with a Winnie the Pooh statue, it was the birthplace of Winnie the Pooh. The further we drove, the less hilly the land got. 

Winnie the Pooh!

There were some neat spots where the trees had all burned down and you could see the burned trees and the new trees growing between them. We had initially planned on stopping just before the border, but we were making good time so decided to just keep on driving. We, of course, got a picture underneath the Manitoba sign. 
Braden, thinking he is hilarious. To be fair, the first couple times it is hilarious, but wait and see how often he does it.

Obviously, this is the Manitoba Border Sign.

Night two we stayed at West Hawk Lake, which is just like the camping provincial parks in Ontario. It was only 11.55 a night, which was just the right price! We set up our tent and since it wasn't dark yet we decided to tour around. We went down to a little beach spot, and then followed a little trail that looked like a deer trail around the outside of the campground. Toby loved the freedom of being outside! He would go ahead a little bit, sit and wait for us to catch up, and then keep going. There were some pretty amazing lookout spots! When we were walking up the path we seen a fox, which is pretty exciting because they are by far my favourite wild animal and I had never seen one before! The first time we seen it, it ran scared. We seen it a few minutes later eating some wild berries, and it sat and looked at us and looked like a cute dog. After a couple minutes It got bored and walked off. 
My Handsome boys! One of the outlooks from the path. 

   
Just a cool picture I took.



Got back to the tent just before it got totally dark, jumped into the tent and settled in for the night. Moto got the car to herself and Toby stayed with us and kept us warm. It was a pretty rocky spot, and a freezing cold night, but feeling relaxed from being out of the car and knowing we were safe I fell asleep instantly, Braden not far behind!

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Big Bird Motel, Afforadable but definately not clean!

So I am going to back track a little, and come up to date slowly. I know its a lot to read, but try to hold in there, there are some pretty interesting parts. I wrote these as we drove across the country and am in the process of writing them onto the computer. :)

Day 1 started in Perth, at 5:30am. We got up, a bit begrudgingly, and got dressed and took the animals down to the car. We headed off down the number 7, about 45 minutes in we turned on the 17 and we were off. The trip was relatively peaceful, if a little boring (with the exception on some pretty cool road names [Whiskey Jack Trail]). The day took a turn after we had been on the road for a few hours. The car ahead of us (which was an intrepid, looked just like nanny’s!!) went over the middle line just as a transport truck was going by in the other direction. At first I just saw things flying at our windshield, I curled into a ball covering my face with my hands, thinking if we weren't’t hurt (oh please don’t let us be hurt) then at the very least our trip would be over. When I pulled my hands away from my face I realized I wasn't’t really breathing and I took a deep breath and thanked god. Literally. By some miracle everything had flown around the car, leaving both us and the car unharmed in anyway. I wanted too pee my pants with excitement. Then we realized that no one in the car was getting out or moving, so again panic. We got out to check on them, as did the truck behind us and the van ahead of the car that caused the mishap. Their airbags had gone off so everyone is the car was a little stunned ( and from the look of the teenagers in the car,  probably stoned too). The driver got out of the front seat, looked at his car and then all around and was like “ What just happened?!”. He nearly killed himself, his friends in the car AND A WHOLE HECK OF A LOT OF OTHER PEOPLES! What just happened. Ha! Braden informed me back in the car that their wheel skimmed the transport truck, and what was flying at us was the tire and the front part of the kids car. In short. Scary.

First stop, Sudbury!!
Sault St Marie; This was the biggest statue there, pretty awesome

Feeling it up the wooden lady. Apparently females don't even need to be real to feel them up


On our first day we learned that Sudbury is not very nice to look at, its not very nice to smell, and do not ever follow a car's GPS when it tries to take you on "shortcuts" through cities. We stopped at a few scenic lookouts but nothing too grand. We were told that driving through northern Ontario would be really boring, but we actual enjoyed it. Trees, hills, big rocks, and Braden's favourite - BRIDGES! Sault St Marie was a lot nicer than we expected, we got a cute magnet and a picture of a moose holding a shotgun in one hand and a man upside down in the other ( obviously it was fake, although if they could train a moose to do that it would be pretty frigging cool, and definitely picture worthy!).

Lake Superior. The lake was huge and the rocks we so smooth


     After Sault St Marie, we hit nothing, it was just forest and big hills. We drove along Lake Superior and stopped at a pretty little park and ended up going swimming. The water was beautiful and Toby actually swam out pretty far without being forced! Got back to the the car and onto the road and before long drove past a really cool shoreline and ended up driving down a private road, parked, and went for a walk along the water. Finding an easy route down to the actual water though turned out to be quite a  challenge. The shore of the whole lake (or at least what we saw of it) was covered in smooth rounded rocks, to make it more difficult there was an insanely steep hill of these rocks to get down to the water. After a while of walking along the top of the hill looking for an easy route ( and also through what looked to be peoples cottage yards) we decided to just make our way down the immensely dangerous hill. every time we stepped on a rock it rolled away, and over 15 minutes later (and only just about half way down the hill) we looked to the right (also the direction we had come from) and seen a staircase built into the rocks. We picked up a couple rocks for souvenirs and headed back to the car ( this time using the stairs!!). The ride after that was very up and down and up and down and up and down and we realized that the mountain part of our drive was going to be quite scary.

This is about halfway down the rock hill, it took about almost 20 minutes to get down.
At which point we look over and see this staircase we walked right past. Intelligent eh?

  
     We learned that if we meow at Moto she will meow back. Overall the animals were good. Moto sat in the front for a few hors and spent the rest of the time in her crate. Toby spent most of the day, but has had quite a bit of trouble listening.  We got to Wawa finally after driving through what seemed to be forever worth of nothingness. I really had to use the washroom and Braden and I were both feeling really goofy. There were 3 huge loons there (which is what people told us too look for). There was a motel advertised as " Beaver Motel, Clean and Affordable", and Braden laughed about it. So when, a couple minutes later, we passed "Big Bird Motel" Braden thought it was HILARIOUS. Unfortunately (maybe not so unfortunately to me) the Beaver Motel had no vacancy and Big Bird Motel was closed down ( Not clean but definitely affordable!). To our surprise and total frustration, all the motels were completely booked. One place told us that the whole town was fully booked and the next town (White River, an hour down the highway) was also fully booked. We decided to double check to just make sure and lucky for us one had a vacant room ( the last motel we got to, and we went to every one). We settled in and got some supper at Tim Horton's ( who had no bread and made us horrible wraps) and went to bed.

Water, Land, Trees & Mountains

Current location : Courtenay, B.C, Canada, North America,  Earth, Universe


I have decided to keep everyone up-to-date by writing a "blog". It's not really a blog. And I'm not really an author or a blogger, but we take some pretty epic pictures, and we see and do some pretty awesome things. I know that facebook has all pictures, but I feel like you need the real story behind things to really enjoy it like we do. Mind you, often I will just probably tell funny stories about Toby and Moto, I do not have good grammar or spelling skills. But I hope you all enjoy it just the same. Hope you enjoy!!

First stop seeing the mountains
He did this at every sign
Add caption
look off the ferry from van to naniamo