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Published: August 7th 2007
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AT LAST - WE’RE FINALLY ON THE ROAD!
Wednesday, 13 June ‘07
This is the end of the 2nd day of our trip. We’re presently in Sault Saint Marie, Ontario, having spent the first night in Sudbury. We’ve covered close to 900 km driving so far. The driving has been pretty good; after a bit of getting accustomed to the size of Casper, Bob has gotten fairly comfortable at the wheel. I’ve been able to observe the various sights (or should I say the scenery) along the way, as I’ve been playing passenger the whole time, so far.
Somehow, we seem to have accumulated a TON of stuff to bring along, and it was a real job putting it all in the van. Like, there's stuff for the bikes, stuff for Panna, including food, treats & toys, and snack stuff for Bob & myself, to say nothing of our clothes. And then there's the electronic gadgets, laptop, GPS devices, finally got a printer for the laptop, in case I have to print up some maps en route, cameras, MP3 player, and so on & so on. The hard part is remembering in which box or back pack is
whatever we’re looking for - I’m sure that even by the time we get to Moose Jaw we’ll have it “down pat” in our minds, but for now it’s pretty silly & time-consuming.
Oh, and did I tell you about the heat? We’d been having rather cool mornings the last week or so before leaving home. Well, now there’s a hot spell going on, which means we don’t dare leave Panna unattended in the van during the daytime, and poor Bob is sweating like a pig every time he has to go outside to retrieve something I’d forgotten to bring into the motel rooms. Panna’s travelling like a trooper. Don’t think she really appreciates being confined to her crate so much during the day, but in the van she’s facing front, so she can see us & vice versa, and, again, probably even by the end of the week she’ll accept the situation - she’s happy as long as she’s with one of us.
Today, in Sudbury before we left, I took a very brief ride on some dirt road trails, which were much too short, so I continued on some residential streets while Bob took Panna for
her morning walk, during which he found a small beach in a fairly isolated part of Ramsey Lake, so he could let her walk & play a bit in the water. In North Bay, yesterday afternoon, we had found another beach, on Lake Nippissing, and I let Panna off her leash & she swam out & tried to catch some ducks - no luck for her on that front. Only problem then was that we both wound up with a lot of sand on our feet - had to purchase a whisk broom & dustpan for the floor of the van!
Tomorrow it’s off to Terrace Bay, to what sounds like a very interesting place, the Coach House Motel - we may be able to let Panna have a good run or two in the woods there. We’re using the total range of accommodations - Travelodge in Sudbury, a small motel here in SSM, another small place, but which is more rural in its set-up tomorrow - am mainly looking for places that take pets & have internet hook-ups or wi-fi, not that unusual here nowadays - guess they need that to compete.
In terms of “interesting” things
we’ve seen a few standouts today anyway have been a variety of large statues of animals placed in various places around a town called Massey - they seem to be made of metal & the rust patterns on them is quite interesting. We also passed “Seldom Seen Road” - that name just gets me! And the many types of water, lakes, rivers, falls, etc are a sight to see as well - hope to get photos on my way back.
We’ve also gotten a kick (don’t ask where!) out of the gasoline prices - they’ve varied from 99¢/litre of gas (don’t know equivalent for gallons) to $1.11/litre - and Casper’s gas tank seems to be able to accommodate 100 litres - ouch! Will see what the gas consumption is like as we progress.
Enough for today - hope all’s well with everyone reading this & I’ll be in touch again (and, yes, post some pictures!) soon.
Cheers!
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