08 Group Vacation Day 4 - Aerostitch and Canada

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This set of blogs is another Group Vacation. Our 2008 trip was from KC up and around Lake Superior into Canada and then a slight detour to Milwaukee for a few days for the 25th and 105th celebrations for HOG and Harley Davidson. The blogs are broken into sections, each being a day in the trip. The first blog of this trip is here 08 Group Vacation Day 1 - to Iowa

Monday - 25 AUG 08

We started the day again with the motel carb breakfast with the hope that we would find some café by Lake Superior and have some good seafood for lunch. However the 4.5 miles to Aerostitch took us more than 45 minutes as the layout of Duluth differed from the layout my GPS had planned on. The warehouse for Aerostitch was truly a warehouse, the showroom was very small and doesn’t show a 10th of what they sell. We all ended up buying something. I found 2 bags that were just perfect for use with my tour pak, they are much better than the plastic grocery bags I had been using. A lot of their stock was actually at another location as we were there the day after their big rally, the VERY BORING RALLY. After we found Aerostitch, everyone was hungry so we found an I-HOP to have breakfast, so much for some seafood.

The plan was to go up and around Lake Superior so after Duluth we headed up through Grand Portage MN where we will pass into Canada. The MN HWY 61 turns into Canadian HWY 61. We stopped a couple times for pictures of the lake and scenery.

There was no waiting for the border check. Of course the US didn’t care that we left, didn’t even have anyone there to wave good-bye. But the Canadians were not quite as open about us coming in. The crossing guard (Canadian Customs) wanted to talk to all of us at once so I waved the others up. Nice guy, asked if we all had our passports and wanted us to hold them up. I asked him if that was because he wanted to make sure that we could all get back into the US? He said he just wanted to make sure we were all Yanks. He asked us all some questions like surnames and what we were carrying. I think, maybe it was to make sure we all spoke English.

Our next stop was the only Canadian Harley dealer we would be seeing while in Canada, so I knew we needed to be there by closing time. There is 2 Thunder Bay HD’s in Thunder Bay ON. I didn’t plot both of them, one was a t-shirt shop and the other was full service dealership. I plotted the route to the full service dealership. The bad news was that they were moving everything but service to the other satellite store. So all the t-shirts were at the other location. Off we went, after we waited through a phone call from the Waters house setter who couldn’t get the volume to work on the TV.

Ice cream was the order of the day after buying the t-shirts and an ice cream stand was in the parking lot. Our first meal in Canada and I thought it was a little pricey. Everything in Canada was a little pricy, food, gas…. It became the joke, “But they have free healthcare!” I started taking pictures of gas pumps as we went through Canada. When we were in MN we noticed that gas prices had dropped. We were paying under $4 a gallon for premium, as low as $3.85 I think. When we got home I figured up how much the Canadian gas was a gallon. I found it was between $5.59 and $5.89 a gallon. But they have free healthcare.

In Canada the highway had long stretches of construction. They tear the road right down to the dirt. So if that wasn’t bad enough, then they run water trucks on it continually just to make sure it’s a nice mud hole. We traveled miles on these.

We headed toward Marathon ON that would have been the ideal destination for the day, but when we came to Schrieber it was getting dark (7PM CT) and I pulled over to see if they were ready to call it a night. Willy asked a local where a good hotel was and we were directed to a hotel right behind us. The Norwest Motel would be our home for the night. The owner was pretty interesting. We unpack and all but Marcia head off to supper at a café down the road. After supper on the walk back to the motel the others notice a mounty car and asked him if he would allow them take some pictures being frisked. Mel is thinking that we could use these pictures to go with our story to the other group. He won’t have any of it, too small a town he says. But we are welcome to take pictures with the car. Mel borrows my camera and they try to get some pictures, but its after dark and they don’t come out very good.

Here are links to all the blogs for this trip:

1. 08 Group Vacation Day 1 - to Iowa
2. 08 Group Vacation Day 2 - John Wayne, Albert the Bull and Freedom Rock
3. 08 Group Vacation Day 3 - Buddy Holly, SPAM and the Joint
4. 08 Group Vacation Day 4 - Aerostitch and Canada
5. 08 Group Vacation Day 5 - Canada and Mackinac Bridge
6. 08 Group Vacation Day 6 - Yoppers, Pasties and outa gas John
7. 08 Group Vacation Day 7 - HOG 25th are you kidding me??
8. 08 Group Vacation Day 8 - Vinnie and Cody from American Chopper
9. 08 Group Vacation Day 9 - Last day of the 105th Anniversary Party
10. 08 Group Vacation Day 10 - Heading Home
11. 08 Group Vacation Day 11 - Snake Alley, Worldest Largest Pecan

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Photos

Into Canada
Oh yes, an ABC picture is a must.

Where we ate Supper
The local dive. Was pretty good.