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Published: August 14th 2006
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Parry Sound
A view from the harbour showing the CPR trestle. Back in the days of the 'Canadian' train, this would have been a great view from the dome car. Odometer: 40091km
I left Kincardine very early to try and avoid the heat of the day. It helped somewhat, but it never did cool off very much at night and by 8am I was sweating in my motorcycle clothes, again. I decided to ride along the north shore through Port Elgin, Owen Sound, and Collingwood to get over to the freeway 400 and on to visit my friend Jim and his family near Point au Baril on Georgian Bay.
There is not much to say about this trip. The road was straight, it was located away from the shore in most places, and the towns were all pretty ordinary places. In other words, it was a rather boring ride.
I certainly understand why the trees all seem to be bent over towards the northeast in this area. The wind from the southwest is rather constant, and, like today, can be very strong. Thankfully, it was behind me most of the way. The locals say that the winters are brutal in this area. That was hard to reconcile with the temperature at +30C and green fields all around. We really live in a country of weather extremes.
I
only talked to a few people on this travel day and I hope those that I met are not indicative of the general nature of people here. The few that I talked to were unsmiling and abrupt. At one point, I had stopped my bike to get off and a car pulled up beside me. The two people sat there and looked at me for a second then an older guy opened his window and, unsmiling, he mumbled “Alberta eh?” I didn’t know what the hell I was suppose to take from that so I just smiled, locked up my bike, and went on my way to get something to eat. Some others that I casually said ‘hi’ to just gave me a look of bewilderment and said nothing. I don’t get it.
I stopped in Parry Sound, the home of Bobby Orr, and found Orr’s place to have some lunch. People there were very friendly. Nevertheless, in Parry Sound I had three near incidents on the road, more than I had on the rest of the trip to this point. Each was the result of others gawking about and not paying attention to their driving. Thankfully, I was paying a lot of attention to mine.
Just outside Parry Sound there is a huge highway construction project to twin freeway 400 further north. I was overwhelmed by the enormity of the job. This country is on the Canadian Shield and each foot of highway requires blasting or some sort of bridge structure. I saw an article that compared the cost of highway building here to building on the prairies. I recall that one kilometre costs $1M to $1.5M on the prairies, whereas on the Shield, the costs can be $6M to $8M a kilometre. Looking at all the huge rocks and the monster vehicles to move them, I can understand why. It was all pretty impressive. I wanted to take a picture to show this to you, but there was no safe place to stop the bike.
I arrived in Pointe au Baril (Point of the Barrel) at 2pm and there was Jim and his wife Barb to meet me. I stored the bike at the home of the fellow who owns the marina and then Jim ferried me out to their cottage. This was to be a good couple of days off the bike and I looked forward to relaxing and enjoying the sites and the water.
Odometer at the end of the day: 40455km
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Tot: 0.231s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 15; qc: 71; dbt: 0.0796s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb