The Georgian Journey (I)

 NOTE: Kathy has already done EXCELLENT recaps of this trip on Facebook. These blogs from my perspective are not meant to supplant, but to complement

DAY ONE: Woodstock/Waterloo - Parry Sound - Britt - French River - Greater Sudbury

This trip has been on the docket for almost two years. It was supposed to be last year's undertaking, but inflation deflated that trip somewhat. We still had a great time, of course. But Manitoulin Island has been calling us. Kathy's been on the Island once, but never visited Sudbury; I've been in Sudbury fairly often over the years but have never seen the Island at all. 

Kathy came to collect me and we were on the road by 8:30. We made good time taking the backroads north, planning to meet up with the 400 north of Barrie to avoid a section of freeway she's  never driven on and never had a good experience with as a passenger. It's not Toronto, but the 400 through Barrie can be hairy, especially on Fridays. Half the population of Ontario seems to sift through on their way to the Muskokas and points north, and the road isn't built for the load it takes. Kathy herself is a country girl who much prefers country roads. So I was a bit surprised to hear her musing to herself, working up the courage to tackle Barrie.

And she did it!  Maybe gripped the wheel a bit tighter than usual, but didn't even break a sweat. I know she's proud of herself. I'm proud of her, too. 

Because she conquered this route, we passed a lifetime landmark for me.

It may sound silly, but this particular road sign is iconic, talismanic, in my life. I own a T-shirt replica of it. It's been here, just north of Barrie, as long as I can remember. The right sign beckons, denoting Ken's Childhood Route To Relaxation, Refreshment and Reverence. My dad is up here. So is a landscape, starting just north of this bridge, that has always spoken to my soul: rocks, trees, lakes, loons, wolves, and air that feels alive. (I've come to believe it is alive, but I don't usually admit that in polite company.)

That sign to the right  has subtly changed over the years. It used to say "69 NORTH Parry Sound Sudbury". The 400 has been expanding both north and south for much of my adult life, and highway 69 will someday be relegated to the dustbin. But regardless of what it says, this sign has always, for me,  marked the beginning of The Good Times.

Braving Barrie got us into Parry Sound on time to meet up with my father and stepmom at Tailwinds, which is one of my dad's favourite places to eat in town. (Menu link: be aware all prices have increased about $3 from what's shown).  It's right on the dock and getting there was its own adventure, given how Parry Sound bustles at this time of year. 

We had sought to eat here last year and found it closed for lack of staff. The situation hasn't improved overmuch: it's open, but they're hiring for all positions and the need is urgent. We waited over an hour to be served. In this instance it wasn't as frustrating as it might otherwise have been, because we had the chance to catch up with each other and watch the floatplanes take off, the Island Queen pull out, and the sun dappling the water. 

They were also out of five or six menu options. But the food (we had clubhouse sandwiches) was delicious. Thank you so much, Dad and Heather,  for yet another Memorable Meal and the chance to see you.

From here, Dad and Heather went south and we continued north, stopping momentarily in Britt so I could show Kathy my dad's old homestead. It's an AirBnB now, charging as much per night as it might have rented for per month when it was built, and it was crawling with people, so we didn't even stop. But we've finally completed, I think, showing each other our Meaningful Locales, and Kathy was charmed by this village on the mighty Magnetawan. (Well, it looks like a mighty river at Britt, anyway, about a mile wide.)

Continuing north, I was surprised to find the 400 has extended down from Sudbury all the way to just north of Grundy Lake Provincial Park, leaving about 68 km of highway left to twin. It made this part of the trip all new to both of us. The road was smoother than a baby's butt (something that could not be said of any road in Sudbury itself) and we marvelled at the amount of work that goes into carving a highway out of the Canadian Shield. There are places the cliffs flanking the road are 100 ft or higher.

The numerous bridges over the rivers that dot the landscape here have been modernized, making them safer but robbing them of character. Such is the case at the French River. But the old Highway 69 bridge is still here, and so is this incongruous cable suspension bridge,  the longest snowmobile bridge in Canada.

We wanted to visit Recollet Falls, which is (we think) just out of view behind the little promontory on the right in the image below. We could see a tiny bit of whitewater. Alas, the hike required us to be in a shape that is not round; Kathy also pinched her sciatic recently, limiting her mobility somewhat.  

The French River connects Lake Nipissing to Georgian Bay. It is Canada's first Heritage River, with an indigenous history going back to ten thousand years B.C.E. The Ojibwa originally named it Amik Ziibii, literally "Beaver River". Europeans renamed it "rivière des Français" because, like everyone and everything else Indigenous, who cares? 

I do, incidentally. I fully support the reclaiming of ancient names, and I really couldn't give a shit how hard my settler tongue has to work to pronounce them properly. This province is liberally (but far from liberally enough) spackled with indigenous communities, from Shawanaga just south of here (reached by Bah-Sah-Gim Road) to Wikwemikong, Kagawong and M'Chigeeng among many others on Manitoulin Island. 

We made a quick pit stop at the French River Trading Post nearby, and then continued the trek north to Sudbury. There is no reason I can think of why Parry Sound to Sudbury, and especially Britt to Sudbury, should feel like it takes twice as long as it does. The highway, as I mentioned, is a four lane divided freeway for most of the distance. It does feel odd in northern Ontario (and yes, I know this isn't really "north", not in this humongous provice, but the Ministry of Tourism even calls this area "the Near North") to be travelling on a freeway: almost all the comparatively few roads up here range from two lane, narrow, winding byways down to old corduroy logging roads impassable in two wheel drive vehicles.

Yet even though it's a freeway (or maybe because it's a freeway), this is the only part of the whole trip that seemed to drag. Part of that feeling might be due to Greater Sudbury.

You get to the sign announcing you're entering Greater Sudbury, population 166,000, and you think "166,000 what? Moose? Deer? Can't be people." The city is considerably larger in area than Toronto, dotted with 330 lakes, including Lake Ramsey -- except for the original city of Sudbury itself, still more than 20km from us as we passed the southern city limits sign, you'd never imagine any kind of urbanity around here. 

It gets fantastically cold up here in the winter. I've personally experienced a -50 windchill more than once in this place. That does a real number on the roads, which rival Detroit for the worst I've ever seen. There is construction everywhere right now and you get the feeling they just play whackahole with all the potholes. Fill three in and seven more form.

We pulled into the Travelodge. I'd booked this room two months ago, directly with the hotel rather than going through a site like Expedia or Booking.com. This is my preference: yes, those off-brand sites might save a bit of dough, but I've heard far too many stories of people being bumped out of reservations they made through them. Also, although it hasn't happened to me yet, booking with the hotel itself ups your chances of an upgrade to your room.

It hasn't happened until now.

We opened the door to room 441 and beheld something very like this.

It dawned on me before I even really set foot in the room that upon checking in three minutes ago, a charge had been levied to my credit card that was nearly a dollar less than the rate I'd booked. My immediate assumption was that a mistake had been made: we'd been given a suite for one night instead of the standard room I'd booked for two.

I left Kathy to relax -- she'd earned it -- and journeyed back down to the front desk. That took a lot longer than it should have. For one, I've never had to walk so far from an elevator to reach my hotel room. I punched "1" in the elevator but did not find myself in the lobby, which flummoxed me -- we had JUST used this elevator to get from the lobby to the fourth floor, where the hell did the lobby go? Did I inadvertently take some other elevator? I was sure I hadn't, but my surroundings insisted I'd screwed up. This is my normal state of existence and I very much didn't want normal for this four day trek. 

I scurried hither and yon, smelling but not finding the indoor pool, feeling like I was stuck in the Overlook, just waiting for a dog-man to open a door and say "nice party, isn't it?" Lobby, lobby, pin the tail on the lobby, here, lobby-lobby-lobby...

EXIT door giving on outside. Maybe I can navigate better externally. If I just walk around this building long enough, I'm sure to find the place we came in. Sure enough, there it is. Why do you have to do everything the hard way, Ken?

The unreality washed over me some more as the clerk informed me there was no such room number as 441. "Okay, seriously, I don't think I'm in the Twilight Zone here. Here's the key card I was just given, it says 441 on it and opens the door to a suite marked 441." The clerk shook her head and the universe fell into place. "Oh, I'm sorry, I misspoke, " she said, and I took the opportunity to ask here how I'd gotten lost so easily and what elevator I'd taken. "Well, we only have the one," she said, and Rod Serling started orating in my head again. Then I figured out what I'd done: assumed "1" was the ground floor like it was in virtually every other building in North America (in Europe, the "first" floor is what we call the second floor). 

Here, the "first" floor is actually the basement. Lots of standard hotel rooms down here, so I wasn't tipped off. 

I triple checked with the clerk that no mistake had been made and went back up, the easy way this time. 

It's by far the biggest room I've stayed in exluding Disney, but it's not a full suite, in the sense there's no kitchen, only your standard nuker/coffeemaker/bar fridge. A sign on the door informed us the maximum rate for this room per night was more than twice what we'd been granted for two nights. 

We settled down to some of Kathy's delectable chicken Caesar wraps, which are getting to be a traditional first-day road trek meal. Yummy. 

Tuckered out from the trip here, we crashed early and found Ken's only nitpick with the room. To be fair, it's an issue present everywhere that isn't my own bedroom. The A/C unit was on the far side of the suite. No matter how wide we swung the bedroom doors open, the cool didn't make it in and, more critically for me, neither did any air movement. I have to remember to pack a table fan and aim it right squarely on me.

The bed was reasonably comfortable. The shower was, as I'd hoped, a typical Travelodge shower, which means it threatened to blow me through the back wall. I LOVE that: it's great on sore muscles. 

DAY TWO: Greater Sudbury

Up early today to meet Kathy's nephew Bennett and his partner Max. They'd suggested a breakfast place new to me: Jak's Diner. It bills itself the "best breakfast in Sudbury" and it understates its case significantly. I'm confident this is the best breakfast place in northern Ontario, and no, I don't have to try any others to make that statement. The food here was hearty and exquisite. I had a Monte Cristo sandwich with a fruit salad side, surprising Kathy and myself both.

The company was hearty and exquisite, too. Bennett at 19 has grown into a strong provider/protector type who will never forget his roots and who carves his own routes through life. We hit it off easily with Max, whose running commentary on Bennett, Sudbury and life in general was sweetly sarcastic. 

Bennett and Max, with Kathy being Kathy in the centre

Bennett gave Kathy's 'side chick' a once over (she'd had several issues lately) and pronounced it roadworthy even if it wasn't a pickup. He then gave locally informed directions to Onaping Falls, cursing the roads he helps construct the whole time. Yep...whackahole. 

Armed with Bennett's directions, we ventured to Onaping Falls, 

As usual, there is a hiking trail allowing a closer view, but it was off limits for us round people with misbehaving sciatics. No matter: this is one of the most accessible falls we've found. A wheelchair with good tread would have little issue.

Onaping, Cree for "vermillion", was made famous by A.Y. Jackson of Group of Seven fame:

This is a gorgeous site, and we had it mostly to ourselves. I remain amazed at how quickly the water smooths from a boil at the base of the falls to a pristine pond not three metres away.

Time, the enemy of all vacations, was getting away from us. We had debated doing Dynamic Earth, with the underground mine tour. I've never been on it myself, but have heard it's really cool. (Literally: seven stories below ground, it's 13C, less than half the temperature at the moment.)  It was already after noon; the last mine tour of the day was at 3:30, and we'd also wanted to take in Science North. Although I have been to this stunning building several times, starting when it opened in 1984, this trip was for Kathy to experience, not me. I had no good idea how long it might take for her to be scienced out. Could be half an hour; could be four hours plus. We'd therefore decided to see Science North and do Dynamic Earth only if there was time.

There wasn't time. That's okay...if we really want to do this, we can maybe do another circle trip, this time going east from Sudbury to North Bay.  But that's for the future and the present is entrancing. 

But just because we didn't have time for the mine tour, didn't mean we couldn't stop at the largest coin in the world. This is a photo op I've somehow never taken. 

The Big Nickel was commissioned for Canada's Centennial; it opened three years early, in 1964. Approximately 64,607,747 times the size of the nickel it replicates, it's 8.83m (29 ft) high and weighs 13000 kg (a little more than 14.3 U.S. tons). 

On to Science North, which is quite simply the loveliest building I've ever been in.

The entrance to the centre proper is bored through the rock. The place is ingeniously accessibly  constructed such that a ramp spirals up around the building to each level. Many of the exhibits are geared towards children, but with enough content that most adults will learn plenty. 

We began with a digital planetarium show, again geared to kids, again quite interesting for adults. I learned some new to me constellations and lamented how polluted our night skies have become. 

After touring the centre, we watched an IMAX film simply called Ireland...it's one of those places we want to see but likely never will. Yeah, it's a puff piece put out by Tourism Ireland, but it's narrated by Liam Neeson, and shows us just how MUCH we want to see of this fabulous country.

Supper today was thanks to my father's generosity: we went to M.I.C. (Made In Canada) Whiskey Pub and had a meal we won't soon forget. We started with hand-wrapped cheese sticks (havarti encased in spring rolls)  that were to die for, followed by steak for Kathy ("rivals the best I've had") and maple brie chicken for me (shockingly tasty) and wrapping up with a large plate of made-in-house Nanaimo bars that were to live for.  You do not expect such culinary perfection in what is essentially a roadhouse. I would have been more than satisfied with simple comfort food in this environment. We  got meals  you'd as like find in a restaurant with carpet and nobody under ten allowed. . Good value, too. I will be recommending this establishment to all who will listen.

Back to the room to reset for the morning.

DAYS THREE AND FOUR to follow: this took me more than four hours to assemble, so it might be tomorrow.