Alert-120

SUNDAY – TYSON LAKE, ON -> MARATHON, ON [774km]

It seems to be a trend that on the mornings I embark on new adventures, the weather is foggy. Pulling out of the Tyson Lake Marina and beginning down the road, honking, and waving at my grandma as I drove past, the road stretched into the shroud giving it a rather mysterious look.

Despite the uncharacteristically warm spring that had allowed me and my brother to share the first lake dive of the season, only the evergreens had their needles, leaving the interspersed deciduous trees naked and in the midst of an identity crisis of if it was late fall or still early spring. The lack of leaves would make the rest of the drive out of Ontario pretty fun actually as it left more of the Canadian Shield rock face visible which is my favourite part of Ontario.

Originally, I was planning on going as far as Wawa as to not push myself as I had never driven over 5-6 hours at a time, but I was on a time crunch needing to be in Medicine Hat by Thursday morning, but I’d preferably like to arrive at a decent time on Wednesday. Marathon it was.

The drive was beautiful. Barely anyone on the road, and the sun had cleared away the remaining fog and clouds to give the lakes all around the characteristic Ontario blue hue. I would pass look out points, parks, and generally breathtaking views wishing I had the time to stop to take my time exploring, but I had a mission.

We’re going to skip over the fact I almost ran out of gas in the Lake Superior Provincial Park and was anxiously eyeing my ‘x kilometers until empty’ tracker against my google maps ‘kilometers remaining until my destination’ tracker. I won’t say how close I cut it because I know my mom would have nothing good to say. Lake Superior Provincial Park was beautiful! Especially with the added sense of, “Well, if I am stranded at least, I have a pretty view!”. Most of this stretch of Ontario doesn’t have service after all.

MONDAY – MARATHON, ON -> KENORA, ON [769KM]

With an embarrassing burn to my ego after the events of yesterday, I gassed up at the Esso just outside the Inn even though I wasn’t even below half a tank. The Inn, instead of a breakfast bar, handed out breakfast bags stocked with school snacks like a double chocolate muffin, yogurt, juice box, and a fruit cocktail cup which honestly is a genius idea.

Just outside the town, I stopped at a lookout picnic area and ate my yogurt cup. I noticed the brand of most of the snacks were the same brand of snacks that they pack in the military lunch boxes served to us on the plane. I laughed to myself, Alert was never too far away, was it?

I was feeling more confident in my ability to conquer the 8-hour drives, leaving me more room to do the odd stop at a lookout or in Nipigon and scale their walk-up tower. On this leg of the journey, I saw the last remaining signs of winter with the odd clump of snow packed tightly into the rock face, usually a small waterfall sliding over it into a glossy sheet of ice, feeding into the swamped ditches at either side of the road.

With the high cliffs and odd plateaus created by the highway cutting through the Shield, it made for perfect terrain for thin waterfalls and water streams to cascade down.

After Thunder Bay is when the drive got difficult. For some reason, the Shield completely died down from around Thunder Bay, through Dryden and right before Kenora making it pretty boring. With no one else on the road, no cool wildlife besides crows, and no pretty scenery besides run down abandoned buildings and diseased evergreens (and naked broad-leaves), I just wanted to be in Kenora.

I had to will every muscle in my right leg not to speed as I entered the outskirts of Kenora where the speed limit is 60 (?!), and trudge through the town to the opposite end of Keewatin. I was so drained I collapsed onto my bed at the Nature’s Inn and had to give myself a solid 30 minutes before braving the drive back through town to find something to eat. My eyes were bugging out and I had a raging headache. I made an executive decision that night to break up the remaining 12-hour drive to Medicine Hat into a 6 and 6 rather than 8 and 4, to give myself a break.

TUESDAY – KENORA, ON -> WHITEWOOD, SAS [618KM]

Tuesday’s drive was nothing notable. The sunny weather of Ontario quickly morphed into a windy rain almost as soon as I crossed into Manitoba. Rather than take the Trans Canada, I dropped sightly south to ride Highway 2 directly west across all of Manitoba in one shot to get to Whitewood, Saskatchewan.

The Whitewood Inn is, I believe, the only accommodation in the town of 900. The man at the front desk was actually a cook who had been asked to cover the front and was definitely not expecting to actually help anyone. I felt bad as he kept repeating, “I’m so sorry, I don’t know what I am doing, it’s been months since I had to do this,” as he tried to process the reservation I had made online the night prior. Thankfully, the actual front desk lady appeared with Co-op grocery bags in hand.

The Inn was incredibly quiet. At the front desk, I looked to the left and could see a roped off restaurant area, and beyond that what looked like a small arcade area also presumably closed. To the right of the front desk was a door with a sign above it, “The Sundowner’s Bar” with a couple paper signs advertising their VLT’s inside. Funnily enough, I only know what those are from Trailer Park Boys – a tv show that I started watching while up in the Alert (or forced to start watching by the SWO’s assistant).

Walking through another doorway to the rooms section of the Inn, I thought I had mistakenly walked into the indoor pool area. Except the pool was empty, and in the middle of what was a very regular, if not a little liminal, looking hotel. Rainwater slowly leaked from the skylights far above and dripped onto the dusty tile floor – it was the only sound that could be heard at all. Red room doors lined the walls of the first and on a look up, the second floor as well, but there were no people. I was room 105 at the end of the hall. I promptly barricaded myself inside.

^The incredibly liminal and spooky hotel atrium.

WEDNESDAY – WHITEWOOD, SAS –> MEDICINE HAT, AB [642KM]

Anyone who says that the drive through Manitoba and Saskatchewan is boring doesn’t know how to live. I must have incredibly low standards because I think a drive is a success when I look into one of the many hundreds of roadside ponds and see anything other than a mallard. You can appreciate the Canadian landscape when seeing it slowly roll past you as you cross province to province and see what makes each province unique, and how the intermediary spaces in-between biomes can also be appreciated in its own right such as the rolling hills of the grasslands as it morphs into the badlands of southern Alberta. The number of hawks and other birds of prey is also a birders delight through these ‘boring’ provinces. Go touch grass or something I don’t know.

As I neared Medicine Hat, my excitement grew. It was weird to think that I had finally made it as I passed the ‘Welcome to Medicine Hat; The Gas City’ sign as in the moment the drive felt long but it also seemed like a blink of an eye through the Canadian Shield, into the prairies and finally into the badlands.

The ‘townhouse’ we were told we would be staying at was actually a collection of Medicine Hat College student residence townhouses built in a loop and all sharing the same blue siding and brown shingles. The townhouses back right onto a large green space with a few small rivers and a pond that encompasses a small residential area and Connaught Golf Club. Apparently, it’s a great place to go birding, and I will definitely go exploring.

All four of us share the top floor (we each get our own rooms of similar size) of our townhouse that’s equipped with a two full bathrooms, full kitchen, common area, and basement laundry.

I think it’s funny that I didn’t have to do residence as a student at Guelph to get that residence experience after all. I only had to drive 3,239 km across Canada to do so 🙂

it was worth it.

Also! I completely redecorated the blog! Entries are more organized, the about page will have more information on my jobs (eventually), and there is a work in progress gallery section. This is the official separation of my arctic entries and alberta entries which are categorized on the category page. Hope you like the less harsh colours!