Go Big or Go Home Tour - Day 14 - Perspectives

Well today didn’t start out as planned but really none of the days really start out that way.  We woke to a heavy blanket of smoke. Luckily we had planned for an early start so this worked in our favour.  We had a good haul ahead of us this early in the trip, so we got up at 6 a.m. (without an alarm clock), packed up most of our stuff, headed down for a quick breakfast and then started to load.  Because of the smoke and heavy haze, Larry was wearing one of our N95 masks just to be on the safe side…the index was about at a 9 which is high risk.  The good news was that we knew we would be riding out of it..or at least we were pretty sure we would.

We were on the road by 8:30, and stopped about 75 kms in to gas up.  The haze was starting to lift.  Once we got all our “business” out of the way we headed out again.  This was the last gas station for 150 kms which is also a nice way of saying  “no places to stop”.  Before leaving I snapped a picture of the sun doing it’s best to shine through the smokey haze.  At least here we could see a bit of it…in the Soo it was nothing but smokey soup!  

By the time we got to the gas station on the other side, we needed gas, a washroom, something to nibble on but what we didn’t need was sunshine, cause it was right there waiting.  This beautiful orb followed us the rest of the day, even though the temps got to 14 and 15 a couple of places…we didn’t care.

Today we were treated to a few new perspectives….one perspective is the thing everyone experiences from time to time….directional travel…you travel a road in one direction but when you travel it in the other, the scenery is generally quite different.  We experienced much of that today.  When we travelled this road in 2016, we were headed east.  What we could see riding in that direction was different than what we see riding west.  

Secondly, in 2016 we got off the 17 at Wawa and took an alternative route that took us past the Soo, so a lot of this road is actually new to us.  Several times today we uttered “look what we missed!”  At the time we had chosen the alternate route to avoid traffic, the rain and quite honestly we hoped the OPP (didn’t happen, they drive ALL the roads). If you go back to 2016 blogs you will find the Wawa stop and remaining commentary…I think we did over 700 kms in the rain, 2 hours of it without any place to stop.

Another big perspective, and one we will blame on both weather and choices, is the experience.  We have often said we wouldn’t want to do the Northern Ontario route again and quite frankly we didn’t have much good to say about that experience.  I am happy we took a second chance on it.  It has actually become one of our most enjoyable routes so far….now maybe that perspective is influenced by all the riding on the 4 - O - somethings, I don’t know….but it is a lesson on always giving things a second chance.  There is nothing to be lost and so much to be gained.

We arrived in Terrace Bay around 3:30 in the afternoon and booked into our room.  Cute place, conveniently located right on the highway at an Essa gas station.  On the outside it is very modern and on the inside it reminds you of a cute little log cabine.  Shortly after we got into our room, our friend John rode in to the parking lot!  We missed John in Montreal as he was riding back from Vancouver on his Triumph.  As previously mentioned, he was suppose to take another route but smoke pushed his trip to overlap ours….even the fact that we were on similar routes was fortunate as he had planned to be back in Quebec sooner and we had originally planned to have left weeks earlier.  It is a great opportunity to meet up with friends along the way and even greater when they are on the same adventure, just going in the opposite direction.  We had a great dinner together sharing stories, thoughts and ideas from previous trips and information on the routes that were yet to be taken.  As always, it is good to get someone else’s perspective!

Tomorrow Ignace is our final over night stop in Ontario!  Oh and Teddy was happy to come out from under his protective cover to enjoy a little sunshine too!