Ontario

We crossed the country from Calgary to Ontario in a few days. We stopped at a few places, like Dinosaur Provincial Park. That was pretty cool. As a kid I wanted to be a Paleontologist, and had always wanted to see stuff like that. We also stopped at Reed Lake, and migratory stop for lots of birds, but for the first time in several years the lake was completely dried up. There's lots of other cool stuff too, like the Terry Fox Memorial in Thunder Bay and the big nickel in Sudbury. At the Terry Fox Memorial, we even randomly met up with some other friends from University, Laura and Mike, who were stopping by on their drive west.

Tree that looked characteristic of Northern Ontario

Terry Fox. I'm proud to have run a marathon. Terry ran a marathon every day for 5,323 km on one leg while cancer ate away at the rest of his body, raising money for cancer research. A true national hero.

Laura and Mike in Thunder Bay

Since then we've been traveling through Ontario, and have been busy making a few stops to visit family and friends who lived along our travel path. It rained for 48 hours as we passed though much of Northern Ontario, so that wasn't very exciting, but it stopped for us after we arrived in Elliot Lake, Meghan's hometown. She was born up there, and lived there for 10 years or so before moving south. We got to visit with some family friends, who fed us and took us on adventures hiking and ATV'ing. Having driven 30,000 km on a motorcycle last year, my brain is wired for counter-steering, whereby if you want to turn left on a motorcycle, you actually turn the handlebars to the right (in order to upset the balance of the bike to get it to lean to the left). On an ATV, to turn left, you steer left. When I was driving, I would be coming up on an obstacle on my left, and decided to steer around it by turning right. My brain did the math, and I would turn the handlebars to the left, aiming stright for whatever I was trying to avoid. It was a bit stressful, so I asked Meghan to take over. This was also a little stressful, but much better. Thanks to everyone in Elliot Lake for the warm welcome.

Meghan and I atop an ATV overlooking the town of Elliot Lake

Continuing south, we went to Lion's Head to do a bit of climbing. It's a gorgeous setting, with north-facing climbs on the cliff face at the edge of the Georgian Bay. For the majority of climbs, you rappel from the cliff-top to a bolted anchor partway down the cliff, then climb back up to the top. We got on a few routes, but typical of climbing in Southern Ontario, the guidebook is out-of-date and inaccurate, so instead of warming up on an easy 5.8, we interpreted a new (less than 20 years old and therefore not in the guidebook) climb as something else, and instead ended up at the hanging belay of a 5.10c, with no other choice but to climb our way out. This wasn't too much trouble, but was certainly no warm-up. We got on one other climb, but again it wasn't as easy as we thought it should be, and being a chilly day, we weren't enjoying it as much as we thought we would, so opted to go get dinner instead.

We stopped by to visit family on our way south, picking up lots of great chocolate chip cookies in Tara, and finished all our laundry in record time at Grandma and Grandpa Tyler's. We also had a great visit with Grandpa Mullin before heading to Waterloo to visit my parents. Our friend Ryan was getting married on the weekend we were passing through Ontario, so we were able to attend the wedding and see a bunch of friends from University. We also got to have a nice big homecooked meal at my parents' place, and my aunt, sister, and Adrian were able to come for the visit as well. It was great catching up, but we weren't sticking around for long, and soon headed east.

The Canada Goose at Wawa

The Big Nickel in Sudbury

Georgian Bay Coastline

The dog loves rolling around in rotting dead animals at the farm. She doesn't love getting a bath.

Congratulations Ryan and Jodi!

We stopped in Lindsay to visit more family along the way as well, and then up to Ottawa. Here we were able to visit our friends Gen and Peter, proud parents of 6-month old twins. We also got to tour around the city a bit, analyzing it as a possible home after our big roadtrip. We also checked out the climbing in the Gatineaus, just across the border in Quebec. There's some decent climbing around too. That's where we are now, just at the west edge of Quebec. In a day or 2 we'll be heading east again, towards Montreal, Quebec City, and beyond.

The Peace Tower and Parliament Buildings of Canada