Wednesday July 22, 1998 - Ontario

Somewhere on Highway 11 - cool, windy and rainy.

This weather is following me. I drove into Thunder Bay and got ice, gas and cash from a bank machine and then stopped at the Terry Fox monument just northeast of town. This is where Terry Fox's run across Canada ended in 1980.

Terry Fox monument

Lake Superior across the highway from the monument

At Nipigon I turned off the Trans-Canada to follow the northern route through Kapuskasing and Cochrane. It rained most of the time. I stopped by a lake for supper and saw a merganser with more than a dozen chicks. First they swam in a clump and then later in a long single file (so I could count them all). When the adult duck saw me she quacked and the chicks all clumped up again and rose up out of the water to scramble across the surface away from me. It was cute to watch.

I stayed in another roadside rest area that night; it was cold and wet and there were lots of mosquitoes outside of the truck. The newspaper in the tailgate cracks is still working to keep them out. I did not see a lot of scenery worth mentioning and there were mostly big trucks on the road. Lots of raod construction too. This is not exactly a tourist route, which is I guess why they aren't so strict about camping in picnic areas.