Trippin’ Around North America

Thunder Bay to Wawa

Great day, good roads, good weather, great scenery. There is a lot to be said for travelling this time of the year; no line-ups, low rates and light traffic.

We started the day with shopping at Wal-Mart where there were about 12 RVs who spent the night in the parking lot, including the German couple we met yesterday. I did a cleanup of the truck and trailer while Fellette shopped.

Thunder Bay is a bit spread out and it is very old, the streets are somewhat irregular and not in too good a shape so getting out of there could have been a bit of a problem.

HOWEVER, we have this navigation aid called a Tom-Tom. It works on the GPS [Global Positioning Satellite] principal. We enter the city [or address] that we want to go to and it tells you how to get there, as you travel; both visually on a small screen mounted on the dashboard, and it actually speaks to you in any one of about 30 languages. We have chosen "Jane" as our voice, a very nicely spoken lady with an English accent.

Between Jane and Fellette we are scoring 100%. However, in the more remote areas Jane gets confused and gives us bad advice, like "left turn ahead," when such an action would take us off the roadway. Great in built-up areas, which is where we need it.

No attractions for us today, just gorgeous scenery, hills, lakes, and little quaintsy towns eeking an existence out of a remote and beautiful environment.

To live here you have to love the life of fishing, ice fishing, moose hunting, snow and very long and cold winters.

The town of Wawa, is really quite nice, around 1800 people and one main street. The local curiosity seems to be the local General Store and gas station. [With a moose on the porch].

Somehow for some reason more than a few buildings and monuments are sporting reproductions of a humungous goose.

I think it was an attention-getter for when the highway was opened in the 1960s.

The highway we came in on today is called the "Courage Highway" after Terry Fox. There is a very large and well kept monument to mark the site of his easternmost point before he had to stop.

So far we have done 4011 kilometers! [2400 miles].

posted by Doug and Fellette @ 7:40 PM