Today went hours longer than expected!

We got another early start, and met Brian for breakfast at Pur & Simple at 7am, before there was a hint of daylight! They had real freshly squeezed orange juice!

There was plenty of daylight by the time we got to Terry Fox’s statue.

Hello Thunder Bay, Sleeping Giant, and Lake Superior! Are you really going to be my new home?

We headed east, stopping at just about every look out.

Like the pretty rock beach at Rossport.

We stopped at a gorge with a waterfall that I’ve never stopped at before, just west of Terrace Bay.

More look-offs:

Soon after we hit some rain. Nothing problematic, just off and on rain. I guess we are overdue since the weather for this trip has been so spectacular! Jeff’s had snow for 3 days!

Hi Winnie!

When we got to Wawa, we were so confused, maybe with a touch a horrified. Does the Wawa goose have a handcuff around it’s neck? Is this a protest? Has he been harmed?

We NEEDED to know!

It wasn’t until we walked all around it that we realized what it was!! Can you guess?

It’s a promo for that fundraising keychain at Petro Canada!!!

So naturally we had to go get one!

Also, to satisfy Jeff’s brother, Cecilia got two pickles out of the barrel at the general store in Wawa!

The sun was back out and we had some more views of Lake Superior! And the reds were now appearing in the landscape! Maple leaves!

Lake Superior was smashing onto the shore in the wind!

Windy I say.

Perfectly framed shot!

Oh nice! The rain washed some of the bug parts off the front of the truck!

Beautiful views!! We were looking forward to the last couple of hours of views, but then we came around a corner to a long line of parked vehicles. Right around here, at Montreal River Harbour.

After sitting awhile and wondering what happened (construction? accident?)

It was a bit nerve wracking because my parking brake seems to have bit the dust on this trip. My truck is a standard and unless I keep standing on the foot brake or turn off the truck and leave it in gear, I’m rolling. And we were on a significant down hill.

A white truck with a flashing light came to take the cars through, but then 2 police cars arrived and that quickly was stopped.

There was lumber all over the road and a truck was flipped over!!

It looks like the truck was going down this hill and maybe too quickly and flipped? Look at that car in the ditch! What he/she must have seen when they came around that corner!!

The first people on the scene moved some lumber to let cars go by. We probably could have gone around too, but once the police were there, they weren’t letting anyone through. We were already pulled out into the other lane, so we got tuned around. Another person told us to go back to Wawa and maybe go through Chapleau to get over to Thessalon and back to the Sault.

That would be hours and hours of driving in the dark. I bet the hotels in Wawa are already booked too! We had to reserve a hotel room in the Sault for over $300/night!! We’re guessing a lot of people are going on the Agawa tour train and coming to see the fall leaves. We started driving back to Wawa, cursed loudly for a bit, and then pulled over. It just felt wrong. Wawa was over 100km back north. We had gas. We had snacks. In fact, I have a couple sleeping bags, fire starters, a JetBoil to make hot water, dehydrated meals, a cooler full of drinks…. Let’s just turn back and get in the line and wait it out.

The first hour or so people were all making friends. And broadcasting live dance parties.

We had a couple bars of cell signal so we turned off the Starlink mini to save the Jackery’s power.

We were right beside a live traffic camera. There was a slow trickle of people turning around and heading north.

And then the sun set and it was quickly dark. Some people kept their engines running and their lights, so it was never too dark.

The stars were pretty. I had a lantern. We played cards. Cecilia read a book. We ate snacks. I was tense and worried about napping and kicking us out of gear causing us to roll. I thought about finding some big stones to chock the wheels.

It was windy so we put on our puffy coats and closed the windows to preserve some warmth. If only the truck wasn’t full and we could tip our seats back more and stretch out.

And there we sat.

For 6 hours.

Finally, the road reopened.

We had been up since 6:30am and my eyes were so warn out. It was a dark drive into the Sault with a lot of traffic. I swore. I said I was selling the truck tomorrow and buying an automatic transmission vehicle instead. We got to the steep hill at Goulais and there was a lane blocked for construction. We were practically bumper to bumper behind a transport crawling up the hill. No where to go with pylons everywhere and I had to keep downshifting, we were getting so slow. AHHHHH!!! I went all the way down to second gear and finally we all crested the hill.

We made it to the hotel after 1am and had to find the dexterity to park in a parking garage without hitting any poles or parked cars. I was so over tired. I dreamt all night of war. It was strange.

Cecilia, let’s not set an alarm for tomorrow, okay?

(Fortunately we heard there was no one injured in the accident.)