TDC Revisited Day 4

Winnipeg to Thunder Bay

The journey continues on to Thunder Bay, ON. Welcome to Day 4 of my driving adventure, retracing the route I cycled across Canada in 2013 as part of Tour du Canada.

If you would like to refer back to the original legs that are included in today’s trip, they are:

Today’s drive was long. We were on the road for about 11 and a half hours. Partly due to the long drive, and partly due to the landscape, I didn’t take many photos. Mostly it was about getting through this part of the trip.

As we left Winnipeg, fields of corn soon gave way to forests. I remember, in 2013, describing northern Ontario as rocks and trees, trees and rocks, interspersed with beautiful lakes, and more rocks and trees. Don’t get me wrong, it is beautiful. But it does seem endless. On the tour, we had 3 back-to-back century rides just to get from Dryden to Thunder Bay! (A century ride is 100 miles or about 160 km.) On one of those days, there were no services of any kind for virtually the whole distance. Our driver, Adam, parked the truck about midway so we could refill our water bottles.

Here is my depiction of trees, rocks and a lake:

Even so, I do have some great memories from this part of the trip. In Kenora, two former work colleagues took me out for lunch on our rest day there.

In 2013, when we left Kenora, it was raining. A ways out of town we came across a little store and restaurant that was also a motel office. We were able to hang out gear in the little store area to dry out while we went into the restaurant. The store got quite steamy from all the wet gear as more of our riders arrived. Eventually there was quite a group of us in the restaurant.