The Red Mist Heads West!

 Good evening, Sports Fans. It's been a while since I've updated the blog, and I've got a few articles I need to write, but right now I'm going to be concentrating on a series of my trip out West to white rock in Vancouver.

As a quick summary, I'm driving out over the next 5 to 6 days to the Vancouver area and Lower Mainland. I'll then spend approximately 4 days in that area and then return home. This is not my first trip out West by car. In fact, this is at least the fourth time I've driven the entire way out West and back.

I've driven through this, the United States, twice, and this will be the second time driving the entire route through Canada. My original intent was to drive through the United States and go to the federal park that commemorates the battle of Little Bighorn. Sadly, circumstances are such that I must do my entire trip through Canada. It's only sad because I really wanted to go to Montana to that historical site. It's been a childhood dream of mine to go there, and I've actually passed it twice and not had time to stop. It was it was my hope thought I would be able to make it happen this time.

 

Instead, I'll be travelling through all of Canada, which is just as good since I'm Canadian and Canada is a fantastic country, and the scenery, history and other aspects of the trip are well worth the drive for those who like long distances.

So Sports Fans, hang on and I'll be giving you some details that I hope you find interesting, and we will get right into it...

 

Day One: May 1st

 

Overcast and a relatively early start to the day.

The trip through Canada is approximately 4400 miles and 46 hours of driving. Since this will take a while my first day of driving is basically a launching off point. I left work at 6:30 and drove up to I have a motel near Midland, ON and stayed overnight. That was a relatively short trip of 280 kilometres, and it took approximately 2 1/2 hours to drive.

 

Some of the noteworthy items of the trip involved driving through the Holland March, and then north on Hwy. 400 through Barrie, Ontario. The Holland Marsh is an incredibly dense agricultural area with rich, dark soil that basically is a vegetable food basket for all of southwestern Ontario. Its location near Toronto makes it ideal to support that market, and the concentration of farms is absolutely astounding. I believe part of the reason it's named the Hollande marches because a lot of Dutch farmers or familiar with reclaiming swampland and bought that land in that area and reclaimed it to make it viable for agriculture. The reason that this is a memory for me is that we used to have a cottage on Lake Simcoe and driving along Hwy. 400 as we drove down the hill into the valley, where the hallen marches indicated to us that we're getting closer to the cottage and our subsequent excitement and expectation would increase. Our father was very generous with his time and energy, and always made sure that our family had a wonderful place to holiday. The way that he would do this is he would rent cottages on different lakes in Ontario, and we would get the benefit of the rental of those places. The place we stayed at was called Sandy Cove, which still exists to this day,y and I have many fond memories of going there.

 

I wanted to mention the drive through Barrie, ON, specifically because as a child,d we used to go into Barrie for groceries and other shopping opportunities when we stayed up there throughout the year. It's not recognizable to me anymore. Yeah, it's basically grown out to a road called Innisfil Beach Road and the density of businesses and shops is absolutely incredible. It's not the quiet town it was back in the late 60s, early 70s. And it's probably lost its lustre in its character as it's now been homogenized into a typical North American re. Canada, US town or city with box retailers and American fast food joints all over the place.

 

I actually entered the coordinates wrong on my GPS. I ended up at a bed and breakfast and had to drive 17 kilometres, basically backtracking until I got to my motel. The bed and breakfast was named almost exactly the same as the motel. That's what you get for using voice recognition on your map system in your Subaru Impreza.

 

Not the fault of the map system, but a user's fault!

 

Day 2: May 2nd

 

The second day was a run up to Terrace Bay, which is approximately 1000 kilometres in driving. For those uninitiated, the dry basically is up I'll highway called Hwy. 400, which extends all the way to Sudbury and then you turn West onto Hwy. 17 and proceeded towards Thunder Bay and then to the Ontario-Manitoba border. A lot of people who aren't familiar terrio to understand that the province is huge. Drive from Kitchener, Ontario to Thunder Bay is an 18-hour drive. In my previous drive, I drove and stayed overnight and a similar location and then made it to White River. This time my goal was to get to Terrace Bay because the following day I want to be in Winnipeg,g Manitoba.

The weather overall was about 8°C and overcast with intermittent rain. The road conditions were very good, but there are sections of the road that are very rough due to the frost heaving from the very cold conditions that this part of Ontario experiences.

Of particular note are some twisties that start on the highway after Sioux Saint Marie and then extend towards Wawa, ON. I was lucky enough to connect with another vehicle, and we drove together as a team, basically coordinating our driving so that we could drive the twisties with some energy. Overall, the drive was quite enjoyable and I have to give credit to Subaru's adaptive cruise control, which simply acts as a wonderful moderator. What I do is I set the cruise control to a speed slightly higher than the car in front of me and then set the distance and just stay behind them it keeps the distance and senses any sudden change in speed in the car in front of me and adapts to that speed and if the car speeds up past the speed of set I just stay at the speed I want to drive at. This actually takes a lot of stress off driving and allows me to concentrate on the act of driving better.

 

Typical Northern Ontario along Highway 17 between Sudbury and Espanola.

I simply can't say enough about how comfortable this car is, and the sound system and climate control are absolutely outstanding. The car is comfortable and quiet, and I drove for almost 4 1/2 hours without a stop. After the entire drive, I felt no fatigue at all. It's a testament to the design of a car, and I'm still surprised because the seats are relatively soft compared to what I'm used to and yet they have full support, and I don't get a sore back. I do have an issue with my right foot and leg and which gets numb after a while, and adjusting the seat solves that problem, but I also have incorporated stretching exercises while I'm driving and when I'm stopped to rest and alleviate the pain that I have experienced. This is something specific to the Impreza, and I think part of the problem is my physical size. I am a large gentleman, so to speak, and I think that is contributing to my challenges there, but I'm able to solve the problem by the aforementioned stretching.

Making two stops. One in Blind River and one and White River. The first one was for gas and coffee, Kitchener, Ontario and the second one was to stop for some food for dinner tonight. If you take a look at the matrix that I've included, you can see how much I've spent on gasoline so far and the average fuel mileage, which I think is very impressive.

 

The Red Mist is looking a little worse for wear, and that is my fault. I haven't had a chance to hand wash the car since the end of November, and I haven't had a chance to clean the interior, though it's in pretty good shape overall.

 

Blind River for gas and coffee.

So, essentially, the car is working extremely well, and I would have to say compared to the Hyundai Accent, this car is at least 50% better overall in experiential value. I get a real joy out of driving it, and it impresses me every single day. It's basically an entry-level car in the Subaru lineup and its engineering and quality control, combined with its wonderful ability and ergonomics, simply make it an enjoyable car to drive, and I can't say enough about how much I love driving this car.

If you expand the photo, the driver of the white car is hamming for my camera (phone).

 

Tomorrow

I'll be staying overnight at Terrace Bay, and my plan is to drive to Winnipeg, MB, for two days. I'm going to the aviation museum in Winnipeg.

 

For my 900-kilometre drive, I'm hoping the weather will be a little bit better, and Thunder Bay weather is showing partly cloudy with sunny periods.

 

Expect another update in one or two days, Sports Fan,s and keep the rubber on the road!