Super Fun Adventure Times: Entering Ontario and Eastern Daylight Time!

Day 15 -- Thunder Bay, ON

Google Earth measurements (straight line between locations)
Distance from Vancouver: 2458 km
Distance from Kingston: 1085 km

Distance Driven Today: 714 km
Total Distance Driven: 4018 km

Today was originally our longest drive because we had planned to drive to Thunder Bay via Fort Frances along Lake Superior (about 775 km). However, we decided to stick to the slightly shorter northern route since we will be driving along the lakes later in the trip. So, the Calgary-Regina leg (758 km) remains our current longest leg. This is all in terms of distance. Since the Trans-Canada's speed limit is 110 km/hr in the Prairies and only 90 km/hour in Ontario, today's drive still took the most time!

We left at around 9AM CDT from Winnipeg and arrived at the Ontario/Manitoba border a couple of hours later. We picked up several brochures and booklets about Ontario events and also some literature specific to the cities we're visiting. Crossing the provincial border also meant the end of Highway 1. With the exception of our detour to Penticton, we had faithfully followed Highway 1 from Vancouver all the way to Ontario. Provincial governments are in charge of naming highways and in all 4 westernmost provinces, they chose to use "Highway 1" to designate the Trans-Canada. However, after entering Ontario, the Trans-Canada is actually made up of several segments of various Ontario highways joined together. We were on Highway 17 from the border to Thunder Bay.

Driving through northern Ontario is kind of like some parts of BC -- lots of lakes and trees, but few mountains (more like hills, really). We drove through Kenora, which was very nice and then Dryden, which was a smoggy industrial town that smelled bad. Also, Laura drove through a really heavy rainstorm, it felt like we were in a car wash! Several hours after crossing the Ontario border, we came across the Eastern Time Zone border. We stopped to take pictures of us being in two time zones at once!

We finally arrived at our hotel (which is a few kilometres south of Thunder Bay). Thunder Bay's population is over 120,000 -- which is around the size of Kingston! We got there pretty late so we had dinner and swam in the pool. We don't really have much planned in Thunder Bay -- tomorrow we will sleep in, rest, go see the Terry Fox Monument and the city! We also finally finished booking all hotels for the rest of our trip. Juggling which credit cards to use in each city (and when to pay them off) was tough but it looks like we will make it without having to touch our backup cards at all!