Canada Road Trip: Hearst ON to Upsala ON

Day 4, 396 miles

I went to bed in Hearst when it was 52º and woke up to 70º, it was going to be a warm day. I got rid of the leggings, went with a linen dress and crocs, hoping to dip my feet in a lake at some point.

Route 11 (trans canada hwy) was more of the same, a trucking route, logging, mining, trees, lakes here and there. I punched Beardmore into my gps because I liked the name, i was hoping to find something interesting there. I should note, I filled up my gas tank at Hearst, I’m glad I did, there were no gas stations until Red Rock (213 km).

I stopped at Long Lac the first real water, with a convenient and nice rest area, picnic tables and a place to go in the water. As you can imagine the water was REALLY cold, felt awesome on my feet though, even if it did numb my ankles in 8 seconds.

Long lac rest area, I had it all to myself. It was warm and beautiful, but COLD.

My ankles were numb in a few seconds but oh my, it felt great.

Disappointingly I didn’t see a single beard in Beardmore, I saw a small plywood sign with GAS scrawled on it, I pulled to see a very old pump with lights on, covered in masking tape and no price. A kind lady poked her head into the hot, dusty parking lot to let me know there’s no gas. She should probably take down her super effective sign. (haha, it was about 12 square inches) I wasn’t worried, I was still at 3/4 tank, I’ve been keeping it full the whole way knowing this would happen eventually. On the Beardmore town website, a short list of things to do included the usual camping/fishing/hunting and a visit to the ‘big snowman with sunglasses’ in the center of town. Honestly, I didn’t take a pic of it, it wasn’t even that cute, opting instead to take a photo of the awesome Sasquatch and a sign that lays claim to many of the towns around here, by announcing that it’s a Greenstone community, the ubiquitous mining company.

Who doesn’t love a good Sasquatch.

Nature’s Home Town, Greenstone…found in Beardmore.

Onto the Red Rock area, the other side of unforgiving dust, and a relief from the desolate landscape. There is a sudden shift into some hills as I round a corner (yay!), I made a stop at Pijitawabik Palisades, a large waterfall cascading over a cliff that’s a few hundred feet high, that water eventually flows into Lake Nipigon. I almost took a nap at the parking spot, the sound of the falls was so soothing, but yet again, I decided to make tracks.

Pijitawabik Palisades

Just after the waterfalls there are distinctive cliffs emerging, bright red surrounded by dark black columnar cliffs. I looked it up: The red rocks are a sedimentary layer(hence the horizontal lines) containing iron, overlayed by dark black volcanic layers. Take of that and wear in down over millions of years and you have these beautiful stripes in the cliffs.

Stricking rock formations near lake Nipagon.

We have tablelands in the US too, in the Southwest, they are also called cuestas. All of this on top of the ancient Precambrian Shield. This photo is not mine. Link below.

https://files.ontario.ca/ndmnrf-geotours-2/ndmnrf-geotours-nipigon-en-2021-12-13.pdf

Soon I had a glimpse of Lake Superior on my left, as big as an ocean after all those dusty, treed miles. I noticed there was a secondary road I could travel along the water, so I jumped at the chance to see it. Shumiah is just around the corner from Thunder Bay, so I stopped to wade in, journal a bit and take in the warm air. The water was fairly shallow here so it was surprisingly warm, kids were swimming, there was a jet ski despite there being zero leaves on any trees.

Lake Superior in Shumiah, ON

I don’t know what I was expecting at Thunder Bay, the first real city I’d seen since Montreal (100,000 people) but it wasn’t what I was expecting. The lower part of town is dominated by giant shipping buildings loading up huge cargo ships, there was a park here and there against the water, people were fishing off of concrete moorings. In town, there wasn’t really anything that grabbed my attention, sprawling buildings, the North side seemed to be dominated by short stay motels, tons of them. As with most divided communities, the hills had ‘nicer’ houses and more upscale businesses, the whole place just felt off. People didn’t seem happy, visible drug use and panhandling. Makes me sad more than anything to see the disparity between the haves and the have-nots.

A dog looking out a second floor apartment window in Thunder Bay, ON

Smallish boat, really big tanker in the background getting loaded up. Lake Superior, Thunder Bay, ON.

They hadn’t caught anything yet, but they were hoping to catch Steelhead. Thunder Bay, ON

I was planning to explore the city but I decided to motor on, I was happy to find my cozy, middle-of-nowhere logging road to park my Bronco and get a good nights sleep.

The sun doesn’t set here until 9:30pm so I had a little time to do payroll (haha) and get a little bit of organizing done. I put the screens on my windows rather than the privacy shield and fell asleep to the sounds of peepers, and some hilarious bird or creature that made a noise like a faint rolling, high-pitched whistle and then a loud fart. It literally made me laugh when it first started. I have to find out what it was. I was imagining some puffed up partridge or something desperately trying to attract a mate. Power to him!

This blog update brought to you by a Tim Hortons maple and medium coffee.

I ran into a few nice people today, that’s for tomorrow’s update!

• One nice fellow named Dave (who just picked up a motorcycle from Thunder Bay) told me about a few places to visit.

• The Margaret Laurence historical site in Neepawa, she’s a prominent Canadian author that writes about a fictional town called Manawaka, based on Neepawa.

• He also mentioned that if I do one thing in Winnipeg, I should visit the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, the architecture of the building is something to see too.

So cozy and quiet, I just love it. Just like I love that farting partridge or whatever it was.