before we left toronto, we stopped at the mcdonald's on keele and st. clair to get breakfast (cause, really, what's an early morning road trip without an egg mcmuffin?) two things happened. first, we watched a man argue with the cashier about charging him tax on his $3.99 combo, because "there's no tax on things under $4.00." then an old italian man in a dirty suit and hair like einstein tried to buy my hash brown for a quarter. oh, toronto. don't ever change.
- the last thing you really see when you're leaving toronto is the behemoth. thanks for opening a week too late, cw.
- after driving for an only hour, roadside signs are already starting to seem hilarious.
- the tops of mcdonald's coffee cups look like little faces.
- espanola is, apparently, a "fine paper town." i still don't know if this means it is a town made of fine paper, or if it is a paper town that is fine.
- there is a dairy queen in parry sound.
- the speed limit on the trans-canada, after parry sound, is 90. well, except for the spots where it diverts through a town. then it goes down to 50. sometimes you think, hey, this highway is pretty wide, maybe it'll go back up to 100! but you are wrong.
- sometimes when you are on a very long trip, and you stop frequently but drive like a normal person, you end up passing the same retards over and over again. sometimes, you notice them a little harder because they have manitoba plates and a car full of plants.
you can't see the plants as well as i would have liked, but rest assured that we passed these girls at least three times. the third time, we were stuck behind a line of cars and we were like, "who the hell is holding this up?!" yep. you guessed it: plant girls. - the entire length of the transcanada, from toronto to thunder bay, there are these billboards advertising... well, something that you don't know what it is until you get home and you look it up on the internet and realize IT'S A FUCKING BOOK!
this guy is SO HARDCORE, you guys. i guess it's probably a little more effective than sticking your book on the "heather's picks" table every time you go into chapters, but whatevs. - i have never seen a beaver dam. correction: i HAD never seen a beaver dam.
- the ontario government has spent our tax dollars wisely on these signs:
duh, ontario government - every time i passed a dude on a motorbike, i was like "pacey!?" sadly, it never actually was pacey.
- there is a restaurant in sudbury that looks like a mcdonald's. but it is most definitely not a mcdonald's.
- there is also a statue in sudbury that looks like a vagina.
- when i yell "OMG IT'S A PINK VESPA, TAKE A PICTURE, TAKE A PICTURE!" cory actually does it. he's a good man.
- sometimes transport trucks are carrying really super enticing stuff.
- there are these signs everywhere warning about horse and buggies. we were laughing at them until we saw an ACTUAL HORSE AND BUGGY driven by ACTUAL AMISH-TYPE PEOPLE trucking along the transcanada. i wish we had taken a picture, but we were too stunned to really do anything but stare.
- i'm pretty sure the bar at our hotel in sault ste marie was supposed to be "coach's corner."
what are you so smiley about, beer mug? - there are no fewer than two shopping carts at the bottom of the st mary's river.
- we had planned to cross over to the american side to see if we could get ourselves a couple of kfc double-downs. but then we thought about how it would look to the american border guards to have two hobos trying to cross over with all their worldly possessions crammed in a corolla. we actually considered taking everything out of my car and putting it in the hotel room. that's how badly we wanted one. (we were also going to try to buy delicious bass, which apparently they don't import to ontario anymore. we found this out by basically checking every beer store in the entire province.)
- they love roberta bondar in the soo.
- there was not, as suggested by hotel literature, a hot tub at the hotel. there was, however, a sauna that took an hour to heat up.
there was also a pretty good view - cory has an irrational fear of bush planes. he took this picture anyway.
- apparently some places in canada are more americanized than others.
- the first signs for thunder bay look pretty much like heaven.
- this is possibly the most delicious place on the transcanada.
- this is possibly the most difficult-to-pronouce place on the transcanada.
- this is definitely the all around best name on the transcanada.
- there is a lot of NIGHT DANGER signs on the road.
but apparently, there is quite a bit of DAY DANGER, too!
she seemed nice! - apparently all those signs we passed were the result of people actually putting them there and are not, as i sort of once hoped, naturally occurring.
- wawa is a town with only one way in and one way out. for reals.
- unless you are a seagull. then there is NO WAY OUT. or, at least, no escape from the nerf gun.
cory=ninja - beef links jerky sticks are not as good as hot rods.
- you used to be able to buy bears in white river.
i looked around but did not see any bears for sale.
they do, however, have teeny tiny stop signs! - there is a little display at the turnoff to manitouwadge basically pimping the town and telling you why you should drive the hour north to go there (mostly because they are SO EXTREME and also houses cost $35,000). as part of the display, there is a giant quad runner and a giant snow machine.
what? this is how i drive a snow machine.
so i'm standing there looking at the front of the snow machine and i can see there's a sticker that someone has stuck on the front of it. i'm like... is that... no... it CAN'T BE!
haligonians. what are you going to do?
- pebble beach in marathon is super pebbly!
the sign said not to remove any beach material, but i might have taken one rock. okay, two.
not that i actually tested it out myself or anything - after you get past marathon, the road gets REALLY HILLY AND THE SCENERY IS SO DRAMATIC! at least, according to the dude who works at the subway in wawa.
- the aguasabon gorge in terrace bay is really pretty, but you have to walk to the edge of the railing to see it.
this is as close as SOME PEOPLE were willing to get - contrary to what i was told, there is no 7-11 in nipigon. just a mac's. but they do have fanta banana slurpees.
i was once a cherry cola slurpee from nipigon. true story. - after seeing the road that he ran on, i totally now have even more respect for michael j. fox.
- first stop when we got home: lcbo.
home.
