Km 14,699 - Crowsnest Pass, Alberta

Home at last. The last week has been more driving than anything else. After leaving Montreal, we headed west along the St. Lawrence crossing into Ontario. We spent an afternoon in our nation's capital. The only other time I have been in Ottawa was in November 2004 and the city came across as being very grey and lacking character, a typical government town I suppose. I was happy to find that the city completely transformed itself under the summer sky. The landmarks are so much more impressive against a blue sky backdrop (the last time I was there it was cold, dark and foggy). We spent a few hours walking around Parliament hill, checking out the historic Rideau Canal and house hunting for the Prime Minister's abode before crossing the ridge back into Quebec and stopping in Gatineau Park for the night.

The next morning marked the beginning of three long days to get us across Ontario. The first day followed the Ottawa River valley ending on the north shore of Lake Huron. Day two took us into Sault Ste. Marie and along the shore of mighty Lake Superior. I was impressed by the power of the biggest of the great lakes. While the others seemed to be relatively calm, Superior was generating 6 foot waves crashing and an extremely rugged shore. The shore drive around Lake Superior was one of the nicest drives we have had, but there are very few towns along the way. I was surprised how sparsely populated this significant stretch of highway.

Our last day in Ontario turned out to be more eventful than it needed to be. We started out by stopping at the Terry Fox Memorial just east of Thunder Bay. It is very nice tribute to the greatest Canadian of them all. About two hours north of Thunder Bay, we ran into a traffic jam caused by a single vehicle fatality. We were stopped for 7 hours while the accident scene was cleared. We were about a mile back of the accident. By the time that the traffic started flowing again, there was about 10 Km of traffic on each side of the accident. Not wanting this to ruin our day, we drove well into the night and ended up setting up our tent at 1am in a small municipal campground in eastern Manitoba (about an hour east of Winnipeg).

We headed into Winnipeg the next morning for a look around the Forks area in downtown before heading to Grand Beach on Lake Winnipeg for the afternoon. We left in the late afternoon and drove all the way into Saskatchewan to my parent's house. Throughout our trip, we experienced a great deal of the truly Canadian things that make this country great. Parish lobster suppers in PEI, snapping pictures of all the tourists crawling around Peggy's Cove, eating poutine in Montreal, drinking Tim Horton's coffee anywhere. Along these lines, watching and smelling the crops being harvested under a big prairie sunset is right up there.

After a day visiting family, we headed home and arrived Saturday afternoon...14,699 Kms after beginning.