The Wawa General Store

The Wawa General Store, originally uploaded by mickzilla.

My good friend, and the best Barber in Vancouver, Farzad (that's in the history of Barbers - next time you're in Yaletown, get a cut and shave and see!), anyways - he told me about a special little town that he discovered when he traveled Toronto to Vancouver via Motorcycle. It was called Wawa, Ontario - and there was a general store there that had everything you could possibly imagine. I thought this place was between Kenora and Thunder Bay - so I figure I missed it - but on the way to Sault Ste. Marie today - I found it!

The place was incredible - you name it and they sold it, everything from Suckers with dead scorpions to Homemade Fudge to Nike's to Shotguns.

The full sized dead stuffed moose in front invites you in to this wonder of the world - and you're sure glad it did once your in! It also claims to have the best summer sausage in the world - I believe Farzad mentioned that to me too - and they were both right! Their secret is their 3 week smoking process, they say. I picked up 2lbs of this meat god-send for a mere $15


We also got to see the birthplace of Winnie-the-Poo on this leg of the trip. In White River, Ontario - he was a cub that was sold to a Canadian solider from Winnipeg, just before he left for Europe and WWI. Winnie ended up at the London Zoo, where author A.A. Milne used to take his son, Christoper Robin - You might remember seeing one of those "Part of our Canada Heritage" commercials that the CBC use to spam us with about this.

We're at a campsite just outside Sault Ste. Marie - (thanks again to Kelly's hookup) - It's another night of camping in the car. Tomorrow night we'll make it to Canada's Wonderland - and get ourselves setup to spend all day Tuesday there!

30K From Thunder Bay

Getting better at this camping thing!, originally uploaded by mickzilla.

I'm writing from the "Happy Land" camp site, right outside of Thunder Bay, Ontario - No Phone service, but high-speed Wireless Internet - That's the way it should be!

It was another successful 8hrs of driving, we'll do it again tomorrow and end up in Sault Ste Marie - A city that exists part in Ontario part in Michigan - good thing we brought our passports!

Ontario is a massive province - we crossed BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba in 1 day each - Ontario alone is going to take the time of those combined by my estimates!

Also, all the way until Ontario - it was pretty much 2 lanes - and you could comfortably maintain a solid 140-160Km/h - but as soon as we hit this massive province, we hit one lane and big trucks in front of us going 80k/h, then to top it off - every 100k there's these big signs which are like menu's for speeders. They read:

Want to Speed?
100km/h............$98
120km/h............$200
130km/h............$298

I'll take the 130km/h with a side Ceaser please.

Anyways - I love Ontario - when i was 20, I had spent about 1/2 of my life here - i just remember it being a lot "cooler". I'm sure all will be forgiven when we hit Canada's Wonderland!

PS - We got our picture on the corner of Portage and Main - check out Flickr for them!

Worst campers ever!

We made it to Jasper, Alberta! For some reason I paid $9 to get into
the park, but I haven't seen this $9 park yet... I'll figure that out
tomorrow. We did find the quaint town of Jasper and my plan was to
park in one of their many tourist parking lots, and crash in the car.
Rightly so, Keona thought that was a bad idea, and that along with the
signs that said it wasn't allowed had me looking for new
accomidations. We stumbled upon Whistlers Campsite, and for $27, Keona
and I are the proud owners of campsite 6H for the night! Sadly, we did
not bring a tent, or flashlight, but that didn't stop us wannabe
campers. With only minutes to spare before pitch blackness, and the
bears come to eat us, I converted the Honda into our 4 star sleeping
facility, and built the most awesome fire you see in the picture.
Maybe we're campers after-all!