6/12/22

After seeing the Terry Fox monument, Ken and I rode into Thunder Bay downtown. It was Sunday so a lot of stores were closed. We found a cafe that was open and we rode there to caffeine up and figure out our next step. We could either stay the night or continue west for another hour or so. We googled a motel about 90 miles north west of Thunder Bay in a town called Upsala. Since it's doesn't get dark until almost 9:30 PM, we decided to keep moving. ON17 was a two lane road that ran north west of the Trans-Canada Highway. This area of northern Ontario reminds me of Maine - green, lush, trees, and water.

After 90 minutes of riding, we rolled into the parking of this motel. There was not a single car in the parking lot. I surveyed the outside the of motel and decided it wasn't worth the $100 dollars. I saw a campground across the street. I pitched the idea to Ken about camping and he was up for it. I brought all this camping gear here so I better use it sooner or later. We rode across the street and found the office closed. There was an honor system where we just slip the $25 through the door slot for our camp site. After we paid, we found a site by a pond.

It looked beautiful as we got off our bikes and starting to unpack our camping gear. Not even a minute later, I found the downside of camping - mosquitoes. There were hordes of mosquitoes swarming all over us. I picked up some bug spray in Brampton to deal with the Alaska mosquitoes but it was required now. I closed my eyes and sprayed all up and down myself. I didn't help at all. Now time is of the essence in putting up camp without being eaten alive by these mosquitoes. I am not a camper and neither is Ken. But we managed to setup camp without any major issues (but lots of minor issues).

I did not bring cooking gear with me on this trip so I was just planning to eat some granola bars and some elk sticks I bought a few days ago. But Ken did have a trail stove and a bag of dehydrated pad thai that he generously offered to share with me. I've never had dehydrated camping food before and was eager to try some. After boiling the water and pouring it into the thai pad pouch, we waited the 20 mins before it was edible. And overall, it wasn't bad. I was somewhat impressed.

We built a small fire to help with the mosquitoes. Ken mentioned that he was leaving his food out away from his tent because of potential bears. I followed suit and left my road snacks inside my side case and hope the bears couldn't figure out how to open them. After a couple hours of experimenting with Ken's drone and chatting about US culture and politics, we crawled into our respective tents to get some sleep.