The (Long!) Trans Canadian Highway

At a lunch stop at Indian Head,
somewhere along Hwy 1

We’ve driven 1900 miles since our Sunday departure from Calgary along Highway 1, the Trans Canadian Highway.  It’s the longest national road in the world.   Today was a light day, ‘only’ 273 miles.  Yesterday was 425—a bit too much pulling a trailer and having it push us down curvy steep hills. 

Canadian prairie, Manitoba 

The first 2.5 days out of Calgary were flat, straight, and green prairie.  Gradually the scenery transitioned to more trees to the point that yesterday and today we were in coniferous and deciduous forests all day, with occasional glimpses of Lake Superior, with lots of hills and curves.  At least half of the time the highway is a two lane road with frequent passing lanes.  Fortunately, traffic seemed light, but with frequent construction delays and often rough roads.  The first two days, the speed limit was 60-65 mph.  But the past three days it's been 55.  The towns and cities seem so far away from each other!

Lake Superior near Sault St. Marie

We’re not doing all 4800 miles of Hwy 1, which starts in Victoria BC and ends St. Johns’s Newfoundland.  Our goal was to simply get across the prairie and the vast southern interior.  We’re 300 miles from Ottawa, where we plan to spend a couple of days, then more quality time in Montreal and Quebec. 

We started near Banff, hope to make it to Nova Scotia

Near Thunder Bay, overlooking Lake Superior
Close (sort of) to Grand Rapids, MI

So what’s it like driving about 400 miles a day?  For the driver, it’s tedious and fully engaged, especially with 5500 pounds and an extra 21 feet behind us. However, we’re scenery geeks, (especially me) even flat prairie.  We’re working our way through an excellent audio book about Alexander Hamilton. (What a giant!) And we often default to about a half dozen of our favorite Sirius Radio stations from symphonic to hard rock.  Or sometimes silence, happy and content with the person next to us and ‘Jackson’ our Airstream behind us.  It wouldn’t be fun alone.  When Kathy isn’t driving, she’s finding our campsite for the night and beyond, or dealing with Assistance League emails.

And speaking of campgrounds, they are all starting to blur together.  Tonight we’re in a nice, but mosquito infested, provincial park with lots of privacy and hiking trails.  We’ve stayed in a delightful city park, and two commercial places. Our fellow campers are friendly—to the point where we were playing a scrabble-like game over wine and chocolate with our neighbors next door two nights ago.

Davis Lake CG, Ignace Ontario.  Great
 studio for my drum practice pad

Rapids on our hike in our campground tonight at
Chues Provincial Park, Massy Ontario 

If you missed our Facebook or Instagram posts about the Tyrell Royal Museum, we spent a couple of hours there Sunday before starting our eastward journey.  It was the best natural history museum we’ve ever experienced.  It, and the surrounding dig sites are huge.

Well worth the detour!

Tomorrow Ottawa—and two nights in the same place!

"What We Can, While We Can!"