August 16 – Ottawa to Massey (Chutes Provincial Park)

Got some good miles in today, it feels good to be moving west. We spent the first part of the morning visiting with Luke, Catherine, and Nathan, so we did not really get going til nearly noon, but we stayed on the road until about 8 so we covered quite a good distance. The only thing that slowed us down was that we hit about 4 construction zones – we had to wait for about 40 minutes at one of them!

We passed to the north of Algonquin park and had to decide whether or not to detour through it. In the end we decided not to because it would have been a few hours detour, and we were not far enough along to stop for the day, so we just would have been driving through anyway. So best to just keep on moving. Similarly, we did not dip down into southern Ontario at all, instead taking highway 17 straight across from Ottawa, through North Bay to Sudbury.

The drive was pretty unremarkable today, but tonight’s campground is really beautiful – best spot we’ve been in for a while. Nice to be back in the Ontario provinicial parks. There is a really nice waterfall here, pretty large and raging away. There’s also a swimming hole just below the falls. It would be great to be spending a day here, but we don’t have the time. A great vacation would be to drive from around here (maybe starting in Algonquin) and head to Thunder Bay, stopping at several provinical parks for 2 nights – so you have a full day with no driving to enjoy the campground you are in. There are so many between here and there.
Once we passed Espanola (about 30km ago) we were back onto familiar ground – though it doesn’t look too familiar right now. Kind of unremarkable along the road though, it’s not surprising that it did not stick in our minds. Tomorrow should be a really nice day as we pass along the eastern then northern shore of Lake Superior – some of our favourite scenery coming out. We plan to stop at a number of spots along the way.


Once again I am glad about the route we took heading east – heading down into Southern Ontario across Manitoulin island was much more scenic than the stretch we did today. The only part I would have done differently was to head for highway 2 sooner than we did, and avoid highway 7.