Who would have thought that there could be such an interesting way, besides the Trans Canada Highway through Sault Ste Marie to get from Wawa to Sudbury? Though they are slower, 80 kph, and add about half an hour to the trip, the 101 and the 144 are great roads. Both are well maintained beautiful strips of asphalt. The first goes through logging, camping and fishing country from Wawa to Timmins in a series of undulating, largely straight, stretches of road.
The scenery is quite interesting. As one who appreciates the beautiful and curious at the same time, I was impressed by this most gigantic boulder right next to the highway. This would be such a cool addition to my backyard rock collection; why it comes with it's own Christmas tree. Now if I can only figure out how to get it here without anyone noticing it's disappearance.
There are only two population centres, Chapleau and Foleyet along the entire 330 km route. Chapleau is a beautiful little town that has served as a mid-point station on the CP rail line between Sudbury and Thunder Bay since the 1860s. There is a fine museum with great artifacts, models and papers with its own steam engine outside. The plaque next to the train is dedicated to Louis Hémon, the author of the famous french novel 'Maria Chapdeleine' who was killed by a train near Chapleau in 1913 and is buried in the nearby cemetery.
The actual village is neatly laid out on the 'other side of the tracks' and boasts a wide main street with a few restaurants, a number of other businesses and public service agencies, and at least three churches, the biggest being the bilingual Roman Catholic Église Sacré Coeur.
As Northern Ontario was settled by a large number of francophone from Québec and New Brunswick it is not surprising to see signs in both official languages and the hear people in the region speaking french. This was certainly the case in Foleyet, the other much smaller community where I stopped for lunch, a great home made cheeseburger.
Though there were many signs warning of their presence
I did not encounter any moose along the way. But I did stop to pick these flowers for Jane.
Given the distance already traveled and the likelihood that there would not be much chance of finding gas on the northern part of highway 144, I pressed on pass the intersection of highways 101 and 144 to the outskirts of Timmins in order to fuel up. This 'detour', which turned out to be the right call - no gas on 144 for the first 105km, added another 50 kilometres to the ride. While I had been rather lucky with the weather and road construction on this trip up to this point, that was about to change on the stretch from Timmins to Gogama. I got both! But beyond slowing me down a bit, the rain, heavy at time wasn't that bad and the construction zones were mostly where there was resurfacing or bridge work going on. In any event I made it into Sudbury just in time to catch the end of day traffic on Lasalle Boulevard, yet early enough to have a nice dinner with my older brother, and a visit with my dear 84 year old cousin and his darling wife afterwards.
Tomorrow, the last leg of the journey.
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