It was 11 a.m., and we crossed the border into Canada after an six-hour drive to Duluth and an OAR concert on the shores of Lake Superior.
Our phones said "No Service," and a sign read "Entering eastern time zone."
We switched the clock on the dash of the 2002 red Ford Explorer to noon.
That puts an hour behind our schedule, I thought with a little anxiety, like every other trip I've been on. I'm usually a lot quieter and a lot more on edge, thinking through back-up plans to everything that could go wrong until we actually reach out destination. This trip was no different.
We started out on Highway 11, changing our thinking from mph to km/h, and I went to look for the La Poutine's address in Thunder Bay on the GPS.
I went to the search area and changed from Minnesota, USA, to Canada and then looked confused at the screen when it allowed me to only choose New Brunswick province. We were in Ontario.
I clicked on the search area and wrote Ontario. "Not found," the screen read in small black letters.
"Uh, the GPS doesn't have Canada. It only has New Brunswick."
Nate looked at me questioningly, and I went through the process again. "No, look it just says New Brunswick. It doesn't have any other part of Canada in it."
"OK, well, I know this road leads us all the way to Hearst, so I know where we're going. I don't know the address to the restaurant though, so we may be out of luck there."
"Maybe we'll be able to find it or stop and ask for directions."
I had really wanted to try some authentic poutine when we crossed the border, but I didn't realize how big Thunder Bay was. In a city of more than 100,000 people, finding one restaurant without an address and without any cell coverage to look it up is difficult. We drove through the city for about a half-hour and finally gave up, assuming we'd be able to find something to eat along the way.
Across the border, we were passing nothing but trees, and I commented on that fact. "This isn't how I expected Canada to look."
You see, my experience with Canada was limited. As a kid, I went to Niagra Falls with my family, but that is basically the U.S. What I had read about Canada consisted of prairie stories by Janette Oke, and so I expected many more grasslands than I was seeing amidst the bluffs covered in conifers.
We continued out of Thunder Bay and were surprised at how rural everything was. There weren't small towns every now and then. There weren't even gas stations or fast food restaurants.
Our stomachs were growling, and I saw a sign that said there was a business section of Highway 11 that had restaurants, gas and a bed and breakfast. We took the turn and continued driving, but nothing commercial presented itself.
In fact, nothing presented itself except more conifers.
The bypass ended, and we merged back on to Highway 11, where the speed limit of 90 km/h was apparently a suggestion because cars with Ontario license plates blazed past us.
It was an hour before we saw a sign for Nipigon. We entered the "town" and saw a gas station and a Tim Horton's.
"Is this it?"
"I think so."
Nate and I looked at each other and laughed. This was a town? This place was insane. I was expecting a continuation of what we were used to in the U.S., and the farther north we went, the less it looked like that.
We stopped at Tim Horton's and got some food, starting our meal with two sour-cream glazed donuts, which we may have had two other times during our trip as well, and headed back on Highway 11.
The road curved around Nipigon River, amidst rocky cliffs and tree-covered bluffs. We passed ditches of wildflowers and more conifers than I had ever expected to see. There were no open areas, except where a shallow lake broke the line of trees and then disappeared.
There were no houses, very few off-roads and hardly any cars.
It was the most secluded, untouched place we had ever been, and we just couldn't get over it. We laughed at how our expectations were changing tremendously.
The hours dragged on, and I started my anxiety dance in my head again. At this point, we weren't going to get to Hearst until 8 p.m. We had to be at our outfitter early Saturday morning. I still had to get groceries, and we had to pick up our bait that we pre-ordered from the tackle shop. We had no idea when a grocery store might close in a small town and were pretty sure the bait and tackle place would be shut up tight by the time we arrived. However, we also didn't have any cell service to be able to check on hours or to call the bait shop to say we'd be late.
We entered Longlac, or Long Lake, a First Nation community, and passed a general store. "Think they have groceries?" I asked.
We pulled into the lot and quickly decided that they didn't have groceries. It didn't look like they had much of anything.
We cross the bridge over Long Lake, seeing toys sitting by the side of the road and dogs roaming around, and we entered the small town. We drove around to see if we could find a library with wi-fi or a grocery store, but there didn't seem to be either of those things.
Nate stopped at a Rexall Pharmacy. "Maybe this is their grocery store," he said.
We walked in, and it was bright and clean, but it was just a pharmacy. There were boxed beverages and bags of chips, but there wasn't the fresh items that I needed.
"What do you need?" Nate asked.
"Everything I couldn't bring over the border --- grapefruit, lettuce, sour cream, milk, eggs, escharole."
"Escarole? What is that?"
"It's a green, but I'm thinking I'm dreaming if I thought I could find that here."
We went to the back of the pharmacy, and Nate asked if there was a grocery store in town.
The two white-coated individuals looked at us like that was the dumbest question they'd encountered that week.
"Noooo," the woman responded. "There's one about 30 minutes away, but it's really expensive."
"We're heading to Hearst, and we needed some groceries," Nate said.
"Hearst would have better groceries," the woman responded.
"We don't know what time it would close though," Nate said, and the woman kindly checked on the computer to find that the grocer closed at 9 p.m. We would have plenty of time to get what we needed, or at least what we could find.
"Do you have a phone or wi-fi?" The woman again looked at us with an expression like she saw a kangaroo in Canada. "We're from the U.S., and our phones don't work here," I explained. "We are going to be late getting to Hearst, and we need to contact the bait shop and tell them."
She looked at her co-worker and decided whether she could give us a wi-fi password. She took Nate's phone and input the password so he could make a call to the bait shop via Google. He almost shouted his concern that we would be late to the bait store owner who said, in a French accent, that he could bring our bait to the hotel we were staying at.
We profusely thanked the kind pharmacist and headed back on our way.
What we had concerned a primitive area didn't seem to hold a candle to what we were getting into though. As we left town, a sign said "Check fuel level. No services 211 km."
"Nothing for 211 kilometers?" I asked, aghast.
We turned around to top off the gas tank, better to be safe than sorry, and had to drive all the way back through town to the original general store we passed to fill up. A couple of dogs without collars or tags sat underneath the shade of the store overhang. They didn't seem to belong to anyone.
I decided that I had better make a back-up menu if the many fresh items that I needed weren't available in the town of 2,000 we were heading to.
"I need my recipes. I think they're in the blue tote."
I climbed into the back of the car and tried to dig out my recipes from our tightly packed totes of supplies.
I couldn't find them.
"I forgot, they're in the folder up front."
I sat back in the passenger seat and went through the manila folder of papers we had.
"Oh no."
Nate looked at me then quickly turned his eyes back to the road. "What?"
"I think I forgot my recipes."
"Where are they?"
"I think they're on the floor in our upstairs."
"Guess we'll have to improvise."
"Looks like my chef skills are going to be put to the test here." I got to work writing my back-up plan on the yellow legal pad that had the list of ingredients I still needed to buy.
It was a long trip, but we finally made it to Hearst --- with plenty of gas in the tank --- and were delighted to find a grocery store just like back home, actually larger than what we have in town. It had everything we needed, and I didn't even need a back-up plan.
We had everything ready to go, including getting the bait at our motel, and went into the restaurant for dinner.
"I'll have the salmon burger," I told the waitress. "Fries would be great."
"Gravy fries?" She asked.
I said great, not gravy, but what the heck. "Sure."
We were enjoying our meals, complete with the Canadian staple of gravy fries, when the waitress came over.
"I forgot to bring your ketchup and vinegar."
She said a bottle of white distilled vinegar on the table.
We knew that vinegar on the table was a staple, from watching "Letterkenny," but we thought it was malt vinegar. It turned out it was white vinegar, which made me think more of cleaning than of eating.
Nate poured some on his plate and dipped his salty, crispy fries in it.
"Actually, that's quite good."
"OK, give me some." I dipped my fries in a pool of the clear liquid. "Alright, that is actually good."
It was like salt and vinegar chips but fries. Dip them in vinegar and gravy, and it's even better.
When in Rome, right?
Go to: Part II
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