{"id":1835,"date":"2011-09-21T18:13:58","date_gmt":"2011-09-22T01:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/?p=1835"},"modified":"2011-09-21T18:13:58","modified_gmt":"2011-09-22T01:13:58","slug":"back-in-thunder-bay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/?p=1835","title":{"rendered":"Back in Thunder Bay"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>2011\/09\/21<\/p>\n<p>Wow, today was a long day.\u00a0 520km in 7 hours &#8211; which is pretty good considering it was pouring rain most of the day and I took a bunch of breaks.\u00a0 Luckily the roads were mostly in very good condition and I didn&#8217;t have to worry too much about water pooling on them, so I was able to go at the speed limit (90km\/h) most of the time.<\/p>\n<p>It was cold and damp.\u00a0 When I stopped for lunch (a sandwich in a picnic area next to a small lake) I had to put my coat and toque on, and my hands still got painfully chilled.<\/p>\n<p>Today I drove through what someone on Google Earth calls &#8220;The Big Empty&#8221; &#8211; a 200km stretch of very straight road with no towns &#8211; indeed, almost no signs of civilization at all. Just road, trees and sky for a bit over two hours.\u00a0 Basically this, forever:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/IMG_3022.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"padding-left: 0px;padding-right: 0px;padding-top: 0px;border: 0px\" src=\"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/IMG_3022_thumb.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_3022\" width=\"640\" height=\"332\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There was very little traffic too &#8211; just a transport truck every few minutes.\u00a0 The isolation plus the cold and the rain created a little bit of that peculiar Canadian man-versus-elements-and-bleakness feeling that I relish.<\/p>\n<p>The landscape was still mostly flat until the town of Beardmore, where the road turns south into the Palisades.\u00a0 Between there and Nipigon was gorgeous, especially with the fall colors &#8211; actually now that I think of it, just like a bit of BC dropped in the middle of Ontario.\u00a0 And with the heavy rain, the many waterfalls were in full bloom:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/d20110921_0027.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"padding-left: 0px;padding-right: 0px;padding-top: 0px;border: 0px\" src=\"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/d20110921_0027_thumb.jpg\" alt=\"d20110921_0027\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Spotted this abandoned church in the town of Longlac (which is at the tip of a very long lake indeed):<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/d20110921_0008.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"padding-left: 0px;padding-right: 0px;padding-top: 0px;border: 0px\" src=\"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/d20110921_0008_thumb.jpg\" alt=\"d20110921_0008\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I have actually seen lots of abandoned buildings in Ontario, and yes, shame on me for not taking more photos of them.\u00a0 But for the record, if any of you UrbEx photogs want to get out and see them: I saw a lot of abandoned motels and gas stations between Sudbury and Barrie, and quite a few abandoned houses along the road between Cochrane and Hearst.<\/p>\n<p>Fall colors are out in force now &#8211; too bad today offered little chance to shoot them.<\/p>\n<p>[gmap type=&#8221;satellite&#8221; visible=&#8221;true&#8221; zoom=&#8221;auto&#8221; center=&#8221;files&#8221; file=&#8221;__UPLOAD__\/2011\/09\/20110921.kml&#8221;] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2011\/09\/21 Wow, today was a long day.\u00a0 520km in 7 hours &#8211; which is pretty good considering it was pouring rain most of the day and I took a bunch of breaks.\u00a0 Luckily the roads were mostly in very good condition and I didn&#8217;t have to worry too much about water pooling on them, so [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}