It was disappointingly short and shallow.\u00a0 I mean, it was interesting – they talked about the formation of the rich ore deposits, and showed examples of mine drift working conditions from the 1900s, 1950s and modern times.\u00a0 But we didn’t go very deep underground – I wanted to see huge underground vistas with big machines, dammit.\u00a0 These mines go down 2.2km – there must be some interesting things to see down there!<\/p>\n Breakfasted and hit the road.\u00a0 Stopped for a break at the French River crossing, which almost looks like a canal at this point:<\/p>\n Major important canoe route in the pre-railway, pre-Trans-Canada days, yadda yadda.<\/p>\n Stopped in Parry Sound to get some lunch.\u00a0 Nice town.\u00a0 No pictures because I couldn’t find the particular sites, but I have two important memories of this town.\u00a0 One is that this is the home of Tim Horton’s, or something like that, and we once made a point of stopping here for supplemental bread torii.\u00a0 The other was that near the Timmy’s there was a basement arcade where I first played Roc’n’Rope<\/a>, a game I had scrutinized screenshots of in video game magazines but never dreamed of actually finding in Canada.\u00a0 I really liked that game and wish it was more common.<\/p>\n Continued on, but had to leave the highway at Barrie because the traffic suddenly became way too intense for me.\u00a0 The 400-series highways here should have a sign saying, “You must be at least Mario Andretti to ride this road.”\u00a0 I was afraid to use my brakes for fear of causing a pileup.\u00a0 So I switched over to Yonge Street – in my mind, Toronto’s spine – which runs all the way to Barrie where it has addresses in the 20,000 range.\u00a0 Much slower road – cost me an extra hour – but better to arrive late than late.<\/p>\n My route down Yonge toward my hotel took me past two of my previous residences.\u00a0 North York at least has changed in that there are lots of new high-rise buildings, but there was also much that was still familiar.\u00a0 North of Steeles was way more developed than I remember – it’s pretty much city all the way to Aurora now.<\/p>\n![\"d20110824_0004\"](\"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/d20110824_0004_thumb.jpg\")
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