I woke up early in the morning to get ready, pack, and do my morning meetings while Hohyun slept in. As I was in my meetings, he woke up, offloaded the dashcam footage, helped check us out, move everything into the car and at noon, we left. I had a meeting in the afternoon that I had to attend, so he planned for us to stop at a rest stop an hour out of Sault Ste. Marie so I could do that. The rest stop, which was in Batchawana Bay Provincial Park, had some incredible views overlooking Lake Superior and I just felt so lucky to be able to work with views like that. As I was taking the meeting, he bought us hot apple fritters from the store there and they were DELICIOUS.
As we were sitting by the water, a stranger approached us and asked us to take his picture. Hohyun, who enjoys taking photos, took some for him and thankfully, he liked all of them. We got to talking for a bit afterwards and we found out that his name was Mayur and he was driving across the country (from Nova Scotia to Kelowna) by himself. He told us that he was planning on doing the drive as quickly as possible (so 10 hours a day approximately) in order for him to get to Kelowna to prepare the hotel he owned for opening ASAP. I was extremely impressed by this and kept asking him questions. He had lived in BC before moving to Nova Scotia, but the town he moved to in Nova Scotia was too far from the city and too small for him, so as soon as he was able to, he decided to move back to Kelowna full time. We exchanged contact info and after we told him of our plans, he said to message him if we ever came to Kelowna. We wished him well on his travels and he left.
After my meeting was over, we decided to explore. Pancake Bay Provincial Park was nearby, so we decided to drive in and take a look. Unfortunately, most of the park was closed due to covid and the bugs were brutal, so we just continued on our way. It was beginning to drizzle as well. The cell phone service from this point onward was really weak/nonexistent, which allowed us to really appreciate the nature (rocks, trees, water). We got to Lake Superior Provincial Park and stopped to take a picture at the sign. We didn’t stop to do anything at the park besides take pictures from a stopping point since it was raining and we were a bit tired.
I fell asleep as he kept driving, but told him to wake me up when we got to Wawa since I wanted to see it. I assumed that Wawa would be the “big city” amongst all these surrounding townships and would have something for us to see (like a cute main street or something), which is why I wanted to stop. I was only partially right. Because of covid, most of the stores on their main street were closed and the ones that were still open were about to close. However, the town did have something else for us to see, which were gigantic statues of Canadian Geese and we saw 3 while driving in and out of the town. Obviously, we had to pull over and take pictures.
When he told me that we were staying in White River initially, I asked him why (since it is literally in the middle of nowhere) and he said that it was the halfway point to Thunder Bay. From our previous road-tripping experiences, we both knew that breaks were really important for the overall happiness of the trip, and the drive from Sault Ste. Marie to the next big city (Thunder Bay) would be around 8 hours. For him, it was doable if we really had to but given my work schedule, I couldn’t spend 8 hours on the road with a spotty internet connection, so White River it was.
We stayed at the Continental Motel that night and checked in as soon as we got there. Hohyun asked the receptionist for things to do in White River, who paused and said “if you don’t like anything outdoorsy… nothing” and I laughed really hard when he told me. We also asked for restaurant recommendations for dinner and found out that we had a grand total of 5 places to choose from in the whole township (Robin’s Donuts, Continental Restaurant, A&W, White River Bar and Grill, and Subway). They also had this hilarious sign in their reception area paying homage to Winnie the Pooh (who was born in White River):
The motel was split across 3 buildings, and our room was in the second building. I loved the room and found it really spacious. We were really tired, so we ordered food from the Continental Restaurant next door and wanted to take the night to just rest. As we were waiting for the food, we decided to work out behind our building.
The food itself was alright, but it wasn’t the best food we’ve ever had. We planned out the next day’s driving schedule and decided that we were going to leave White River at 9am latest to make it to Thunder Bay in time for my 1pm meeting. Since we were so tired, we got ready for bed early, watched a bit of Superstore, and then fell asleep.
