Good news was that the rental location was able to hold the specific car that I wanted: 2012 Ford Focus Hatchback Titanium trim...yeah baby, leather seats, sun roof, and an incredibly sexy back. I think this car has everything in it what you need for a trip like this. Cargo space, a rear camera (else I wouldn't see at the back because of all the stuff) and a 160hp 2l engine which I think you could call fuel-efficient in North America as I managed to get a 6.8l consumption with a pretty hasty driving (of course it is far from the advertised 5.2l, but I think you could get that only in a laboratory environment. But let's not make this a car review, I am sure this car will have a lot of adventures on the next 15k that is waiting for him.
So the bad news was that my TomTom XL 350 GPS device died (at least the touchscreen did) just the day before. Awesome, I bought it specifically for this trip, worst $200 investment so far. Support couldn't do any magic, so I ended up buying the GPS Navigator application for my BlackBerry. It's not too bad, but once you loose cell coverage, you can't get any new navigation, but it will continue to navigate you on your existing route with cached data. Should have gone with this option in the first place (I have a 700 pages thick Canada back-road atlas as a backup :)).
The reason for the hasty driving was that we left a bit later than planned. Well, 3 hours later than I wanted to. This first day was a pretty long drive (almost 900km), and I wanted to reach the campsite before it got completely dark. We left at 11am and by 9pm we were here. On the way we stopped for a lunch break at Espanola, than in a remote small town to buy some food supply for the night, and another random place to fill up the car. Interesting thing I learned about the gas pumps that are not that super-modern than the ones in Toronto. You have to push some lever manually to reset the pump, else it will show the previous fill up and the gas won't flow. Took me couple of seconds to figure out, I almost went to the gas station across the street, thinking this was defective.
After Sault Ste. Marie cell phone coverage went away and hasn't returned until the campground. Our road went along the shore of Lake Superior, there were quite a few scenic lookouts and I have seen surprisingly sandy beaches resembling more the Caribbeans rather a North American lake shore. At one of the lookouts I have seen the biggest RV...EVER. It was the size of a bus you see carrying famous football teams. Only in this, merely 2 people were sitting having dinner. He had the most amazing view in front of his moving apartment. Why didn't I take a picture of that thing?...sigh, I don't know, was probably too amazed by its sheer size. I will take a picture from the next one I see. I have a feeling more of these monstrous RVs are cruising the roads. It's time to go sleeping, I think a rabbit just bumped his head into my tent.
Distance travelled: 869 km
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