One World 2 Explore: Echo's Across Canada Adventure

Angela writes:
In order to take care of the most important detail prior to starting our motorcycle adventure, I drove 4300km to Ontario to take our dog Echo to her babysitter. After working a 12 hour night shift as a nurse at the hospital, my mom jumped on a plane and flew out to Vancouver on July 23 so that she could make the trip across Canada with Echo and I.

At 6am July 24 we loaded Echo into the backseat of our 2002 Mazada Protege 5 and headed across BC. We saw lots of motorcycle travellers along the way and my stomach flipped whenever I saw them thinking that that would be Daryll and I in a couple weeks. I even tried to wave at some of them as they rode by, but alas I was a "cager" and the too cool motorcyclists did not wave back. The views of the Rockies were amazing and just before we entered Alberta a huge black bear walked across the highway in front of us. Later we gased up in Lake Louise and continued to drive for 1021km before we stopped for the night. We were going to stop in Calgary but all the motels were full due to a Saskatchewan/Calgary football game so we drove to the next town of Strathmore.

The next 4 days went something like this:

Sunday, 827 km from Strathmore, Alberta to Grenfell, Saskatchewan
Monday, 909 KM to Ignace, Ontario
Tuesday, 838 KM to Kapuskasing, Ontario
Wednesday, 713 KM to Brechin, Ontario

The rest of the journey was pretty uneventful. Once I hit Alberta I set the cruise control at 120 km/hour and didn't stop until I got to Ontario. Much to my mother's annoyance I kept making jokes about how flat the rest of the country was and even told her I could see her house in Ontario, from Alberta. Every place did have it's unique beauty though. It's incredible to believe that half our drive was spent getting to Ontario and the other half of the drive was getting across and down Ontario. Man I forgot how big the place was. The only frustrating thing about the drive was that we drove across three time zones that were ahead of the previous one so just when I thought I was making good time I would cross a time zone and lose another hour, doh! We stopped at a lot of gas stations, Tim Hortons', Tourist Information and picnic rest stops. The best one was in Herbert, Saskatchewan a little town in the middle of no where. Their tourist center was in an old CP train and it had felt like we had stepped 50 years back in time! The only modern thing I found was a book that the town had recently published and it highlighted the 2010 Olympic Torch bearers of their community. The photos were incredible and made me excited to think that for the rest of my life I will get to travel to small towns all over Canada and see their contributions to the 2010 Winter Olympics.