Driving Northern Ontario August 2008

I drove across Northern Ontario in late August 2008. The Trans-Canada splits and turns into a rather rustic back-country road in some sections. In BC I am used to secondary highway driving in the mountains. But considering that these Ontario roads are a vital lifeline in Canada's richest province; I was surprised to discover a highway that in many places has not even gravel shoulders, is often badly pot-holed, is rarely marked as the Trans-Canada and often seems as a rural afterthought. The worst sections were the furthest from Toronto. Near Kenora the "highway" rarely runs straight for as much as 50 metres as it winds between the local lakes and hills. 

The trip from the Manitoba border to north of Toronto took 2 1/2 days. I knew Ontario was big but had forgotten that it was that big!

North of the vast Lake Superior there is some road improvement.
As I sat in the sunshine beside a Thunder Bay marina I could easily imagine that I was sitting beside a vast salty ocean... it would be interesting to see when it is frozen in winter ice.

After Thunder Bay there are many miles where the road overlooks the great lake. The many bays and rocky beaches seem designed for a kayak or canoe. The beaches consist largely of rounded red pebbles.

The second night I was camped in my trailer beside the highway between White River and Wawa. I caught this sunrise in the morning.

Beautiful Wawa Ontario! home of giant Canada geese

I drove across Northern Ontario in mid-August 2008. I was looking forward to visiting that den of iniquity known as Wawa, Ontario. This is a small town on the Trans-Canada Highway that was known in the seventies as being a place where hitch-hikers would apparently spend weeks waiting for the next ride. I never got caught there myself but I heard plenty of stories.

It is also famous as being a boring place where there was nothing to do except look at the great Canadian goose that overlooks the highway. When I arrived on the morning of August 16th I was surprised that there was plenty to see and plenty to photograph. To my surprise, Wawa has not just one giant goose but three! All are on the way into town on the short detour from the highway. According to the informative information signs, the first goose was built in 1960 but eventually fell into disrepair at a place called Fort Friendship, Ontario. In the year 2000 it was restored and given a new place of honour outside the old-fashioned Young's General Store gas station. This creature weighs 150,000 lbs and stands 27 feet high.

The second goose is made of steel and overlooks the highway beside the local tourist information centre. This one was dedicated upon the highway completion in 1963. It is 28 feet high and weighs 4,400 lbs.

The third great goose is perched nearby on the roof of the Wawa Motor Inn. This one was built in 1961 at the same time as the motel.  

There was much more to photograph here, but I will leave something for my next blog.

Wawa Ontario (Part Two) Grandma Doors

As I said in my previous blog, my short trip to Wawa, Ontario last August 16th was a big surprise. I found an interesting northern town with plenty of things to photograph.

The whole of the town's main street was done up into a massive temporary art project. Apparently the students of the local elementary school created 200 decorated doors based dedicated to the grandmothers of Wawa. Some of them are the student's grannies and some are historic ladies of the town.

According to my reading at Wawa-news.com; this was a temporary project from May to September 2008.

The students used paint, paper and multimedia materials. The results were glued onto cheap interior doors. The city took on the project of installation and removal.

I could find almost nothing online about this project. I have no idea where they got their idea. There is a similar project at GrandmaDoors.org but that is an extremely strange web site with no information about when, where or how that web site was created.

Dropping 2 Blogs (ActiveAlertWorld and ActiveAlertData)

When I started this blogging thing I thought that I would keep the different sizes of my personality in different blogs. (Just like I once had several web sites for different purposes). 

Instead I am reverting to just two blogs. If you want to keep track of me in the future then please here and my travel blog: ActiveAlertTravel.blogspot.com 

 The blogs that I am dropping should remain online with the old blogs. 

For the curious the old efforts can be found at ActiveAlertWorld.blogspot.com and ActiveAlertData.blogspot.com

World Hotel Prices are Crazy (Conspicuous Consumption Edition)

Having worked on the front-lines of the hotel industry, and having done my share of world travel, I fully realize that world hotel prices can be rather insane. A flea-ridden hovel in mid-town Manhattan can go for $100 per night while in other world cities one can get a 3 or even 4 star hotel for a small fraction of that price. 

Hotels are also excellent rational predictors of financial trends. An unsold hotel room is worth less than nothing. If the room is empty the hotel is still paying for heat and air-conditioning and loan payments on the construction costs. Staff must be trained and available. While the restaurants and bars -- which are necessary to attract visitors to fill those empty rooms -- must be staffed and ready when someone wanders in the street.

Rack rates at the front desk are always flexible downwards if there are empty rooms. You would be amazed what a discount you can get in a major hotel when you stand there with cash in hand a few hours after the expected the big bus tour just got cancelled. The same rates are always flexible in an upward direction if it is Saturday night during the big football weekend or a big trade show is in town.

 After a week of reading how Russian billionaires are having to start keeping careful watch over their millions, and how thousands of jobs are disappearing in world financial centres; and after a week where I spent hours watching my own personal investments hit the tank; and a week when every publication and politician is making dire warnings of doom; and during a month when world commodity prices have taken a dive; I sit and read predictions of insanely high price increases. The first article that I read was a Robert Hughes declaration that the new emperor of art isn't wearing any new clothes at all. (In case you weren't paying attention, people are paying millions of dollars for pickled sharks and cows as long as some guy named Damien Hirst declares that what they are buying is 'ART'. And the darn things are starting to rot!). 

 Then I read about the opening of the new Atlantis Hotel on Dubai's Palm Jumeirah island. The darn thing has more than 1500 rooms and it cost a million dollars per room to build. This is in a city with practically no historic sites, where drinking of alcohol is highly discouraged and gambling is banned. So what kind of market are they building this hotel in and who do they expect to visit? 

 That got me poking around in Expedia.com. (The following prices are all in US Dollars and refer to a week in late October this year). Dubai now has 53 Five Star hotels! Many of them are offering rooms for 40 percent lower than the $650 minimum asking price at the new Atlantis. Obviously this place was not opened as an investment. It is no more of investment than a pickled shark in a tank is either an investment or art. What about the rivals in other world cities? Well here are some quotes for one person for that same week in October:

• The Plaza in New York $812 (one of just 5 Five-Star hotels in New York)
• Trump International $515 (one of 2 Five-Star hotels in Chicago)
• Trump International $212 (one of 5 Five-Star hotels in Las Vegas)
• Hotel Scribe Paris $472 (one of 5 Five-Star hotels in Paris)
• Royal Garden Hotel $248 (one of 52 Five-Star hotels in London)
• Conrad Hotel $480 (one of 4 Five-Star hotels in Tokyo)
• Mandarin Oriental $348 (one of 11 Five-Star hotels in Hong Kong)
• Mandarin Oriental $280 (one of 8 Five-Star hotels in Singapore)
• The Peninsula $283 (one of 8 Five-Star hotels in Bangkok)
• Venus Beach Hotel $107 (a Five-Star hotel in Paphos, Cyprus)

So these hotel-builders in Dubai think that they can fill up 53 Five-Star hotels at $600 per night in a city of about 100,000 citizens and a million guest workers? Are the local Arabs going to spend their entire lives staying in these places or do the owners really expect to receive the millions of millionaire tourists that would be required to make these baubles pay for themselves? In case anyone other than myself was wondering, this is what one can find if you go down a few steps in comfort that same week in October:

• Two-Star: Hotel Swagat Palace $9 ($17 air-conditioned) in Delhi (price is apparently not a misprint)
• Three Star: Puri Dalem Sanur Hotel $30 on Sanur Beach in Bali
• Three Star: Jin Jiang East Asia Hotel $38 in Shanghai (I once stayed across the street from this one)
• Three Star: President Hotel $44 in Cairo, Egypt
• Four Star: Swiss Belhotel Plaza $113 in Kuwait City, Kuwait
• Four Star: Le Meridien Commodore $104 in Beirut, Lebanon
• Four Star: Sun N Sand $100 in Goa, India

Apparently they don't believe in market research in the Middle East and simply order up the number of hotels, the size and quality that looks good. It is just a game of monopoly. Just like they order automobiles, buy military weapons or building new factories and cities.

RoadsideAmerica.com Roadside Attractions

I have been having fun the last few months submitting entries to the RoadSideAmerica web site. (If you try RoadsideCanada.com you are directed to the web site for the Big Beaver so I had to settle for Roadside America). 

Their web site is good because they appreciate the quirky side of life. Here in Edmonton we might have North America's largest shopping mall, some massive multi-billion dollar oil refineries, a wonderful park system, a classy university and an excellent LRT transit system. But for RoadsideAmerica the city is mainly famous for a big boot! 

So far they have added my photos for these attractions: 

St Paul Alberta's UFO Landing Pad 

World's Largest Mallard Duck in Andrew, 

Alberta Giant Turkey in La Riviere, 

Manitoba Giant Buffalo in Wainwright, 

Alberta Suzie the Giant Softball in Chauvin, 

Alberta Giant Bunnock in Macklin, 

Saskatchewan Giant Baseball Bat in Edmonton, 

Alberta Giant Boot in Edmonton, Alberta 

World's Largest Sausage in Mundare, Alberta 

I have made several more submissions lately that will take some time before showing up.

Alberta, BC and the Yellowhead

Wow that has been a long pause between blog updates, hasn't it? I have been a busy man but blogging has not been one of my activities. 

I moved in November, 2007 to Edmonton Alberta for a software job that only lasted three months. In the meantime this did give another chance to explore some icy and snowy roads as I got everything packed away, sold and or moved to Edmonton. I ended up driving the 2500 km round trip to Surrey BC twice since I moved here. 

The trip down at Christmas time was especially hairy. North of Kamloops I must have seen a dozen vehicles off the road in just an hour or two. (In the first photo on the right those black portions of the road are covered in very slippery ice). It is hard to believe that I hitch-hiked that lonely road so many times. Thank god for winter snow tires! 

On the way to the coast at Easter -- when I did the final cleanup after selling my mobile home there -- I screeched to a halt near Jasper town site to take pictures of the elk feeding beside the highway. Visitors always sees elk in Jasper Park in the winter though they are much rarer in the summer when the tourists are around. But this is the first time that I have seen close to 50 all in one location.

On the return from that trip I got this nice mountain view west of Banff near the BC border. Yet another boring mountain photo but they are so easy to take in the Rockies when the weather is good. 

I have taken a few local trips near Edmonton and posted a lot of the photos on my NotSorry.com web site. I am particularly proud of my Ukrainian church photos from this area. [2020 Note: No photos on that saved version. Flickr versions are here]. So now I am making my summer travel plans. Perhaps someplace local in July and then a long range trip in late August. 

I am leaning towards going all the way to Ontario, NY state and perhaps even the New Jersey shore and Philadelphia. 

I bought a little Trillium camping trailer this past spring and am looking forward to the trip. I recently added brakes to the trailer and did the trailer controller installation myself. (Would you believe that the thieves around here wanted $400 installation fee for a job that took non-mechanical me just 2 hours?) I have making spreadsheets and studying Google maps. I am afraid that travel is no longer something that should be done casually without planning. The average price of gasoline in Canada this summer is near $1.40 litre and about $1.08 litre in the USA. Plus the trailer adds nearly a 50% penalty to the amount of fuel used. So I do not think that this is something that I will be doing every summer!