Aside from the whole experience of being on the road, there is also the fact that this trip culminated in my first ever face-to-face meeting with my in-laws. Although my husband and I had a very 21st century romance, meeting online as we did, I did not meet my in-laws until this trip and I felt not a little unlike an arranged bride, or mail-order bride.
I was warmly accepted, however, and whatever nerves I may have been prone to as the very first woman my husband took home to meet his mother soon dissipated under their unreserved welcome. At a summer party held the day following our arrival, I was introduced to everyone as "G's wife, newly-arrived from Jamaica" and everyone was likewise polite and welcoming. I was able to tell the story of our meeting and marriage once or twice, and told how it all sounded very fairy-tale like!
That I was the only non-Caucasian present did not make me feel the least out of place, and as the party-goers were all likewise in their 30's and 40's (save for my nephews by marriage), I was able to relate to the topics they found to speak on and mingled freely, much to G's delight. He even teased me later that I was quite the social butterfly and did very well in putting aside my natural reserve on meeting new people.
Back to the road trip, though. Given the fact that we had some 565km (351 miles) to cover, by necessity our trip started early. I was already packed from the night before, G chose to do his the morning of travel. By 6:55 a.m. we were quite ready to leave, and found ourselves on the porch staring out at the rain misting down. My breath began to frost on the air! Naturally that put paid to our plans to walk into town with our backpacks, so we ended up calling a taxi to take us to the bus depot.
The depot in town is an office just off the highway. The Greyhound office is small, but was wonderfully warm to be in considering the wind, drizzle, and temperatures outside and the fact that under my hoodie I wore only a t-shirt over my underthings. I had neglected to add a second layer on top (to make three in total) and I was feeling it. Naturally I had a good laugh at the idea that I was feeling this way on an August morning! First and second travel tips: dress for the weather, and make note of the minimum pre-boarding arrival time requirement. Greyhound's is at least an hour prior, especially if you are purchasing/collecting your tickets the same day as travel will occur.
The bus to begin our journey turned out to be one of those smaller yellow school buses. Again cause for much hilarity, as I would for the first time ride "the short bus". However, as more people began to arrive, it became apparent that the short bus would not do at all, so with only twenty-five minutes to go before our 9:00 a.m. departure time, the driver departed with the short bus and returned with a standard sized school bus in the recognizable yellow. Yes, I have pictures:
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| Greyhound Office, Elliot Lake |
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| The short bus! |
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| Standard sized bus |
With everyone ensconced aboard the second bus, we departed down Highway 108 and drove the nearly 30km that took us to the junction with Highway 17, otherwise known as the Trans-Canada Highway, because it runs across the country. At the junction we actually turned west and headed in the direction of Sault Ste. Marie, but only going as far as Spragge, the next town (not sure, it might be best described as a village or a hamlet, it's that small) on the highway. In Spragge, we off-loaded and waited for the Greyhound bus coming from out west. Yes, the bus we took was coming from other cities and towns all the way from British Columbia through the prairie provinces and on into Ontario! Here it is:
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| Spragge layover |
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| Greyhound bus to Toronto |
From Spragge, we departed east for Sudbury around 9:30 a.m., the next major stop and the major Greyhound depot in the region. The trip lasted some two hours and a little bit. It was an overcast and cool morning throughout, rain dogged our miles from town to town. Before we got to Sudbury, however, we would make stops in Spanish and Espanola. The Spanish stop was a drive-by, basically, as no-one was waiting for the bus and the ticket office is located in a building fronting the highway. In Espanola we did a quick loop around their city hall and paused long enough to collect a few more passengers. The rain was coming down in a steady drizzle at that time. Here is Espanola's city hall:
From Espanola we then headed for Sudbury with no more stops. At around 11:40 a.m., we pulled into the Greyhound depot in Sudbury and were advised our layover would last until 1:00 p.m. We had time to get lunch, stretch our legs and acquaint ourselves with the rest rooms at the stop. Most persons chose a conveniently nearby McDonald's for lunch, some made use of the vending machine fare offered inside the depot, most selections being priced around $2.00 (a toonie). There was also a coffee/tea/sandwich shop, where I managed to get a cup of hot chocolate for $1.75. It was a Keurig machine, but the shortage of milk left a little something to be desired, to my taste anyways.
We opted to get lunch at the Greek eatery across the street from the depot. The pork savlaki (a kind of wrap) with tsatziki sauce was worth every penny. Ask them for extra sauce, they will add it. They also do chicken variations, if you are not fond of pork. I took these shots of the Sudbury Greyhound Depot and Herc's Eatery:
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| Herc's Eatery |
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| Sudbury Greyhound Depot |
Traveling tip number 3: Carry a selection of coins on you for purchasing items from vending machines and cash-only vendors. Unlike Jamaica, loonies (one dollar Canadian coin) and toonies (two dollars Canadian coins) and the smaller fractions, quarters (25 cents), nickels (5 cents, the larger) and dimes (10 cents, smaller than the nickel!) are actually useful for making purchases.
1:00 p.m. arrived with no sign of our bus, which had departed for servicing after decanting us at the depot. We were advised to leave our bags on board if we so preferred and also to mark our seats, as persons who had previously been on the bus would be boarded in priority to persons starting their journey in Sudbury. A number of other buses arrived, picked up passengers for Ottawa, Montreal and other points, still with no sign of our bus. Some forty-five minutes after we were supposed to have departed it finally showed up, delayed by a traffic accident, the driver said. This meant that we departed Sudbury fully one hour later than originally scheduled.
It was at this point in our journey that I began to feel apprehensive. We had barely an hour between our last stop in Toronto and the departure of the train which would take us out to where my in-laws actually resided. As it was the last train of the day and our tickets were economy, non-refundable and non transferable, we would be severely inconvenienced if we did not get to Union Station in time to catch the Via Rail train. With an hour lost to the stopover in Sudbury, I worried we might be left stranded in Toronto overnight. G was not happy, and determined that if we did miss our train, Greyhound would surely hear about it.
We continued south through more of the Georgian Bay area, what is commonly called "cottage country", where many southern Ontarians own weekend/summer cottages where they spend warmer days in outdoor pursuits. It is a very picturesque area, but as we were mostly on the highway, I saw little more than glimpses. We had one very short stop in Parry Sound, where I was able to take these pictures:
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| Highway |
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| Travel Centre at rest stop |
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| Boat on display outside Parry Sound travel centre |
Further south, we entered what was obviously farmland. Large tracts of land covered in corn began to roll past, with farm houses and barns being typical features. We were by now in Simcoe county, and G said that if we made it to the city of Barrie around 5:30 p.m., there was still a chance we could make the train. We began rolling past Barrie around 5:40 p.m. and he said it was good enough.
Signs began appearing welcoming us to Toronto, and it was soon obvious we were on a major artery leading into the city. One sign proclaimed the population of Toronto as 2,500,000, which is essentially the same as the entire population of Jamaica, give or take a a hundred thousand or two! We made it to a highway leading to the Yorkdale Mall, and observed planes overhead going to Lester Pearson International Airport, where I had landed about 10 weeks earlier. There was a brief stop at the Yorkdale Mall, and then it was on to our final destination downtown. Another fifteen minutes served to bring us to the last stop at the Toronto Metro Coach Terminal, on Bay Street.
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| Plane on the way to LPIA |
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| Yorkdale Mall |
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| Yorkdale Bus Terminal (inside) |
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| Yorkdale Bus Terminal (outside) |
Unfortunately, at this stage of our travel I had little time to take photos and did not manage a photo of the Metro terminal. Immediately we disembarked from the bus, we were headed down a flight of stairs and hurrying through Atrium on Bay, a set of shops below buildings on Bay Street that also had a subway station. I had to stay hard on G's heels as he moved quickly through the crowds. We paid for our subway tickets at 6:36 p.m. and were on the platform for barely a minute when the subway pulled up. Two stops later, we were inside Union Station. It was 6:46 p.m., our train was leaving at 7:05 p.m.
We raced through Union Station to find the kiosks where we could scan our online confirmation barcodes and receive our tickets. When we found them, we quickly scanned the pages and received our tickets, two pieces printed for each traveler. We were then directed to a distressingly long line as being the one going to our train, and joined it somewhere in the middle as it snaked its way onto our train's platform. Our car was the sixth and last, and barely had we made it onto the train and sat down, before the bell was being rung and the train signalling it was pulling away. We had made it, after all!
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| On the platform |
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| Safely on board the train |
Traveling tips number 4 and 5: Pre-book your tickets for the bus and train whenever possible. Travel light, you never know when you might need to make a run for it!
An hour and three stops later, we had arrived at the suburban city my in-laws call home. We were greeted outside the train station by G's mother and sister, then driven the short distance to their home.
In Road Trip part 3: Toronto!
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