Maniac Roadtrip, Part 6: The Long Journey Home, With Barrenness And Wake-ups
As I indicated in Part 5, the rest of the manic roadtrip took place in the dark of the tiring night. There wasn't much opportunity to take photographs because nightfall. Also, after spending well over fourteen hours in the road, I was getting tired.
Keep-Awake Tricks
The loose pylon I had to move, which I mentioned in the previous part, I half-cleared as of 12:30 AM:
at which I had put on 965 km or a little more than 600 miles. Good reason to be glad that the rental company offers unlimited mileage :)
In the abstract, a highway with sparse traffic is better for a tired driver because there are hardly any vehicles that could be hit. But in fact, it's worse in some ways. Seeing someone else's headlights or taillights make you pay attention and keep you alert. When those aren't around, it's not that hard to get lulled and risk a drive-off-the-highway solo accident.
Here's a trick that works: flipping on the high beams when no other car is around.
If you've been driving some time, you know well how annoying someone else's high beams can be when they're coming towards you in the opposite lane or are riding your tail. Drivers' courtesy says, flip your high beams to low when another car approaches from the other side or when you're behind someone. That obligation to be courteous - which does make highway driving safer for everyone - did keep me alert. It even had me watching the thin night fog for the brightness that foreshadowed another vehicle on the other side of the road.
When I reached North Bay again, the dividing line became clear again. I found a self-serve gas station that was actually open! After some friendly palaver with the night clerk, I saw a trio of drunken youths shouting as they stumbled to wherever they were going. Ah, civilization ;)
Sense Of Direction, Once More
I don't know why, but North Bay was a bit tough for me to get out of. Somewhere in the town, I had meandered off Highway 11. Either there was a sign I messed or there was no sign at all. Yes, ladies, I was man-driving. :) 'Twasn't until I hit a residential street where all the houses were darkened that I figgered something had gone wrong.
There are times when a driver has to rely on a sense of direction. When I was trying to get out of Larder Lake to go through Kirkland Lake, I needed to get to Highway 66. It was a bit of a challenge because Larder not only had no signs pointing the way but also didn't have any traffic lights I could see. Also, I had arrived - after sundown - via Highway 624.
So all I could do was drive in the direction I expected Highway 66 to be. Mind the dead-end signs, and cross my fingers. That worked: the second major street that was laid out the right way was Highway 66. One of the upsides of a small town is that it's actually hard to get seriously lost.
But North Bay was much bigger, and I had driven into the asleep part of the residential area. Again, I had to rely on my sense of direction: look for a nice paved road that went off into nowhere in the right direction with a high speed limit. All the while, looking for a sign that said either "Hwy 11" or "To Hwy 11." All the while, crossing my fingers.
Again, I had some luck. The road-to-nowhere I picked was a provincial highway, and it did have a sign that said "To Hwy 11" with a very welcome arrow. It took a transfer to another provincial highway before I got back on the main drag, but I didn't lose much time; only a bit of brow sweat. A sense of direction does help - almost as much as a well-laid-out system of provincial highways ;)
"Where Is Everybody?"
This can be explained by the time-of-night, but I saw something that was kind-of eerie after Highway 11 had expanded from two lanes to a full four. Hardly anyone was on it! There were long stretches when I saw no-one, not even vehicles travelling in the opposite direction. This photo I took while north of Huntsville shows what I was driving through:
No traffic my way, no-traffic darkness the opposite way.
Okay: this pic was snapped somewhere around 2 AM on a Saturday night-Sunday morning. It's not a time when there should be that many folks on the road. Still, 11 is one of the main Ontario highways. It was a bit eerie to see a superhighway-level thoroughfare on which you could play road hockey almost undisturbed.
"Car!"
This vehicle-desert continued for a lot longer than I had expected. Even after I had passed through cottage country, there was hardly any traffic. Even transport trucks, which do make runs at night, were almost absent. I did see two that were parked off-highway, their drivers asleep.
To Toronto And Home - And A Wake-up Jolt
When 11 merged into Highway 400, the traffic did pick up - but only to 'bout the flow of Highway 11 north of North Bay. Granted: there's a good reason for it. I was southbound on northerly 11 late Saturday night; I was on 400 in the dead of night. Still, 400 is so busy that cottagers routinely allocate extra time for their homeward journeys to Toronto at the end of holiday weekends because traffic jams are routine then.
In Part 1, I showed a few pics from an off-400 gas-station-and-food-court combo called "ON Route." I pulled into the southbound one a little south of Barrie because its roadway and parking lot was made with a material now considered chi-chi:
Concrete. Not asphalt, not Tarmac: concrete.
Have you noticed any monster homes in posh neighborhoods being built with concrete driveways? Like this one...
that's currently listed for C$7.5 million?
This trend is profoundly retro. In the house I grew up in, the one-block street - until last year - was made of concrete. Concrete that was cracked, patched, replaced with asphalt fixits until about half of it was visible, but concrete nonetheless. It was built with concrete because it was so old, asphalt was not yet standard! When it was finally replaced with asphalt, the workers dug up a few culverts below it that were so old they were half-way to the aboriginal-meeting-place timeframe.
What was obsolete is new again: go figure. Anything for positionality.
With sparse traffic, I was kind-of lulled as I made my way into Toronto. Normally, I stay in the fast lane because home is reached via the 401 eastbound and the two leftmost lanes of the 400 exit onto 401-East. Lulled by sleeplessness and habit, I saw a construction sign warning everyone that the three leftmost lanes were blocked off after Finch Avenue. Since I had never seen anything like that ever, I assumed that the sign had been mis-programmed: something like this sign:
But after Finch, I was startled into realizing that more than half the entire highway was closed off for construction. I not only had to delicately but quickly make three lane changes, but also had to figure out how to get to the 401. If there were a single-lane special access route to the eastbound 401, I didn't see it. Instead, I had to pull off what amounted to a U-turn via Black Creek Drive and Jane Street
Nuthin' like "What the hell do I do now!?" to jolt a sleepy driver awake. I assure you, it works much better than Red Bull :)
Home At Last
The 401 being the 401, there was light but solid traffic even at 4 AM on a Sunday. Traffic that keeps up the good ol' 401 habit of tailgating, which made negotiating lane changes enough of a pick-me up for the final leg. When I reached my turn-off and then home, I took this final picture of the odometer:
The rental car then had 14,397 kilometers on it. Subtracting the 13,089 kilometers showing when I started off:
leaves a grand total of 1,308 kilometers driven. In eighteen hours, I had been from Toronto to Larder Lake and back - and had driven 817.5 full miles. How's that for a manic roadtrip?
Of course, after mania comes depression - i.e., sleep. After unloading my goodies Sunday afternoon, I returned the car to the rental agency just before 8 AM on Monday morning. The rental clerk wasn't surprised by the mileage I had put on. They know me by now. :)
If you've read through the entire series, thanks a lot! If you haven't, here are the other parts:
- A Necessary Errand...
- Followed By Another Errand
- From Cottage Country To The Border Of The North
- Tourists And Traps
- Night Driving And Peculiar Hazards
- The Long Journey Home, With Barrenness And Wake-ups (You're Here!)