Monday 9 August 2010

Home At Last... At LONG Last

Good afternoon ladies and gents.  Sorry for not posting yesterday, but there really wasn't much to say.  We got a lot of rain in the morning, so we spent that time mostly just bumming around the lodge and driving to nearby shops.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, it gave me a great opportunity to get a ride in my uncle's Toyota MR2.  Big grin!

In the afternoon I just went for a jog out to the lighthouse and then chilled out in the lounge with my book.  After dinner we all relaxed in the lounge and listened to Andy sing the evening away.  All told a very relaxing day.

Today, not so much.

After breakfast I got right on the road, hoping to get home in the early afternoon.  I made great time to Parry Sound, stopped for a bit of gas and a bag of beef jerky at the half way point, and continued on my merry way.  However, it was around half way between Parry Sound and Barrie that the fine troglodytes of the Ontario Provincial Police decided that it would be amusing to shut down the highway.  Now, it may seem like I'm being critical of the highway closure itself, which I'm not.  I have no idea why they closed the highway, and given their track record it's entirely possible that the closure was vaguely warranted.  No, my problem with our lobotomised boys in blue was that they simply blocked off the highway at a particular exit and dumped everyone using that highway out onto a meandering county road and left us to fend for ourselves.  With that many cars dumped onto a road, completely devoid of directions, chaos ensued.  People were stopping in the middle of the road to turn around, or try to get directions.  There were hundreds of us on this tiny road, on the way to a small town where the great caravan of cars would be held up by a stop sign.  In short, it took about an hour and a half to get the roughly 17km to the first small town.  At that point, things sped up a bit, but aimlessly as at that point, still without signs or guidance in anyway from the imbeciles who had thrown us off the highway, the great caravan wove its way through the great Ontario back-country.  With the previously mentioned stop for gas and one short washroom break being my only stops it still took just a little over 7 hours to get home.  The real fun was that thanks to my detour I got into Barrie around 4:00, which was just time for traffic to start getting nasty, so even the last leg of the journey where I was back on course was a bit arduous.  As usual the OPP have managed to make it look like this was everyone's first day on the job.  Well done.

Okay, okay, enough ranting from me.  Aside from the crumby drive home I had a great vacation.  Looking forward to heading back up for some camping at the end of September.

5 comments:

Jabbles said...

Sucks about the horrible drive home. At least you got a fun ride in a cool car. I need to get me a ride in that too, I am sure I can negotiate a trade for a ride in the MINI, my MINI rides are a thing of legend at work.

Corey Blosser said...

An hour and a half to go 17km? That's an average of roughly 11.66666666666666666666 km an hour.

I did that math in my head.

I thought your Blackberry might have GPS - but maybe you didn't have cell tower signal?

Colin Young said...

Good math Corey!

Actually, yes, my BlackBerry does have a GPS, but it's not a great one, and it wasn't getting a good signal when we were surrounded by trees and the sky was overcast. Once I ended up in Gravenhurst I was able to get Google Maps working and it took me home.

Corey Blosser said...

Ohh.. you ended up in Gravenhurst.. that probably means that you came across Hwy 169 through a tiny hamlet called Torrance - so here's a bit of "Much Too Late and Poorly Timed Advice":

There's a place off the road called Torrance Barrens that is a 'Dark Sky Preserve' - an area roughly 1 bazillion hectares (or cubic light-years if you prefer metric) without a single light-bulb. There's no light pollution at all, and the rocky soil prohibits trees from growing very tall, so you can see the nightsky from horizon to horizon - I went there once in August during the meteor showers, and it's specatular on a clear night.

Completely understand your traffic frustration - I was coming south one evening when there was an accident where Hwy 11 and 400 merge - both highways were closed.. we actually turned the car off because we didn't move for half an hour+..

Corey Blosser said...

For next time : http://www.muskokaheritage.org/natural/torrancebarrens.asp