There is some chance that I will be driving to Edmonton from Ottawa by the end of November. Any hints or tips on the highway? Are motels and restaurants going to be fairly readily available? Gas stations?
What are my chances of getting into impassable weather conditions? Should I hunker down in Sault Ste Marie making sure the coast is clear for a dash around Lake Superior to Thunder Bay? Do the Canadian plains get ground blizzards like Colorado does?
Anything I should know?
Motels and restaurants? No problem. Gas stations good during daytime hours and manageable 24 hours, but don’t miss an opportunity to top up.
Weather? Could be anything. Keep an eye and an ear on weather reports at all times. Snow squalls come up quickly along the top of Superior - suggest doing that run during daytime hours. Major storm systems can come up from a south westerly direction or from straight out of the west. Watch for black ice. Blizzards can be pretty impressive. Be prepared to hunker down in a motel for a couple of days. If the weather is especially severe the highways get shut down. Carry a survival kit and lots of warm clothing. Watch for deer and moose. 90 kph two lane with lots of passing zones through Ontario, twinned and 100 kph in Manitoba and 110 Saskatchewan and Alberta.
Routing pretty easy. Trans Canada to Regina then north to Saskatoon to the Yellowhead to Edmonton. 3 solid days of solo driving if the conditions are perfect. Budget for 4 or 5 (or more) if the weather is bad or you want to take it easy.
Not too much scenery west of Kenora. Driving’s a good way to see the country, but I think I would fly.
If you’re on the Trans-Canada Highway and then the Yellowhead, you won’t have any troubles finding hotels or gas stations on a regular basis (plus Tim Horton’s, of course 
).
Weather is usually pretty good around then - often clear and cold, bright blue skies. (I’ve driven to Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg around that time for Grey Cup, and the drives have been uneventful.)
However, this being Canada, there’s always the possibility of snow, but even so, the highways are designed to deal with blowing snow by being elevated above the surrounding terrain by a few inches, so it takes quite a blizzard before the highways are impassable. That kind of weather is unlikely in late November - more likely from late December onwards. Just keep an eye on the weather channel for regular updates, and you should be okay.
Can’t speak for the weather around Superior - maybe muffin will check in with some info.
By the way, what’s a “ground” blizzard? Different from a regular blizzard? 
Actually, if you don’t need to go to Regina, it’s quicker to leave the Trans-Canada around Portage la Prairie and take the Yellowhead straight to Saskatoon.
Depends on your taste. Southern Saskatchewan scenery is best appreciated by those with a taste for abstract art. 
Not much to add, I’m afraid, but keep us posted as to whether you make the trip. Looks like I’ll still be in Edmonton at the end of November, so maybe we could organize a mini-Edmondope or something.
I’ve gone the Portage turn off many times, but the last couple of times I went the Regina route. Nice twinned road between Regina and S’ktoon, faster speeds and only about 40 km farther. I got to where I was going in the same amount of time and with much less stress.
That might work for someone from down east. But not with this Bomber fan 
If he’s carrying a banjo and wearing a straw hat, he’ll be fine.
The Trans-Canada highway isn’t very good in Northern Ontario – it’s only a two-lane highway. You might be better off going through the States and heading north at some point.
Yesterday in TBay we had sun, rain, freezing rain, a wee bit of snow (still some left here in Marathon today), and one hell of a wind storm, all before lunch. November can get a bit nasty (think Edmund Fitzgerald), and there will be a dump of snow before the end of November, but probably not a major winter snow storm. Odds are that weather will not be a problem for you, however, don’t be surprised if the road is closed for a few hours north of the Soo due to freezing rain and high winds. That’s why truckers who need to make their deadlines skip the whole top of Superior thing and instead stay inland by taking the very dull Highway 11 rather than the very scenic highway 17.
The Soo to Wawa section and the Marathon to Nipigon section are very beautiful, although November here is very drab due to the leaves having fallen but the heavy snow not yet having arrived.
Try to avoid driving at night in north-western Ontario – way too many moose, deer and bear wandering about up here (friend’s hubby killed by a moose a couple of years ago, I took out Trixie the neighbourhood deer a few months ago, neighbour totalled her van on a deer last week, traffic was slowed down last night and again this morning due to bears). If you do drive at night, don’t go too fast, keep very alert, and lie down as you hit the brakes for moose.
If you do travel at night, fill up your gas tank every chance you have. There are communities every hour to hour and a half along the top of Superior, but very few of them have late night gas stations. The Soo, Nipigon and TBay have them, and White River stays open late in the evening, but otherwise don’t count on stations being open much after prime time.
Always travel with a survival kit in the event of a cold weather breakdown in the middle of nowhere. Seriously.
Check the weather before you leave the Soo. If in doubt, hunker down in the Watertower Inn.
If you get bogged down along the top of Superior, the Travelodge in Marathon (room 222 or higher) is a blessing.
If you need a place to crash in TBay, drop me a line: culpeperlaw@tbaytel.net
The highway through Michigan’s UP is no great prize either, though. Unless you cut south through Detroit and Chicago, you’re not making the whole trip on 4 lane highways.
Bombers? that would be the team that needs the Roughriders’ help this weekend against the ARgos to let them creep back into first place, right?
A ground blizzard is not a precipitation event - it’s a wind-driven rearrangement of the precipitation that’s already on the ground. As Frank would know from having lived in Colorado, the mix of high winds and powder snow can cut visibility to zero and make roads treacherous, even though if one were to look straight up, the sky might be completely clear.
In Wyoming especially, which is notorious for ground blizzards, you’ll see strategically placed angled plank fences (a/k/a “snow fences”, which are intended to mitigate the effects of wind-driven snow by breaking up the straight-line high winds and giving the snow a place to drift before it covers whatever highway or train track the fence is protecting.
Sorry about the run-on sentence there at the end. :rolleyes:
Which exit is that?
From the Trans Canada just west of TBay, turn south on Hwy. 588. Lots of free loving, pot growing hippies in the hills down that way.
Thanks all for the advice. The trip seems eminently doable. Now I just need to find out if I’m doing it.
I don’t want to go through the States this trip. I want to see Canada. Mapping it out doesn’t show much of a time difference between staying in Canada, going through the UP, or going through Chicago, so it’s not like I’m costing myself days of travel time.
Muffin, I might take you up on that. I’ll let you know once I’ve made better plans.
So a fellow inherits some land from his mother in Nolalu. After growing pot on it for a few years, he sells it to a buddy and heads for Central America, where he travels about for a few years with a couple of girlfriends.
One of the girlfriends wanders off, so he marries the remaining girlfriend, and they move into a sailboat that she inherited from her father in Florida. Eventually she sells it and they move back to Nolalu, where he builds a shack out of found materials on the land that he had previously sold to his Buddy.
Allegedly, they subsist by growing and selling pot. Despite being arrested repeatedly, they always get off by claiming that it is the Buddy who is growing, not them. Similarly, every time the Buddy gets arrested, he gets off by claiming that it is the squatters who are growing, not him. The arrests cause friction between Buddy and the squatters, but it’s hard to stay angry for too long with your toking pals.
The squatters integrate so well back into the community that they start spouse swapping. This eventually leads to divorces, when after a period of many years, an ongoing swap with another couple turns sour and each spouse moves in permanently with the other couple’s spouse, although everyone still regularly sleeps with everyone else despite the divorces.
That’s when the squatter wife sues her husband for a matrimonial division of the property owned by the fellow’s Buddy, including the shack with running water. The husband’s defence includes “the only thing running about the water was me running back and forth with buckets to the creek.” She also sued for support based on income derived from their “garden” (their alleged pot growing enterprise), and from his busking (he is not a bad street-corner guitar player and singer). Meanwhile, the Buddy who owned the land was wondering how in hell a squatter’s wife could sue a squatter for land that neither of them owned or had a right to be on. Despite the lawsuit between the squatters, and the great concern Buddy has about claims against his land, and the two couples having permanently swapped spouses, everyone is still going at it like rabbits with each other, and toking like fiends.
The property claim against the husband was dropped following examinations, when the wife’s lawyer decided that it would be futile to proceed against the husband in court because “he looks just like Jesus Christ,” which he does. In fact, the lot of them are all very physically attractive, well spoken and interesting hippies.
So if you are ever in Nolalu, and see a fellow who looks just like Jesus Christ wandering about playing a guitar, your doorway to pot smoking and fornication with various members of either sex, either individually or collectively, is now wide open.
That’s Nolalu.
To put it another way, yesterday when I momentarily confused the village of Nolalu with the nearby village of Hymers, my client exclaimed “Oh god! No, I’m not from Nolalu, I’m from Hymers! I’m not one of THEM!”
Not sure if it’s been mentioned above, but you might want to seriously consider snow tires for you car before you head out, not just all-seasons, lest you get into icy/snowy conditions.
Also, moose and deer are especially active around dusk (at least, that’s when I always see them), so be careful! I am not terrifically familiar with deer behaviour, but moose have been known to leap onto the highway to clear the roadside ditch, so they can appear suddenly, even running across the road. They don’t avoid cars, and in fact are often drawn to the highway by low-growing roadside brush (mm tasty) and salt they put on the roads. I would think this latter would be more of a consideration later on in the winter than in late November.
You are driving to Edmonton from Ottawa in November? Ugh.
Actually, Northern Ontario is quite nice, but the rest of the drive is drab-o-rama in my opinion. Bring some books on tape.
Google maps indeed routes you through the US - you cross over just north of Detroit, by their default route, and it looks like you’re on interstate roads (4 lanes minimum) from there as far as Jamestown ND. From there, what little remains of the US portion is on US-highways (step down from interstate; sometimes/often 2-lane, through towns, traffic lights) so that would compare to what others have described of the Canadian 2-lane highways. Though it’s further south than the all-Canadian route, I imagine the same cautions would apply.
My guess is that the route from Ottawa to the US border - which passes by Toronto, Kitchener and other major locations, is very good road but you could also do the US for that portion: cross over the St. Lawrence into the US and take I-81 south, then go west on I-90 the whole way. I-90 is a major east-west interstate and likely to have any needed amenities though the parts of it through Ohio, Indiana and Illinois are toll roads. That only seems to add about a hundred km or so to the default route, for a total of 4000ish km. It is, however, completely lacking in any scenery worth seeing (well, as far as Chicago; I haven’t been further along that route by car).
Though the all-Canada route (which goes via Winnipeg) seems to be about 3500 km, which is significantly shorter - a full day driving if you’re not pushing it, half a day if you are.
So basically - without knowing the Canadian portion at all, my suggestion would be to stick with the most-travelled roads possible, that time of year. In the summer, a shorter or more scenic route would be lovely but if winter is a concern, you’d want to be within relatively easy reach of shelter.
The way you put it, Muffin, it sounds like a law school hypothetical. I was almost ready to “discuss all legal issues arising from the given scenario.”
Frank, you should be fine if you stay on Highway 17 through Ontario. I’ve never done the Ottawa-to-Sudbury portion of that highway, but I have done the Sudbury-to-Ontario/Manitoba border part. Yes, it’s two-lane, but you’ll see why: there is simply no room in spots to make a four-lane road. You’re in Canadian shield country and there is only so much that the billion-year-old granite is willing to give.
Anyway, if I recall correctly, it’s a busy road and one of the very few road routes between eastern and western Canada (don’t they all meet up to go over a single bridge near Lake Nipigon?). As a result, there are plenty of places to get food and fuel, and to stop for the night. But use your map and plan carefully, to make sure you can get between them safely. Remember that the days are getting shorter too, and the sun will rise later and set earlier than you would be familiar with at this time of year in Colorado. You may not want to try some portions of that trip in the dark–the road winds.
If I can ask, what’s the purpose of your trip?