Thunder Bay

We're in Thunder Bay today, having flown from Kenora to Thunder Bay on Saturday. We decided to take a day off and check out the local wildlife. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Saturday morning we had a fire alarm go off at the discount motel at 6:30am. I was in the shower, but I figured there was a pretty good chance that it could be real at this place. The firetruck, the ambulance, the police all showed up soon, and checked the place out but couldn't find any problem. They had to decide whether to break down doors or wait for the owner to get out of bed and bring a master key. Luckily for many of the hungover guests who refused to do more than peek out their windows, they waited for the key. However, there was one guy who came out of his room with nothing but his portable electric beer cooler and the clothes on his back. Got his priorities figured out.

After that, we had breakfast down the street and took a cab back to the airport. The taxi driver told us a little more history of the place, not all is suitable to repeat here, involving people who come in from out of town to rent a room just to do some heavy drinking, but he did say there was a knifing a couple of weeks back at the place. Hey, remember, this is Pete's pick.

We had an uneventful takeoff and flew direct to Dryden for more fuel for the next long leg. I remembered reading something about a discount for COPA members somewhere along here, and it turns out we got about a 10% discount (one of the many reasons for joining COPA). So far, gas is costing about $1.65 per litre, and we have spent close to $1000 for gas. A typical re-fuel costs us $100-$150 and we try to re-fuel by the time we get to 1/2 tanks. The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.


After that we followed Hwy 17 until it disappeared and navigated by radio over land that was scattered and broken lakes. At times it was ~50% water. We passed one area called "Lac de Mille Lacs", which literally looked like a thousand islands in the lake. It was quite bumpy, with scattered clouds at ~6500 feet. We were still encountering updrafts where we'd quickly climb 1000 ft/min and be 500 ft off our planned cruising altitude.

There was still a lot of chatter on the enroute traffic frequency, but most pilots were referring to their route by local lake names, but we had no idea where they were. The enroute frequency covers a very wide area, and there are literally thousands of lakes on the map, and not all have names printed.

We thought we saw an oncoming aircraft with it's landing light on heading straight for us, but after quite awhile we realized it was a train off in the distance on the ground.


We approached Thunder Bay and could see it from quite a distance away. The CFS procedures have a confusing note about not going below 2500 ASL on approach until cleared by ATC, but the airport elevation is only 600 ft. There was lots of traffic the ATC was handling, and he eventually cleared us direct to threshold on the downwind well before we normally would have turned base, so Pete did a very steep kamikaze descent to try and make the field but we ended up overshooting and going around. Second time, the ATC told us that circuit altitude was 1600 ASL, not the 2500 in the CFS. We had told the ATC we were unfamiliar with the area -- every time we've mentioned that, the controllers have done a great job getting oriented and in.

After that, we got great help at the Shell station for finding hotels and we found a hotel at the opposite end of the spectrum. We even qualified for the Seniors discount - a first for both of us! This is a true Retirement Beta Test.

For dinner, we asked a cab to take us downtown to a restaurant area. He said "what downtown?" but took us to an nice area near the marina. We walked around a bit, dipped into Lake Superior and saw a head-banger band festival in the park - like Pablum meets Megadeath. They also were playing "human foosball" -- basically a small court where they have strings across the court, and the players have to hold on to a sliding ring and can only go sideways across the "table" to kick at the ball.


We walked around looking for a restaurant and settled on a quiet sports bar/restaurant called "Tony & Adams". It very nice, quiet, the prime rib and beer was great. And then suddenly the environment became "target rich", as Pete puts it. About 45 scantily-clad young women between the ages of 19 and 22 descended on the place like lawyers to a traffic accident. They were clad in various costumes and less, to raise money for heart research. It definitely wasn't a pub crawl, the bartender told us, because that would be illegal. After having a few drinks, they all left again in a school bus. I think they must have forgot to collect any money for research.

Today we didn't fly, but rented a car for the amazing price of $27/day. We toured some of the local sights, like Kakabeka falls (the 2nd biggest after Niagara), and went Fort Williams historical park, where they have actors that re-enact the local scene of 1815. It was actually quite interesting... did you know you could skin a beaver by taking it's insides out it's butt, with no other incisions? It ends up being a hollow tube, like one of those hand-warmer things you used to see in winter. The whole tour was really entertaining. And again, we got the Seniors discount on admission.

Up to this point, we've flown about 1495 nautical miles (1719 statute miles or 2750 kilometers) and accumulated almost 19 hours of flight time in C-FPAK. It's very different from flying in the lower mainland area of BC. One thing that is very striking is that we here a huge number of people giving Traffic Advisories on 126.70, but we have seen very few aircraft in the air. It's almost the opposite of the situation in the lower mainland.

I've managed to upload all our pictures so far at www.nymble.ca/photos. I found this great freeware web photo gallery software that does thumbnails, slideshows, and album organization.
And the Kenora-to-ThunderBay breadcrumbs are here.