I woke up after a good night's sleep and got ready for my hour drive to Thunder Bay. I returned the key and was surprised when the owner of the hotel remembered my name from the night before and greeted me when I walked in the office to check out. We talked a little bit and I hit the road. I did a pit stop at Tim Horton's for breakfast.
I went to Paddle to the Sea Park again and took a few more pictures.
I then hit the road for Thunder Bay. My first stop was the Metro grocery store, just like the first time I was in Thunder Bay.
I then headed to the mall.
It was getting around lunch time so I decided to get some Taco Time. It is kind of crazy that, in a city of 110,000 people, the only Mexican restaurant there is a Taco Bell-like chain called Taco Time. I can see where someone looking to start a restaurant would have a decent opportunity to start a Mexican restaurant.
I got a hard shell beef and softshell fish taco. I also decided to get the Poutine Mexican fries, which was basically like Canada meets Mexico. They were pretty good.
Since I had some time before I could check in to my hotel, I went over to the Marina area and walked around a bit.
I did try stopping and doing some work on my blog in the Marina area, but there really wasn’t a picnic table around, I needed somewhere to sit and type more easily. I went to Fisherman’s Park.
I found a picnic table and got to work with the nice view around me.
After writing a blog entry, I headed back to my car. There was some construction work going on for a compost toilet and the supervisor that was directing the little traffic that came through, was by my car waiting for the next car to come through. When I went over to my car, he asked, "So you're the one from Texas?" I talked with him for a while and then headed to the hotel. I was going to stay at the Prince Arthur like I did last time.
The room was a standard 2 bed.
I decided to get a lakeside view. The view was amazing!
I was getting hungry, so I decided to walk down the street to On Deck.
I got a (Molson) Canadian. Notice in the background, their drinking age is 19.
I then ordered some wings.
Everyone in America thinks Canada is only into hockey, but they had the NFL game going.
After eating, it was getting a bit dark. I then walked to Sovereign Room aka "Sov". Sov is one of my favorite places to hang out in Thunder Bay.
I then walked over to the Foundry. They have a lot of beers on tap.
There were some cool photos on the wall of Thunder Bay in the past.
I was happy they had Smoke N' Oak. This beer is really good!
Ryan, who has the radio program on CILU, met up with me at the Foundry. While I was waiting for him, I BS'd with a few people around me. After the Foundry, we hit up a few more bars before close. After close, there was an old muscle car parked on the side of the road. Since the weather was nice, I saw several different older cars cruising around throughout the day. I guess Canadians love their muscle cars, like Americans do.
It sounded pretty badass as it pulled away. I walked back to my hotel room and snapped a quick picture of the Marina before going to bed.
It was definitely nice only having to drive an hour for the day and then having plenty of time to explore Thunder Bay and party up.