Overland to the North Country (Part 2/3) // EFRT S5 EP32

Welcome to another episode of the Epic Family Road Trip. In this week's episode of the Epic Family Road Trip, we continue on our overland journey to the northernmost road in Ontario, Canada and to the town of Pickle Lake to explore Ontario's last frontier, 1,700 kilometers from our cabin to the end of the road. Driving this section north of Superior, just before you get to Thunder Bay, we highly recommend you stop in and take a look at the Terry Fox Monument and just read some of the quotes. He was a very courageous young man who got cancer and lost his leg to it and then decided to run across Canada to raise awareness for the disease. He started way on the east coast and he made it all the way here to almost to the Manitoba border and then he finally succumbed to the disease and died but what an amazing guy. He raised millions and millions of dollars for research and he's a he's a real Canadian hero. If he had got into Manitoba and then a little ways past Winnipeg he would have hit the, or maybe this side of Winnipeg, he would have hit the continental dead center of the country. So he almost made it halfway but yeah that's Terry Fox. I remember back when I was in school hearing about Terry Fox and he started to gain notoriety as he went and got more and more press and information. By the time he got to where we lived, schools were going out to cheer him on as he as he ran by. So he's from BC originally, Port Coquitlam, BC and he lost his right leg to the disease. After dipping his foot in the Atlantic he began his epic journey in St. John's, Newfoundland on April 12, 1980. Running 26 miles a day, can you imagine with one leg? This outstanding young athlete has conquered five provinces by the time he had reached Ontario in June. Then at mile number 3,339 near this very site, cancer came back and he was forced to give up his run. Unbelievable story. So this is what they call the Arctic watershed and from here everything, all the rivers flow north to the Arctic Ocean. We're at a place called Sandbar Lake Provincial Park and it's just beautiful and remote. We're really getting into northern Ontario. We've now driven off of the Trans-Canada and gone north 11 kilometers on the road that leads to Pickle Lake which is called the end of the road, Ontario's last frontier. We'll be getting up there tomorrow. So it's Monday, July 13th. We are just a little ways into the road that leads to a town called Pickle Lake. It's called Ontario's last frontier, the end of the road. Today we're looking forward to getting up there. It's about three, three and a half hours drive from here and then that'll be the farthest part of Ontario that you can drive to on a paved road but we're going to go beyond that into the forest and just start heading up as far north as we can I guess. There's no services up there, no fuel, so we're going to fill up all of our tanks including our Long Range America auxiliary tanks and then we'll drive until we're about half empty and then we'll, that'll be as far as we go, we'll turn around and come back. So that's the plan and we're going to take you with Hey guys, so today we drove all the way up to the end of the road. This is called Pickle Lake, Ontario. The road continues on for a little bit north and then it turns into a dirt road and so on and that's where we plan on going tomorrow. But we're right on the edge of Pickle Lake as you can see in the background here and the village is over there and this is just a little area they carved out where you can park and camp for free. There's electricity and a fire pit. So a little bit about this town, there's very friendly people. There's a little airport and MNR which is Ministry of Natural Resources firefighting training center up here so we're in good hands if a fire breaks out which isn't likely. There's also an OPP training center here and that's the Ontario Provincial Police and we met with three constables already so they they kind of do drive by this area every once in a while and we talked to two young constables actually originally from our neck of the woods down in Barrie but really nice guys and they gave us their number and all kinds of contact information for when we get way off the grid tomorrow and they gave us lots of information about the area and about this spot and then just a few minutes ago another constable the second shift came by and said hi and wanted to make sure we're comfortable and offered us a fresh water fill up at the OPP station and also a place to put our little bag of trash so man so far so good amazing experience so we're really enjoying this place already we just got here with this being the most northerly town in Ontario people fly in there's a little airport there and and then they get on a sea float plane like this so there's a gentleman here that has been here his whole life he bought that plane when he's a young man and paid it off after all these years and now he's got a nice little business and what he does is the folks will come in that mostly from the states that want to fish in these great Ontario waters there's all kinds of lakes around here but they're completely fly-in only there's no roads you can't drive out there you can in the winter but then you can't fish so that gives him a nice uh little business and tomorrow we're gonna go into town and talk to the people at the municipal office the reason we're here in Pickle Lake is because one of our YouTube viewers saw that we were heading back across Ontario and they said hey guys you gotta come to Pickle Lake it's the end of the road it's the frontier and and we took them up on it we we've never met them before and uh so we said look let's just go to Pickle Lake it'd be fun to go into such a remote place and so we got we got set up in our camp over there and then a blue jeep drove up and it was the people that had given us that message the people that invited us here I was going to reach out to them anyway but they showed up and we had we had so much fun meeting them and talking to them and she called her husband and he came over and we just had a blast such nice people so welcoming and so friendly and that's really what the north is about this is a place in the middle of the forest in the middle of the wilderness there's like almost nothing like it on earth where you can't she said to go if she wanted to go grocery shopping at Walmart the nearest Walmart is four and a half hours drive so pretty cool um and and her husband works with the airline here and they fly groceries into these remote first nations reservations which are way way up north in Ontario and they're so far up that there's not even roads that get up to them except in the winter and are only accessible when the lakes and the bogs and the marshes freeze so our plan tomorrow is to go start heading north of here this being the last town you can still drive on pavement for another 60 kilometers I think and then you get into gravel apparently the road just ends out of lake now you could go beyond that normally but there's a first nations uh reservation and it's all shut down they they're not allowing anyone in or out right now so we're gonna go as far as we can and find some awesome campgrounds we're gonna take you with us were you the guys that told us to come up here I was gonna try to find you guys on holy crap this is amazing we took your advice thank you so much I'm gonna have to reach out to you guys I have I have to call my husband really quick who knows if you guys from BC and they're at the same time we'll see if that sounds good yeah thank you guys so much nice to meet you so me and my husband we we make our own fishing jigs oh so like yeah like lures so um we put some lures in there for you guys and we also roast coffee so oh there's like three of our blend of coffee in there that's so cool that's huge okay so yeah Monaco lake is on there so Pipestone River we're down so yeah Wendigo is all the way up Wendigo is not even on this map because it's so far up but Wannamon's there but that's like a first nation you got a kingfisher these are all first nation communities that are flying in the winter get in there Dan which way is this head to that way that way yeah other way mom we're fueling up before we hit the uh big trail the big road going north this is obviously the place you can fuel up so keep that in mind when you come up here and if you don't have auxiliary tanks make sure you carry some jerry cans just so you have enough fuel to get back you ready to go yeah so we're just about to head north and both the indicators on both jeeps said oil change required and so we stopped in here at i think it's called north motors and they were kind enough to take our jeeps right in and they're doing an oil change on Worsley right now Vandy's next and then we're gonna head north just outside of town there so a couple years ago they paved another 60 kilometers hey guys it's july 14th and we have gone way north of pickle lake now so we're way up here somewhere on this beautiful river and on the gps i can't see the name of the river but i will pinpoint this location for sure and the nice thing about this is we got out of the bush and the wind off the river here is blowing away a lot of the bugs so we actually can sit fairly comfortably outside so we're really enjoying our time here so far and we're gonna go make some food before the sun goes down it's three o'clock in the morning and it looks like the sun's coming up i'm not sure why it must be because we're so far north this morning's coffee was brought to you by jamie and spencer hudson from pickle lake they gave us a light blend a medium roast and a dark and they sell this online it is delicious coffee we had the camp roast the one we had this morning was called the mysterious mousse anyway delicious whole whole bean coffee so we ground up some uh really delicious cups this morning they also make jigs and hooks so their company's called hussies hooks and they gave us some samples we can't wait to sink these in the lake when we get back home so today's big day we are now leaving from this gorgeous camp spot which we've marked on gaia gps for our patreon family and then we're going to turn left and go right to the end of the road this is the farthest north that'll be the farthest north you can drive on a on a dirt road in ontario so we're pretty excited about getting up there it's a long way so i'll look at that this is a beautiful forest we're driving through right now um it's called a boreal forest where we came from we have a mixed boreal forest which is a little bit different but up here it's just a mix of like carnivorous and deciduous trees stay tuned for next week's episode as we continue up to the end of the road as we explore the wilderness of ontario's last frontier in the meantime we'll see you down the road