So again I was on the road! I am certainly getting the hang of this travelling now and about time as it's been nearly 2 months since I left. So I feel my last blog entry is not doing Canada justice and I decided to make a list of all the things I've noticed about Canada which I've had to get used to and enjoyed in the experience.

So again in this next section will be some bits that friends and family who worry too much might not like but you are just going to have to deal with it, ha ha! So I think I want to describe to you the people here in Canada so far, except for the last family I stayed with the people here are awesome! They are soooo generous and friendly and so very social. I have had complete strangers treat me like an old friend and looked after me. All along the way I have people randomly talk to me, help me out with directions, shown me the sights and made me feel so welcome. The people here are such a refreshing change from the cynical and untrusting nature of people back home, no one thinks you have an ulterior motive for talking to them and everyone is genuinely interested in what I have to say and in also helping me out, I would recommend coming here to everyone!! They are so trusting of each other and sometimes live so remotely that no one locks their door to their houses and cars, the majority of places I've stayed have just had unlocked doors and a help yourself policy to all that's staying there, so refreshing!

Ok, other things about Canada so far, in certain places and provinces you have to pay for your petrol before you fill up, which would be fine if you knew how much your car took to fill up! Also petrol stations have so many entrances that people drive in from all directions and is like dodgems sometimes to get to a pump, very funny and frustrating at times!!

There is a Tim Hortons in every town pretty much, doesnt matter if the sign for the town says population of 600 (there is quite a lot of these) or 10000, there is a Tim Hortons, for cheap tea, coffee and muffins!!

The population of Canada is half the amount of the UK, about 34 million in Canada and 62 million in the UK, so we are living on top of each other and here they have so much space and land, the space and distance is still hard for me to get around in my headl!!

Over the past week I have driven over 3500km and I'm still in the same country! It's hard to picture, I would sometimes drive for 9 hours and still be in the same province! There was 2 occasions where I had crossed time zones, lost an hour and never realised till I got to my next destination and realised I was late!!!

So I escaped Edmonton and also took some of the other workers off the farm that weekend and dropped them off in Edmonton before leaving, was a great feeling to be leaving that place and I was on the road again! So I was still in the province of Alberta and it's a very flat province with roads that go on forever, I drove for about 9 hours that day (10 if you count the hour I was circling Edmonton lost, trying to get on the highway out) and I took 2 roads to my next destination! It's a long and boring drive, so I had the window rolled down, singing away to myself the majority of the time, until it gets dark and I freak out a bit as the wildlife here is so massive. There are eagles and hawks flying around all the time, the ravens are the size of a small dogs and I've seen a dead moose on the side of the road and they are bigger than horses! I know that if I hit anything, it will not be an unscathed accident. For a while I was following the main train tracks that cross Canada and the trains are also massive, so long with so many carts that you can't see the beginning or the end and they go on for miles and miles, its incredible to watch. Also another thing about driving is the turning right on a red light, I still have got to towns and forgotten that I can go on a red, but the person behind will generally toot me to get my butt in gear and turn if I'm indicating to do so!

I've gotten lost a lot on the road so far, the places are not normally too hard to get to as there are generally only a few roads heading the way I'm going, but the signs are so vague and I have missed many turnings and once in a town, it's always a guessing game of where I should be going, but I've always made it in the end!

So on the Saturday night I stayed with a cousin of the Mutch family in a little place called Carenport just left of Regina, and now in Saskatchewan. They were a lovely family who lived in a massive trailer with their 4 kids. They homeschooled them and were very involved in their local church, Dana the husband was also studing to be a pastor. When I arrived they were watching top gear and I was welcomed in straight away watching a few episodes, it was such a great place to stay after my experience at the farm and they were so lovely. They had never had a random person stay before but Susan said she was happy that she could of helped out and she made us all a big breakfast in the morning, the family said a prayer for me wishing me safe journeys and I was really touched. I left them in the morning as they went to church as I had another 9 hour drive to get me to Winnipeg in the province of Manitoba.

Again this drive was uneventful, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba all being rather flat provinces with lots of farms and open spaces. This is the first time I lost an hour to a time zone somewhere!

So before I had left the farm I had signed up to a website called couchsurfing.com. This is where people around the world put on this site if they have somewhere you can stay the night or 2 for free, either on their sofa or spare bed and some tell you that they will show you around the area as well. So I wanted to keep things as cheap as possible as travelling can be expensive with buying food, petrol and paying for hostels and also lonely being on my own, so I thought this would be a nice was to save money and meet local people who could show me the sights and tell me what to do. It's all through an official website where you get references and give feedback on your experiences so you can choose who you want to contact by reading the profiles, it's a great idea.

So my first experience of couchsurfing was with Kelly in Winnipeg and it was brilliant! She lived in a nice part of Winnipeg and she again made me feel so welcome instantly, it was like I had known her for years and we were chatting about everything and anything straight away. She had all her friends over in the evening to watch an episode of breaking bad and pizza and drinks were consumed, so much drinks that I didn't get to bed till between 3am or 4am!!! The next day, Kelly's friend Matt, who had also crashed at her place showed me around Winnipeg, over the river and a few of the sights before I had to head off for my next drive.

So after Winnipeg I carried on East and headed to Thunder Bay on the edge of Lake Superior. This is when the drive started to get more interesting, I had hit the province of Ontario and the hills started and the trees would go on for miles. It's also now autumn here, even though the tempertaure is still in the 20's, all the trees are turning yellow and the maple is a bright red, it's lovely!!! This made for a much more scenic drive and getting to the lake was brilliant. Alot of the lakes here are so massive that you would think you are facing the ocean when you are on the beaches, but it's all fresh water, it's hard to get my head around that these lakes are so large.

I stayed in a little hostel in Thunder Bay that was the strangest hostel yet. It was crammed full of things everywhere, was very cosy and felt like a little old ladies home, but it was cheap and lovely. I stayed here a couple of nights to break up the driving. Here a met a young German lad named Jacob. He was 19 and had been hitch hiking across Canada since August and had seen and done some amazing things so far. We went into Thunder Bay together and then went hiking around the streams and rivers coming off the lake and the sun was blazing in the afternoon and it was a lovely place. We also saw the bears here and they were so close, they had come up behind us when walking near a landfill and it was a black bear mum with her cubs, so we slowly backed away and left in a hurry!!

So Jacob them came with me the next day as we left Thunder Bay, he wanted to head in the direction I was going and that meant he didnt have to try and hitch a ride from the main road. So we drove to Sault Ste Marie. Again this was a lovely drive, following the northern line of Lake Superior, stopping along the way to laze on beaches and take photos at look out points, it was nice to have company and to be back in a place where there is so much to see when driving. We arrived at Sault Ste Marie in the evening and there was a hostel/hotel near the river, however they were quite full but they had a twin room without a bathroom so me and Jacob agreed to share a room to make things cheaper. We popped out for something to eat, came back and started to plan our next day as he was looking for a camp site when I could hear a band start in the bar downstairs. So I decided to go down and have a drink, Jacob went to bed and I wasn't tired yet as I was still wired from the driving.

The band was good and I was in the bar for about 5 minutes when a group of guys came over to ask if I would buddy up with a friend to play pool. So another thing I've noticed about some Canadians is that they love the English accent, it makes them laugh and then they generally try and imitate it. This happened in Winnipeg and they think some of the words I say are funny, like sweets and crisps instead of candy and chips, boot and bonnet on the car instead of trunk and hood, things like that! So as soon as these guys in the bar knew I was from England they thought I was great and were laughing and joking around with my accent while we played pool and drank beer. Curt, my pool partner loved the accent and we stayed up playing pool and drinking till 3 in the morning, he was a great laugh and again so friendly and a pleasure to be around.

The next day we wandered near the river near Sault Ste Marie, where you can see the bridge and border control into the US and then headed back to the car to head off again.

I dropped Jacob off at a campsite a few hours down the road and I carried on to Manitoulin Island to a little town called Providence Bay. I stayed the night in a little guest house, near the beach and we took a walk on the board walk and watched the sun set and watched the Salmon swimming in the river, lovely little place and so queit. The island is beautiful and not many people living there.

The next morning I headed to South Baymouth and caught the ferry across Lake Huron to Tobermory. It was a sunny and hot day and I sat on the deck and let someone else do the driving for a bit, was lovely!! Once I got on land I then headed around the lake and back north a bit to Wasaga Beach.

This again was a couch surfing request that was accepted by a guy named Pete. He lived right on the beach!!! He wasn't home yet when I got there but he texted me say I should take a chair from his deck and go and sit on the beach and watch the sun set, it was beautiful and no one was around, it was like my own personal beach and the sun set was beautiful.

Again my experience of coachsurfing with Pete was brilliant. He made me feel at home, made me dinner, we had some beers and swapped stories of travel, music, interests and everything. The next day he took me out on his motorbike to show me the sights of the surrounding area and took me up the ski resort mountain to see the view of the surrounding area. It was such a nice place and would love to live there, beach in the summer, skiing in the winter, all a stones throw from each other, it;s incredible. Pete was such a generous and helpful person with some great business ideas, he gave me a music angel sound system to place my music on speakers and also a power back up pack to charge my phone on the road when my battery runs out. You should check it out on www.musicangel.ca. Thanks again to Pete and all he did for me.

So the next day I had a short drive of 2 hours to get to my next workaway destination. A lovely drive to the new place and its a great place here with the family welcoming me instantly.

So since I've had the car, which is just about a month, I've driven over 6000 km, I have lost 3 hours in time now and only 5 hours behind the UK, I am now in my 5th Province, my 3rd workaway place, I've couch surfed, slept in my car, met superb people along the way and still got so much more to come!!!!