Montreal to Winnipeg, Valentin Taifun 17E

Finally we had to make a start, even if it was a short one... When crossing the continent I log the time as GMT and so from now on I will write the times as Zulu (GMT) time.

18th July: The first leg was to Gatineau Quebec, across the river from Ottawa. Takeoff was at 22:04z and landing was at 23:19z. (All times are air time excluding taxying).
We flew around the south side of Montreal's controlled airspace, passing over Les Cedres which I knew as Cedars Airport where I did my first flight in a light aircraft doing circuits and landings in Cherokee 140 C FVLA in 1971.
The fuel totaliser showed that 8 USG had been used, and so we added 34 litres Avgas 100LL for the following morning, and took a taxi to a hotel. The journey had begun.

19th July: Gatineau to Sudbury Ontario, T/O 17:54z - Land 21:08z, totaliser: 10.3 USG. Added 44 litres 100LL.
We routed via overhead North Bay.
At Sudbury we learned a taxi ride into town would be $100 each way... You can rent a car for less, and so Daryl went to pick up a car while I found a safe place to tie the aeroplane down for the night. The car rental ended up costing less than $100 all in.
We drove to a Thai restaurant in town... The waitress was a bit abrupt, "... we close in forty five minutes..." but warmed up a little as time passed. The food was good, but the servings were massive...
Eastern Canada has gone big, and this was amusingly demonstrated at the hotel where the two girls in the reception office filled its volume like two blancmange eggs wobbling against each other in a box, bloop bloop, like two smooth Vogons.

With a 55.9 foot wingspan it is important to be able to estimate clearances at airport we might visit when travelling across country

20th July:
Sudbury to Wawa Ontario, 15:27z - 17:57z. Added 30 litres 100LL.
Wawa to Thunder Bay Ontario, 19:06z - 21:38z.
Thunder Bay to Winnipeg Manitoba, 22:48z - 02:47z
The original plan had been a route with a stop at Marathon, but there was a Notam that there was no fuel available, and so the decision changed to stop for fuel at Wawa, and then Thunder Bay, and finally Fort Francis with the possibility of going all the way to Winnipeg if daylight permitted.
Northern Ontario is forests and lakes, it's jungle, and so there were decisions to be made should the purring VW engine decide to quit.
Navigation was by using Flight Plan Go on the iPad connected to a Garmin Glo GPS source.
We flew across land to Terrace Bay on Lake Superior and then along the coast to Thunder Bay.
From Thunder Bay there were CuNims with heavy rain to fly between on the way to Fort Francis and then it was an easy run into Winnipeg to arrive minutes before official night.

Connected to the internet at Thunder Bay FltPlanGo showed a few storms on our route to Fort Francis, and as expected we met two storms with a gap between for us to pass.

Here we pass through a bit of American airspace as they have a protrusion into Canada for fishing