Road Tripping Part 4: Some Missed Memories and Good ‘Za in North Bay, ON

I have talked about how both my husband and I were born and raised in Sudbury, Ontario on this blog. Because we are both from Sudbury, some would assume that we met there. Not to sound like When Harry Met Sally, but, “we never met…” It’s true. We actually met in North Bay, Ontario at Canadore College where we were both in the same post-diploma program in Interactive Multimedia (now a defunct program; wow, technology moves at such a rapid pace!). North Bay is a town also considered northern, and about an hour and 10 minutes east of Sudbury.  So the story goes, we became friends, and by the end of the two-semester program, we were inseparable.

North Bay holds some fond memories for me, not only because it’s where I met my husband, but because the town has a certain small-town charm not replicated anywhere else. Located off the shores of Lake Nipissing, this place has grown quite a lot from when I lived there – in population and in what is offered commercially. The hubs and I love to travel through North Bay on our way in or out of Sudbury, as there are some great shops for those seeking gaming deals, as well as some great favourite eateries that have withstood the passage of time, and are still in business today. Unfortunately, as of late, anytime we’ve been in North Bay, we have basically breezed through…not spending any longer than an hour, perhaps long enough to rush into a gaming shop or stuff our faces with a fast lunch.

Last week, while on vacation visiting our families in Sudbury, we decided to take a day and spend some time in the place where we met and fell for each other. The day happened to be my birthday, and I felt there was no other place I’d rather spend my day than in North Bay, Ontario with my beloved, shopping for games and books, and having a nice lunch at one of our favourite pizza joints.

The trip to North Bay from Sudbury is basically in a straight line through farm land on Highway 17 East. It’s a trip down memory lane, that’s for sure…the excitement of traveling to the St. Charles turn-off to go to the hub’s Nona’s cottage…my childhood memory of going to Bible Camp every summer on Dear Lake…or always joking as we pass our “Dream Home,” a boarded-up shack perched on the edge of a hill along the highway that is STILL STANDING after all these years! Those jokes never get stale, and the stories of the past never get old.

Having had only one cup of coffee before taking off on our jaunt, we stopped in Sturgeon Falls, a tiny blip on the map along the way, for a McDonalds McCafe coffee. Now, I have not stepped foot into a McDonalds since 2003 for any reason, but the hubs wanted to try their coffee, and I obliged since I won’t eat their food (‘fee review is forthcoming!).

Our first stop in North Bay was to our old stomping ground, Canadore College. Canadore is a small, but mighty school. I met some great friends there, and was taught by one of the best profs ever, Phil Cowcill. Phil taught me all I needed to know about how a computer works, and I went in with ZERO computer knowledge (really, it was “Windows. What’s that?”). Now, as I work in computers, I attribute a lot of what I know to that guy.

At any rate, Canadore was still standing…the road to it, however, had seen better days and was under some serious reconstruction, so we didn’t spend much time on campus. Still it was nice to check the place out and see if anything had changed.

Next stop was the Hock Shop on Main St, downtown. We can often find some good stuff there. I tackled the LP selection to see if I could find any KMA Master Grail list items (it was a bust…but plenty of duplicates for the John Cougar fan…). I almost made away with CDs from the Led Zeppelin Orange boxed set (I have the cassette version), but I was missing one of the four CDs. I passed on the rest of them as they were pretty scratched up. The hubs, however, made away with a pile of some decent games!

Next, we went all the way down to the Value Village. It was a bust.

It was the next stop that wound up being the goldmine for a girl who likes boxed hidden object games. We came upon this place by accident. The store, called This is MEDIA MADNESS, was one of those “Stop the Car!” type of places advertising games, DVDs and toys. What? Games? Turn in here!

About two years ago, we were traveling through North Bay on our way to Deep River, Ontario and came upon a store housed in an old Blockbuster Movie store. This place advertised a media blowout with games and dvds. That place was the SHIT. A whole back wall was taken up with PC adventure games for $5 and I had to hold myself back not to buy out the store. Unfortunately, that place closed down. My source for boxed PC games was gone, and as I have expressed on here, boxed PC adventure games are getting harder and harder to find!! That said, when we came upon This is MEDIA MADNESS, I got so excited. Could this be that old Blockbuster place??

The majesty of games!

This is MEDIA MADNESS is the perfect store for anyone who likes pop culture tchotchkis and whimwhams. Need a Beavis and Butt-head lanyard? Board Games like “Simpsons Monopoly”, KISS and AC/DC merch, and some Beatles novelty drinking glasses peppered the aisles. It wasn’t until I reached the back of the store where I found the mecca of hidden object adventure PC games and for only $5! This must be the place!

My loot

It was amazing! Again, I had to pick and choose what games to buy, and tried to filter through some of what I thought might be crap games. But, surprisingly, other well-known titles were available – Torchlight, Mass Effect and Borderlands were all there, and only for a fiver! I was so happy to find this little store again.

Stoked by my latest find, I got hungry for lunch! Pizza and Caesar salad were on the menu as we hit up our old haunt, Greco’s Pizza. This place saw us as regulars when we lived in town. Not much had changed…the pizza was still delicious, with its thick crust, bubbling cheese and cornmeal base… Mmm.

…

Sorry, I’m reliving that moment! The wait staff was still friendly and the decor hadn’t changed either, but all is overlooked when the food rocks!

After lunch, we took a stroll through downtown North Bay to one of the most prolific used bookstores in the north, Allison the Bookman. Back in College, I would tour its aisles for that next great read. The aisles seem to go on forever, covering books from any subject imaginable. Alas, I didn’t buy any books on this trip (maybe my commitment to the #TBR20 Challenge had something to do with it?) but it was fun to be back in one of the places I loved to spend time in.

2:30 rolled up fast, and a prior family commitment had us wrap up the trip and head back to Sudbury. Where did the time go? So it goes. Hope you enjoyed reading about our little trip. It was nice to spend some time together in North Bay again, and I look forward to our return, hopefully soon.

Road Tripping Part 2: Finding Nostalgia and the Motherlode in Barrie, ON

My gaming find! Bill Kurtis FTW!

The old apartment

Bandito!

The take-home loot.

In 1998, the hubs and I moved into our first place together. It was a one-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a mostly elderly tenant building on Wellington Street West, in Barrie, Ontario. Our apartment overlooked Highway 400 – the predominant route for traffic going from the big smoke of Toronto to the Muskokas and Northern Ontario. We lived in that apartment for four years until we bought our first home. In total, we lived in Barrie for 7 years, and saw the town grow from a bedroom community to a bustling city where roads were often gridlocked and the vacancy rate near 0%.

It helps to know your way around Barrie, and lucky for us, when we decided last-minute to make the hour-long trip recently we maneuvered our way around the back roads to avoid the busier arteries. This day, our trajectory pointed us toward a few key gaming and thrift shops that historically we’ve had some luck in, and maybe get a bite to eat. Because we know Barrie so well, we could leave our TomTom GPS in the glove compartment of the car instead of relying on it to take us down some cow path to Barrie.

The challenge that we normally face commuting to Barrie from our home base of Stouffville is there is no direct route from where we live. Lake Simcoe takes all our “direct route” real estate, which means the easiest way to get there is to cut through the Town of Newmarket. This summer though, Newmarket is a nightmare to drive through. Every major road running east to west has some type of construction inhibiting access. But, we planned accordingly and got through it with the least amount of aggravation. Highway 400, on the other hand, is a different story. This highway has seen a lot of accidents. It can be a perfectly sunny day and some accident can cause a 3 hour backup. Lucky for us, today would be smooth sailing.

Our first stop was to our old stomping ground around our old apartment on Wellington Street West. At the back of it is a strip mall with a Shoppers Drug Mart, No Frills Grocery, a restaurant and some shops, including a Value Village. One stop shopping! We headed over to Value Village, and I am sad to report we didn’t find much (Boo!).

Not yet tasting defeat, but feeling hungry, we walked across the parking lot to the Little D’s Diner for a satisfying bite – a hamburger and fries for the hubs, and a club sandwich for me. This little understated hole in the wall is a bonafide diner: all-day breakfast, soup of the day, hot turkey sandwiches and delicious coffee. I have never walked away having eaten a bad meal at Little D’s.

Where to next? Right next door to the diner is Bandito Video, a store we haven’t been to in ages. Evidently, unlike many other cities in Ontario, no one told Bandito that it was time to hang up its movie and game rental/retail business when Blockbuster shut its doors. The blue and gold used to EVERYWHERE and was the one place you could find used movies and games for a decent price. Movie rental joints are becoming few and far between as Netflix and Red Boxes are taking over. Rogers Video outlets used to sell used entertainment also, but Blockbuster’s mighty fall must have scared the hell out of them as they no longer exist.

Bandito Video was once a chain of movie rental stores. Sooner or later however, the chains broke, leaving only one living store in Barrie, Ontario. When the hubs and I moved to our first apartment, we were delighted that there was a movie rental joint close by. Both movie lovers on a limited budget, we could rely on Bandito to provide us with a very large selection of movies – at the time in VHS, later in DVD – in a very large store. Teal-painted walls, teal and red checkered floors, and fake cacti and sombreros dressed their store. Free popcorn was constantly being made, and the place was always a madhouse as people planned their weekly movie-watching in-store. Today, it was “same as it ever was,” except…it wasn’t.

Entering the store, that distinct smell of freshly made popcorn was present, and if it wasn’t for the meal I had just consumed, I would have insisted on a small bag to take on the go! Still the same teal walls and checkered floor donned the decor. I was happy to be back among the familiar surroundings!

But, browsing through the store, you start to notice how things have been going for Bandito over the past few years. First and foremost, the large expanse of the store was no longer: it was now half the size. A wall had been built, cutting off a large portion of the area that housed their older stock. A small area was being used to sell used video games. Another sad reality: another area of the store was kept to liquidate stock from one of Bandito’s last chains that had recently shut down in Angus, Ontario. And lastly, the store was eerily quiet – us being the only customers for the full 45 minutes we were there. To be fair, it was a Monday afternoon, and probably not their busiest time. Still, I couldn’t help but notice that the movie rental business isn’t as lucrative as it once was. Walking the aisles, I thought about all the times I browsed and found those hidden sleeper films that later became a part of my own DVD collection…and then wondered to myself if this would be one of the last times I’d be at Bandito Video. I hope not.

One store’s decline can be one man’s win fall, however. Ask my husband! Bandito was selling off their stock of used console games – 2 for $10, 2 for $20…the credit card took a hit this day. I can’t possibly name all the ones he found, but he had been searching for some of these games for a long time. The prices were too good to pass up!

We left Bandito with a bag of goodies, and headed towards another favourite movie rental place – VideoTime – a store situated in the Kozlov Centre, a mall off of Barrie’s main drag, Bayfield Street. VideoTime is also a movie rental joint that like Bandito Video had a few locations around Barrie that have since closed. Today, VideoTime still offers movies for rent, but their selection is less than ever from what I could see, and it appears they are concentrating their efforts more on selling their large selection of used games and gaming accessories than movie rentals. Because of its location, the hubs and I would never rent anything from this store, but we would often stop by to dig for deals on used games. Most of the more common games are kept out on the floor, while rarer games and consoles are found locked tight in showcases. Prices vary at VideoTime. It would seem that what they deem precious is what you pay top dollar for, while what is out on the floor is more affordable. Collectors of pristine copies of games may be disappointed here, however: to VideoTime’s detriment, their showcases use mostly fluorescent lights to highlight their stock, fading the covers of those rarer games. Too bad.

The stock out on the floor, mostly Xbox, Wii and PS2 and PS3 games, was still worth checking out, and the hubs found some more games to add to his booming collection.

At the back of the store, VideoTime keeps a small dusty collection of old PC games, which is right in my wheelhouse. I don’t often find anything that interests me at VideoTime, but this day I couldn’t believe what I discovered.

Anyone familiar with Bill Kurtis and his shows on A&E, American Justice and Cold Case Files? I used to LOVE those shows. Unfortunately, they are no longer on air, and are hard to find to watch them on the interwebs (someone posts them on YouTube only to have them pulled off). At any rate, who knew a game was created based on one of my favourite shows?! The narration is done by Bill Kurtis himself! I have since played the game, so watch for that review shortly!

After the credit card took a hit at two stores, and with the afternoon waning, we felt it was time to head back home, happy with our new additions! It was fun taking a trip down memory lane. Here’s hoping these stores will still be kicking the next time we make the pilgrimage to Barrie, Ontario. We had a nice time and we hope to do it again.

 

Road Tripping Part 1: Tasty Grub and Cool Finds in Peterborough, ON

Finally found this album…and it only took twenty years!

Sorry for the lack of food p0rn. It was a great meal!

The carved bear that greeted us at the restaurant’s entrance.

A little golf humour for you!

Mark’s Finer Diner: A great eatery in Peterborough!

My husband and I work opposing shifts these days. We don’t see each other much during the week, so we make a point of having some fun when we do have some time together. For us this usually means taking day trips around Ontario to local gaming, hock and thrift shops to search for buried gaming treasure and other stuff.

Today’s excursion was to Peterborough, Ontario, an hour and 20 minutes northeast from our home in Stouffville, ON. We had only been to P-Dot a couple of times before, but have always had some good fortune during our past visits. Our target was a store called Chumleighs on George St in downtown Peterborough. A mainstay for the past twenty years, Chumleighs is the mecca of used games, DVDs, and CDs in the Kawarthas. (And…Added bonus is that there is a chocolatier that sells the best taffy and ice cream two doors down! Tee hee!). With our iPod full of awesome tunes and my shitty eff-up GPS in tow, we steered the car Northeast, through the hamlet of Goodwood (cue the Beavis and Butt-Head laugh), and up Highway 7A toward Peterborough.

What makes this trip a real pleasure is the scenery: open sky, rolling hills, and farmland flank either side of the two-lane roadway. Every so often, you come upon cool little hamlets with quirky stops that sell chelsea buns and runny butter tarts, Muskoka chairs or antiquities. As a seasoned Ontario car traveler, I couldn’t help but notice the abundance of gas stations along the highway. If you need gas desperately on 7A, rest assured, one will be just around the bend! This is quite unlike other experiences we’ve had driving to and from our hometown of Sudbury, Ontario where Highway 69/400 literally has 4 working gas stations maximum from Sudbury to Parry Sound 2 hours away, and you DO NOT want to break down on Highway 69 (But, don’t worry: those “sweatin’ on empty” tales will be saved for another time)! We stopped at a gas station en route on the edge of Bethany, ON that also had a variety store that sold “pop, chips, lotto, and auto access.” I also noticed they sold coffee makers, while they were at it.

While my husband fueled up the car, I was charged with locating a decent joint to chow down at once we entered Peterborough as lunchtime was rolling up. This meant using our eff-up GPS, Mr. TomTom. A word about our navigation device: it’s a TomTom Via 1505 with unlimited maps, and I have hated it from DAY ONE. Although it shows you where to go decently, it has bad searching capabilities, and navigating the menus is not intuitive. The maps often hold on to outdated information even post update. In our experience, finding a restaurant using that stupid thing is a total crap shoot as it will list every restaurant that ever opened in town, and NOT according to category so you get overwhelmed with the choices and choose blindly on name alone. The search usually never ends well with TomTom, and often the GPS will direct us to an empty lot, a residential neighbourhood, an abandoned boarded up building in the ghetto, or take us around the town in a complete circle, only to end up at the SAME place, just around the back of the building (oh, yeah, I am on fire with GPS stories)!  We also don’t have a data plan with our cellphones, so more indepth study of certain places is out of the question without wifi.

Searching for restaurants in P-Town on the GPS this day was par for the course: a million choices popped up. Our first option was a restaurant called Jake’s Neighbourhood Grill in Peterborough. Sounded promising on name alone, but not sure what their deal was. We continued on our way to Peterborough with only 15 minutes to go. Our plan to go to Jake’s was shot to hell upon arrival, however, when our jerk GPS Mr. TomTom directed us to a Chapters parking lot. No Jake’s here…The closest thing to a restaurant close by was a South Asian restaurant. Jake’s is obviously CLOSED! You jerk, Mr. TomTom!!

Alright, enact plan B: We took a chance and decided to ignore the TomTom altogether and drive until we hit a damn restaurant. Thankfully, this wound up being a good thing!

Driving up and around the bend on Lansdowne St. was a big sign that said, “Mark’s Finer Diner.” A split decision was made and we turned into the restaurant that looked very much like a log cabin. A large bear carved out of wood greeted us at the entrance.

When you first step in to Mark’s, the sweet smell of lacquered wood and burgers fill your nostrils. The decor reminded me very much of a hodge podge of several restaurants, with a shabby chic cottage-type feel: Montana’s, Jack Astor’s, and Wimpy’s Diner. A lot of charming plaques filled the wall real estate, canoe paddles were used as functional bannisters and door handles – that type of decor; which made total sense considering Peterborough is the gateway to cottage country in Central Ontario.

The menu items were indeed pub-type fare – burgers, fish and chips, french onion soup and chicken pot pie. My hubs chose the Burger Royale and I went for chicken fingers and fries. Our meals were delicious! Each dish came with a side of coleslaw. My plate arrived with five decent-sized pieces of breaded chicken strips, and a nice side of fresh-cut fries. What I originally thought was a side of gravy for my fries, was actually a garlic plum sauce that was a delicious rare pairing that made me want to ask the waitress what brand they were serving. Sorry, I don’t have any food p0rn pictures of my lunch to show other than my empty plate! We left Mark’s fed and satisfied that we had found a great place to eat while in P-Town. Mark’s Finer Diner – highly recommended! Huzzah!

Chumleighs wound up being a goldmine of awesomeness. This place sells used merchandise from what I gather, and really takes the care necessary to clean and “make like new again” what they sell, at reasonable prices. I was most impressed with their table of TV DVDs! Can you believe this place had every season of ER? Impressive! The movie selection is to die for. Not to mention THE GAMES!! NES, SNES, Xbox, Xbox 360, Sega Genesis cartridges, Wii, Wii U…I could go on. The hubs is put into a trance every time we come here!

I was not seeking any gameage this day as I am up to my neck in games. So, while the hubs browsed the games, I studied Chumleighs’ wall of CDs. I don’t often buy a lot of CDs (my collection is being stored in a Rubbermaid bin at the moment) but when you come across something rare, you jump at it. This day I found one CD I had wanted from my University years, but I could never find it. That CD was the Watchmen’s first album, McLaren Furnace Room. When I read the spine I couldn’t believe my eyes, and instantly said out loud, forgetting where I was: “This CD is MINE!” Haha!

You see, I’ve been a fan of the Watchmen ever since their song Run & Hide appeared on a CD of songs packaged in my Frosh Kit, at the University of Western Ontario’s Orientation Week 1993. Oh yeah! The band toured University towns frequently, and as a result, I was able to see the Watchmen at least 4 times while in Uni. Most recently I got to catch their sold out reunion show in 2008 at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto. I have recently heard they will have back-to-back shows at the Horseshoe this Sepember 18 and 19, but I can only make the Friday show which is sold out. Regardless, I was so excited to find their first album, I could barely contain my enthusiasm!

My hubs picked up several games to add to his gaming collection, and along with my find, we cashed out, happy the trip to Chumleighs was successful!

Next, we stopped at Peterborough’s version of Value Village called Talize. I never heard of such a place, but it is a thrift shop that is very similar to Value Village. We found a percolator (that when we got it home, it turned out to be broken) and I found a t-shirt. Nothing too thrilling, other than GROSS OUT WARNING GROSS OUT WARNING // when I went to pay at the cash I found a live earwig in my wallet!! I have only seen two in the house this summer season, but never in my handbag! What an odd place to find an earwig! Blech! //END OF GROSS OUT WARNING!

We headed home shortly after Talize, satisfied that today’s trip to Peterborough was enjoyable and successful, and we definitely look forward to our next road trip!