Sault Ste. Marie (SSM), Ontario (2015) -- Part A -- by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

Day One – Sunday Sept. 20, 2015:

I left for the GO Bus stop in Ajax (at Salem and Hwy. 2) at 9:20 am and caught the GO Bus at 9:45 am.  It arrived at Yorkdale GO Bus Terminal at 10:45 am.  I still had about two hours before the northbound Greyhound Bus was due to arrive at Yorkdale Greyhound Bus Terminal to take me to Sudbury, our first major stop.  So, I amused myself by going to Tim Horton’s in the mall and buying a cup of coffee and a bagel for breakfast.

Like clockwork, the Greyhound Bus arrived at Yorkdale from downtown Toronto at 12:45 pm, the passengers there boarded, and we left for the “Soo” (SSM) just before 1:00 pm.  We arrived at the Sudbury Bus Terminal by 5:30 pm.  I had been lucky enough to have a talkative young female seatmate (Sarah) sitting next to me onward from Parry Sound where we’d stopped for fifteen minutes, and that helped pass the time quickly till we reached Sudbury.

The stop in Sudbury is always at least an hour long so that the bus can be cleaned and mechanically checked.  After that, we re-boarded the bus for SSM.  Two hours later, there was a brief stop in Blind River at Tim Horton’s.  So far, the trip had been good.  I’d met another seatmate, this time a young male (Jacob), and we chatted together a good part of the way to SSM. 

By 11:30 pm, we finally arrived in SSM at the Howard Johnson’s motel at the edge of town where a taxi service would pick me up and take me to my hotel in town.  The Howard Johnson’s was where the local Greyhound Bus Terminal was now located.  I arrived by taxi at my hotel, the Holiday Inn Express, by 12:45 am on Monday Sept. 21^st and checked in.  It had been a very long day.  All I wanted to do was shower and eat something and then crawl into my comfy king-sized bed.  I was way too tired to unpack my computer yet, so I just watched some TV before going to sleep.