Day 21 - Laurentian

Hello friends, today I got to explore the surprisingly beautiful city of Sudbury, and had a great time doing so! I had to say goodbye to my Ottawa friends this morning, which was kind of sad, but I am grateful for the time I spent in Ottawa. It was a 5.5 hour drive from Ottawa, first decently long stretch of the trip that I've done alone, so the entire drive was full of podcasts, loud music, and calling my friends so that they keep me company during the drive, which worked out quite well. I made it to Laurentian University and met up with Harry Brahmbhatt, the current President of the Laurentian University Engineering Student Society (LUESS), and he was kind enough to show me around. He took me through all of the buildings on campus, showed me the spaces their EngSoc currently has, and even gave me some souvenirs for the road! The Laurentian campus is quite huge, and basically has an amazing view regardless of where you are on campus; I thought that was really cool. A few really cool things I learned about Laurentian include the fact that their campus is surrounded by numerous lakes and numerous natural hiking trails, they have a private beach to themselves, they are a bilingual school, and their campus has a street the surrounds the entire campus (similar to Waterloo's Ring Road). On the Engineering side, they have 3 major Engineering programs: Mechanical, Chemical and Mining, and they are getting a brand new Engineering building that'll be ready by September. Their EngSoc is going to have a lot of new space in the coming months, which is very exciting.

After finishing up with my trip to Laurentian, I was starving and decided that East Side Mario's is exactly what I needed in my life at that time. The service there was fantastic, and the layout of the restaurant was unlike anything I had ever seen before at an East Side's. I would say the highlight of my visit there though was the fact that there was a man named Stefano going around table-to-table and entertaining the guests by doing magic tricks, and honestly he did some tricks that just blew my mind and I will never understand them. Definitely the best food experience I've had so far on this trip in terms of the events that occurred during it. I decided that next I wanted to go see the Big Nickel, and it was definitely worth the drive to go see it. Only unfortunate aspect of it was that because of how much the sunlight was reflecting off of it, I couldn't take a lot of good pictures because everything was just so bright. I then wanted to explore the nature within Sudbury, so I visited Moonlight Beach (one of Sudbury's most popular beaches) and took a walk through Bell Park (which overlooked Ramsey Lake), both of which were just absolutely stunning. An old friend of mine, Natalie Roby, is working in Sudbury for the summer, and was kind enough to give me a place to stay for the night while I'm here, so I am very thankful for her help. I cannot overstate how supportive and kind everyone has been over the course of my road trip thus far, I am very grateful for everything they've done for me and hope I can pay it forward.

When it comes to Sudbury itself, it is such a fascinating city. It is very mountainous, to the point that while you're driving down the street you'll see giant rocks in between buildings; this very much adds to the aesthetic of the city. There are also numerous bodies of water such as beaches and lakes, and there is just so much history behind the city. Fun fact: Sudbury has the tallest smoke stack in North America (the 2nd tallest in the world), and there was a meteor that hit Sudbury billions of years ago and created a crater that is still being mined to this day. Sudbury is actually the city with the most currently operating mines in the world. One last things that I appreciated about the city is that there is a bridge called the "Bridge of Nations", and it has flags from countries all across the world, show how much the city appreciates diversity and culture. Tomorrow I get to explore more of Ontario as I have an 11 hour drive to Thunder Bay, which is going to be exhausting but very much worth it!

Laurentian: www.instagram.com/p/BjBgDMWliQ2