Back in the summer when Luke and I did our Road Trip across Canada. As we where driving threw southern British Columbia Luke and I made a pit stop off the side of the road to get a lock down on our route threw Albert. At the time we where 45 minutes east of Fernie where Luke and I had snowboarded 2 years prior with our friend Mat Hudson. It was an awesome week of snowboarding and partying.

When Luke and I pulled off the highway we parked by what looked like an abandoned hotel. I got out to stretch my legs and take a look around while Luke pulled out the map to plan the best way threw Alberta, Saskatchewan only on back roads.

As I was walking around the hotel with my camera in hand, I was of course looking for an entrance to take a look inside. After checking the main entrance that was nailed shut I found a stair case on the outside of the building with a little opening in the boarded up door. So I climb up the the second level of the building to crawl threw a small opening in the door with my camera in hand.

I have to say once I got inside the dark house I was pretty spooked. I was tip toeing threw the house when I first entered because I wasn’t sure if someone else was in the building, possibly living/squatting there. As I was walking down the hall the first thing I see around the first corner is a dead body!

Or at least that’s what I thought it was at first glance. After that I was still totally spooked, but I had a grin on my face because it was a pretty funny prank that someone put together. So I continued walking down the hallways of the second level of the house opening doors and peaking in each room to see what remains I could find.

There wasn’t much to find in most of the bed rooms, but I’ll tell you this if you where looking to film a low budget horror movie, this would be a prime location to film one of those chase scenes!

When I walked into some of the bigger rooms, I found a ton of random crap scattered everywhere with little significance to what or who used to live in this building, but it made for some interesting photos.

I eventually made my way down stairs to check out the first level of the building. The first room that I walked into looked like a small restaurant with a bar and tables for customers. It would have been a nice place to stop if you where driving by. Makes you wonder what happened to places like these.

After I checked out the bar, I spotted a door and guess what it was unlocked, so I was able to just walk out. I wish I would have noticed that instead of crawling in threw the second story entrance. As I walked outside I noticed around back a trailer that was all smashed up with a motor home parked beside it, which was also smashed to pieces.

It’s very amazing what you can find if you go looking for it. After the many trips I’ve done searching for abandoned places all over Nova Scotia, and again on this road trip I am always shocked with what can be found if you drive out side of any major city of town. Once I finished documenting what I saw there in Crows Nest I walked back to the car to see what Luke had in store for us on the next leg of our trip.

Vacancy! is a post from: Nick Vail Photography

Back in the summer when Luke and I did our Road Trip across Canada one of our stops was in Nelson. When we rolled into Nelson we cruised threw basically the whole town looking for a cheap place to stay for the night. While we where patrolling the town I spotted two places that had abandoned written all over them.

Back in the day when I first got into photography I took some classes at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. One of the classes I took involved a term project where we had to compile a collection of photos all based on the same theme. At the time it was getting close to the dead line for choosing a topic so I decided to venture out into the middle of nowhere in Nova Scotia to look for abandoned buildings and document the remains.

This turned into a great topic and I managed to capture some amazing images that I will share in a blog post sometime in the future. But back to the main topic of Nelson.

After we drove all over Nelson we determined Best Western was the best choice for the night. After we settled into our hotel room Luke and I headed down to Jackson’s Hole for a few beers and a nice meal. The next morning I woke up early to ventured over to the spots that we saw the previous day.

I first biked over to the train station that was all boarded up, to take a look around and snap a few photos. The train station didn’t look as interesting as the other building I saw that was only a short ways from where I was.

After I snapped a few photo’s I started biking threw the town trying to find a way to get across the train tracks and find the abandoned warehouse that I wanted to shoot.

Along the way I found a few things in an industrial area, so I stopped to snap a few photos, but I didn’t waste too much time because I still hadn’t reached the building I was looking for.

I ended up having to cut threw a few private property work zones to get to the abandoned building I was looking for, but once I got there it was totally worth all the effort.

When I arrived I got off my bike, stashed it in some bushes and pulled out my camera to continued walking around the warehouse while snapping photos threw the broken windows peering threw looking for a way in. Eventually I found what looked like a way in threw one of the broken windows that had a few bricks stacked up beside it.

Bingo, I was in!

Once I got in the building I was pretty amazed with the way the sun beamed threw the windows giving a beautiful ray of light across the entire warehouse. I quickly started walking around the facility frantically snapping photos because I knew I wasn’t suppose to be in there, so I didn’t want to waste any time.

One thing that I noticed when I first started looking around where these very interesting shelves with all these circuits and wiring hanging out. Who knows what they where for but what ever it was you could tell it would never be used again.

I then went over to what seemed like a boarding area for passengers. But that’s only one possibility to what it could have been. The whole building also looked very similar to a facility where mechanics could repair broken train cars or busted engines.

I still to this day am unsure what the building was actually used for, but it was big enough to have been many things.

The shear size of the building was amazing, you could tell that at one point in time this was a happening place. At one time there must have been over 50 people working at this facility when trains where a more common use of transportation.

After snapping some photos I ventured into the smaller rooms of the ware house to see what else I could find.

I then walked into some dark rooms with smashed glass all over the floors and doors hanging on their last hinge. I continued into this cage type area, I wasn’t exactly sure what it would have been used for, but I was startled when I saw a mangled dead crow on the ground. Other than looking at the dead bird carcus It was a pretty amazing experience.

After exploring the whole building I looked at my watch and decided to head back to the hotel to wake up Luke and get back on the road to continue our journy across the country to our next stop on the map.

Abandoned in Nelson is a post from: Nick Vail Photography

We managed to get up extremely early the next morning to make the final stretch on our trip, from Quebec City to Nova Scotia. Along our travels threw Quebec we stopped close to the boarder of Quebec and New Brunswick at a place called Notre-Dame-Du-Lac for some breakfast/lunch in another small French town. We went to a very humble bakery which made some delicious bread, I was able to enjoy a delightful ham sandwich and a coffee. Then we headed back onto the road to breach the New Brunswick boarder.

Once we got on the high way there where only a few exits left before the boarder and the car was on extreme empty, so we where lucky enough to score some cheap gas before we crossed over into New Brunswick, not to mention the fact that Luke drove away on me again when I was getting some snacks at the station. What a douche.

After we crossed into New Brunswick we got too see 2 fighter jets and a helicopter doing patrols or simulations of some sort in the skies, which was pretty cool too see. Then we continued on down the highway when I saw a sign for Swan Lake which totally reminded me of the movie Billy Madison with Adam Sandler (hilarious movie) and eventually we crossed over the St. John River which had a beautiful landscape view from the highway.

After all the driving we did that day we kept trucking all the way to Nova Scotia, and all I could think about (besides my family) as we crossed the boarder were the lyrics of a Nova Scotia Hip-hop artist named Classifieds and his Welcome to the Maritimes song.

What a great way to end to an awesome 11 day journey across the country

Quebec to Nova Scotia Day 11 is a post from: Nick Vail Photography

The next morning John took us out for breakfast and then Luke and I hit the road to hopefully make it to Quebec City by the end of the day. It was pretty cool driving the 401 threw Toronto on another beautiful day, but once we got out of the greater Toronto area on the 401 we ran into a serious situation.

We where in the middle of passing an 18 wheeler when all of a sudden the truck driver decides he wants to turn into our lane, were a tiny car and it’s a huge transport truck, there was little we could do to prevent it from crushing us; We where lucky enough to be able to merge onto the shoulder of the road so the truck wouldn’t run us over and create a huge 50 car pile-up.

Let me tell you that some of those transport tuckers out there are fucked in the head, because he totally knew we where there.

We rolled into Montréal right at rush hour which isn’t much fun trying to maneuver our way threw traffic on streets were not familiar with to continue on our route threw the city. Not to mention sitting in the heat of traffic wasn’t all that thrilling, but we made it threw the city in decent time considering.

On our way to Quebec City we ran into 2 different thunderstorms and saw 2 different rainbows one of them just as we where on our way out of Montréal and the second one was just before Trois-Rivieres.

We then stopped for the night in Trois-Rivieres at a nice sized hotel. We went down to check out the lounge they had their, ordered a few Keith’s in spirit of almost being back home in Nova Scotia, but it wasn’t as easy to order a plate of nacho’s and a pizza as it was to order some beers when the waitress/bar tender can hardly speak English.

She turned out to be very nice and we both learned to speak a bit more of each others languages before the end of the evening.

Toronto to Quebec Day 10 is a post from: Nick Vail Photography

In the morning John took us to a nice place for breakfast then he showed us a cool dirt jump park in High Park. The dirt jumps totally needed to be fixed up a bit so we skipped those and went back to the car and drove to a skate park called Stan Wadlow park which from the researched we did looked pretty fun.

When we got their it was full of young skaters averaged around the age of 10 and they where all rocking T-shirts. Their shirts all said “We Skate our Hood” with a little skate board picture on it, It was pretty cool too see. Anyway we rode the park for awhile, when we got bored we continued on to roam the streets of Toronto and eventually made our way back to John’s so I could pursue a photo idea I had.

What I wanted to do was get was a point of view shot of Luke riding his fixed geared road bike threw the streets of Toronto. I was excited to do this but gear wasn’t working the way it should.

Luke Point of View in Toronot - © Nick Vail

My magic arm (which is a tool to clamp the camera to the bike) wasn’t locking properly, the lock lever broke on us, so we had to position the camera and tighten what used to be the locking arm with allen keys. Once we got the camera positioned we did some test runs around the block.

Luke Point of View in Toronot - © Nick Vail

To add to the chaos my wireless triggering device (Pocket Wizards) wouldn’t hold a signal more than a block away (and their range is suppose to span 1600 feet) then my Vivitar 285 flash which was mounted to the camera kept falling of the camera due to vibrations from the road.

All in the entire photo shoot was a lot of stress and a big pain-in-the-ass but I got the shots that I wanted.

Luke Point of View in Toronot - © Nick Vail

After the photo shoot it was close to 4pm which is when we heard Shannon was getting out of school so we went back to Kensington to search for red arrow bikes which wasn’t easy to find but Shannon was their, surprised and happy to see us.

We then got to meet a lot of his clientele (which is majority of the Toronto bike messengers). We chilled around the shop for awhile talking to some of the bike messengers, one of the messengers Dennis told us about this new sport that’s developing called bike polo which sounds pretty fun, and apparently a lot of cities play it all across the world.

After awhile we all went to drink some beers on the patio of a pub just around the corner in Kensington. When it was getting dark we headed back to the alley by the shop to talk some more, then one of the messenger dudes and I went to the beer store and bought a bunch of 40s of Corona‘s to bring back to sip on and chill in the shop.

Before the night was over Shannon gave me and Luke one of his band tee shirts and we biked back to Johns place threw the city streets of Toronto around 1am. I got lost and Luke got a flat tire but we both met up outside of John’s place at the exact same time. What a coincidence.

Toronto Day 9 is a post from: Nick Vail Photography

We got up early to hopefully catch the 9:10 ferry across Lake Huron (Luke is pissed off), by the time we got there the ferry was already full, so we had to wait 4 hours for the next ferry to arrive. After we got our ticket for the ferry, we parked in the line up and went across the street and ate an awesome breakfast.

After breakfast we visited the local trading post, and killed time at the rest of the tourist traps. Then we went and sat on some rocks by the lake waiting for the ferry to arrive.

So when the boat arrived we drove on then Luke and I checked out their lounge area with a Corona in hand and I was able to shoot a nice time laps of us departing from the island and mid way threw the sail the camera died before we docked. I intern missed a pretty cool photo of the docking at shore.

It was pretty cool to see how the front bow of the boat opened to let cars out of the hull. We then rushed to the car to get off the boat. Once we got off the boat we where on our way to meet John in Toronto, on another beautiful day.

Along the way threw we grabbed a meal, some where in Owen Sound along the Georgian Bay at some little seafood pub, which had some great calamari.

So we arrived into Toronto just as it was getting dark, I call John to get directions to his place. Just prior to when we arrived at John’s place some drunk had smashed his front door open and ran off. This occurrence made the directions to his place even more priceless.

He told us to meet him at the place by the hardware store were 3 guys are working on a door, Luke and I couldn’t get over it, such hilarious directions. So that night John served up some awesome appetizers, we had cherries, shrimp, salmon with cucumbers. All of which was very delicious, such a nice host.

After supper Luke and I took a bike ride around the city to check out the area. As we were biking threw the streets we where scouting out the location of Red Arrow bike shop which was owned by one of our friends from back home in Halifax (Shannen Leslie).

We didn’t end up finding the shop that night which wasn’t too surprising considering it was the middle of the night and we weren’t familiar with the streets of Toronto. So we made our way back to johns and got ready to start a new day.

Toronto Day 8 is a post from: Nick Vail Photography

We woke up early the next day and headed out on the road, It was super early but believe it or not we got pulled over by a cop going 36 km/hr over the speed-0-meter. Did I mention our newly rebuilt 240 didn’t have a speedometer?

Then almost run out of gas on our way to Wawa but luckily caught a brake at a gas port 40kms outside of Wawa. At the gas stop we got some snacks and believe it or not Luke drove off without me as it was pouring down hard. So hilarious I couldn’t stop laughing. Rain sucks. The skate parks in Tdot look so sick, stoked.

Animal Nation

Some time after Wawa we stopped at the Sandy River falls, took some epic photos, climbed some wicked rocks and slapped some stickers on some shitters, then hit the highway.

We finally got into Sault Ste Marie, checked out their Velodrome bike store, then rode the pump track they had out front of the store, which was pretty cool but it totally needed some grooming.

So we drove around the city looking for a good diner and along the way we lost a bolt for the exhaust. This resulted in the Nissan 240 sounding like a Civic with a rattle can on it. Luckily on after a few blocks we found Casey’s bar and grill where we stopped to check it out. I had an awesome Asian chicken salad and I was very satisfied with their quick and awesome service. We then got a new cap for the exhaust out of Luke’s bag of random bolts and continued to hit the road.

After a few more hours of driving we finally reached Manitoulin Island and spent the night there, grabbed a pizza at some local restaurant then took it back to the room where some hilarious stuff happened.

Luke spotting the wave

Luke riding the surf

Luke comming out of the tunnel

Manitoulin Island Day 7 is a post from: Nick Vail Photography

On the way to Thunder Bay we saw a Daze Doze DEAD billboard on the side of the road, and only a few kilometers up the road we saw a transport truck tipped over on the side of the road, which was horrible, but like the sign said Daze Doze Dead.

We stopped by the Kakabeka falls just out side of Thunder Bay to walk around and take some photos, they where some beautiful falls.

We then wasted too much time in Thunder Bay asked around for the local skate park, was directed to a park with what looked like someone paved some hilly grass to create mini volcano type features, which turned into a complete waste of time, but we talked to some cool dude in a wheelie.

On our way to Sault Ste Marie we drove into a serious thunder and lightning storm struck with rain so strong we could barley see the road for awhile. On our way into it I saw a sign for a bible camp. It makes me wonder about the reasoning of some random occurrences. Shortly after the thunder storm we drove further into the wind and found a rainbow and some awesome sun rays glistening in Lou of the clouds.

A Random Quote of Luke’s along the highway to Sue Saint Marie “the river runs cold deep and dark little fish swallows”

We stopped in Terrace bay on 08.08.08 got a jug at the gas restaurant right next to our motel and watched some of the opening to the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Dryden Day 6 is a post from: Nick Vail Photography

So we wake up in the morning on day 5 scarf down some breakfast before heading back to The Plaza for a day time shred. After biking too and from Luke’s grandfathers place to The Plaza I have to say that Winnipeg has a beautiful downtown area. We seshined the Plaza for a few hours, in huge bowl they had there, amazing time.

As it was getting late we decided to see a bit more of Winnipeg so we went to a skate shop on kings street (huge store) and ran into a bike shop while we where navigating our way out of Winnipeg. When we got on the highway out of Winnipeg we set our navigation to Kenora.

Again we were blessed with some wonderful driving weather along the way. About an hour outside of Winnipeg we stopped at West Wolf Park to have some lunch at a small diner. I was able to enjoy an awesome salmon burger and a nice cold bottle of a local beer then continued on down to Kenora.

Now Kenora was a pretty small town awesome skate park that I didn’t want to leave, but we had to cover more ground before it got dark. We had a great time their, and I would definitely recommend that park to anyone; Beautiful days.

Our next stop after Kenora was in Dryden where we got a solid hotel for $60. Once we settled into the new room me and Luke rocked out into the streets. After about a 10 minute search Luke and I asked some chick on a bike where the skate park was and she kindly gave us directions and the evening turned into a awesome park ride.

It was a brand new skate park skate park that was luckily only 2 blocks from our hotel. I was able to nail all the lines in the park; from hips to spine transfers, simple an amazing time. It was definitely one of my best rides on the whole trip.

We then jetted back to the hotel to clean up and headed out for a night of drinks and craziness. So Luke and I biked into the main street of Dryden to ask a few drunk as fuck chicks where the bar was.

We then rocked up to this saloon to chill and get a few jugs of Keith’s and it turned into a night of drunken shenanigans. We played a few games of pool, after a few Jugs I was way too drunk for that.

Halfway threw the evening some local chick got her ass kicked, by some chick because she was hitting on her boy. We continued with some more beers and socializing with the crazy locals at the saloon.

Woke up the next morning with a wild hang over. Luke and I rocked up to the restaurant attached to our motel for some bacon and eggs (always a good cure), then hit the road to hopefully reach the ferry town before the end of the day.

Winnipeg Day 5 is a post from: Nick Vail Photography

So we wake up in the morning to another beautiful day to find out we had no hot water. So we said fuck it, hopped in the car and hit the road. Along the way we find a cool car dump with some sic classics. So we pulled down a gravel road, parked the car and shot some cool photos of the relics. I also managed to grab a few shots of Luke in his soon to be roaster that he’ll restore some day.

Luke checking out the relics

We then drove around the boarder town to see if we could get duty free stuff, but with little luck. We continued on to venture onto hwy 500 to drove for-ever on what we thought would be a paved highway but turned out to be a two lane gravel road for the next 3 hours.

As dull as it may seem their where some highlights, we stopped at some old farm buildings to take some photos of the remains. Believe it or not we also got to race a deer down the gravel road for like 10 minutes till we got bored and tried to pass the deer and that’s when it decided to run off the road. All in all it was a pretty extreme drive going 100 miles an hour on some sketchy gravel roads.

Once we got off the dirt roads we arrived at Many Berries to fill up the tank cause we where cautiously low on fuel in the middle of nowhere and then continued across the boarder into Saskatchewan.

We mostly just drove right threw Saskatchewan into Manitoba where we chilled at Luke’s grand fathers place for the night. He was a super nice guy, made us supper and let us stays the night. Not to mention he also made us a wonderful breakfast in the morning.

When we first arrived in Winnipeg it took very little time to navigation threw the city to find where we where going because Luke was familiar with the area. When we arrived at Grandpa’s place we where greeted with some awesome home made salad and some great moose sausage, that grandpa prepared for us. Then not long after we headed into the streets to check out The Plaza.

The Plaza is a super fun park that was built in Winnipeg; it’s designed to look like a city park but actually designed with skaters in mind. We rode till 2am and then hit the streets back to our place to get some rest.

Milk River Day 4 is a post from: Nick Vail Photography