Heather and Barry's Homepage

Surviving the BSM (Blood Sucking Mosquitoes) adventure we had last night, Barry and I both slept well and awoke to sunshine. Barry made breakfast while I admired a fuzzy yellow caterpillar on our tent then broke down and cleaned the house by turning it inside out. [Barry wishes all houses could be cleaned with such efficiency.] Post breakfast we showered to de-deet-ify and then drove off.

Our first stop was a grocery store (I don’t remember where) to pick up some of the bug killing supplies from last night. We then drove drove drove forever until we needed gas. This location happened to be Wawa, Ontario. In Wawa was a tourist information center with a huge bird posing outside. I went in to look around and discovered a brochure that had one of the best literary characters in the world on it: Winnie the Pooh, who was born in White River, Ontario. [Apparently, a black bear cub wandered into a train station while some Canadian military was passing through. A lieutenant who was also a veterinarian from Winnipeg found him, named him Winnipeg, and kept him as the company mascot. Winnipeg got shortened to Winnie, traveled to London, and eventually found his home at the London Zoo. He became very popular, particularly with A. A. Milne’s son Christopher; thus Winnie the Pooh was born. White River now makes itself into a tourist attraction based on this history. –Barry] Lucky for me, this was our second stop of the day. The little memorial site dedicated to him was right along route 17; you could barely miss the huge plastic tree with Pooh Bear sitting in it. Barry indulged me as we got out of the car and walked around a bit. Of course, the next thing on the list was picture taking. When I was satisfied with the images and Barry was psyched that he got to play with my camera’s timer function, we hopped back in the car and drove drove drove some more. Around 7 PM were we both kind of hungry. Conveniently, Neys Provincial Park was a few kilometers up the road, so we decided that we should stop there, eat dinner, then head out again. Naively, I thought we would be able to make it to Thunder Bay today, but we had a bunch of kilometers still ahead of us, and it was obvious that we weren’t making it there until tomorrow. We drove into Neys Park and were told at 7:30 PM that even if we were going to be there for an hour, we would need to pay the day-pass fee of $7 Canadian. We sucked it up and paid the fee, then went to Prisoner’s Cove right on the lake to eat. No surprises here: Barry made dinner while I took some pictures of the beautiful scenery. He started up the bug coil when the ‘skeeters were a’buzzing, and few decided to bother us as we munched on our cous-cous and beans. We had pudding for dessert, cleaned up from our cooking, plopped ourselves into the car and plunged ahead. The views of Lake superior at 8:30ish on Route 17 are absolutely spectacular. It really is amazing to drive next to such a great object of nature. Incredibly, we did not stop to take pictures.

We stopped for good tonight at Rainbow Falls Provincial Park. There were no tent sites left, only RV hook-ups, so we had to pay a couple Canadian toonies ($2 coins) extra for our right to camp there. Ironically, we were told after we paid for the evening that the pass lasts for twenty-four hours and will take place of the day-pass fee at any other Provincial Park we stop at until 9:30 tomorrow evening. We set up camp and were soon falling asleep to the sounds of the lapping Superior Lake at our feet which were fighting the noise of trucks zooming by on Route 17 just up the road as well as the trains that were flying by on the tracks that run parallel to the highway. [As a side note – it takes 700 +/- 20ish pumps to blow up our air mattress each time we stay at a new place. For all of you who were thinking that I’m slacking and taking pictures while Barry is hard at work cooking away, be warned. My arms are buffin’ up with each pump I take! :) ]