Family reunion wrapup, Sault Ste. Marie, Lake Superior Provincial Park, Wawa, White River, Pukaskwa National Park, Thunder Bay, Fort William (posted from Seattle Coffee, Thunder Bay, Ontario)
(This post covers 12-19 June, 2007. Sorry for the long time between posts but there are few (or no) free wireless hotspots on the north shore of Lake Superior between the Soo (Sault Saint Marie) and Thunder Bay. The libraries have internet connectivity but only for use on their PCs and file uploads are not permitted. I could retype my blog entries into Blogger but, hey, we’ve got things to do out here. We have been checking our email at the libraries via our provider’s webmail interface. Also, --- for family ---- please note that our cell phones do not work in this area)
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Thursday, 19 June –
Our Wal-mart night last night was a pretty good one even though we had a rolling thunderstorm for a few hours and a very active Canadian Pacific rail-line only a block away. The great thing about most of the Wal-marts here is they close at 22:00 or 23:00 so the parking lot clears out and that calms things down immensely.
Today we spent the whole day at Fort William, a reconstructed fur-trading fort. The time period is 1815 and Fort William is the inland headquarters of the North West Company. It is competing with the Hudson’s Bay Company for dominance of the Canadian fur trade and is doing quite well at this point. Of every 14 furs traded out of Canada at this time, 11 of them are traded via the North West Company, two by the Hudson’s Bay Company and one by independents. The North West Company traders are known for going out among the First Nation people rather than waiting for the First Nation people to come to them. (Unfortunately, their business declines later on and the North West Company is absorbed by Hudson’s Bay Company) and ceases to exist.
We first came upon an Ojibwe camp outside the fort. There we learned about reed-mat making, bannock-making, and building of a bark-covered tipi. We also had a sample of the delicious deep-fried bannock.
We then met voyageurs camped just outside the main gate of the fort. The voyageurs are renowned for paddling their canoes 50- 70 miles per day (!!!), with record trips in excess of 120 miles in a day. They carried 90-pound packs over portages and had a workday of 15 to 18 hours--- and loved it!
We then met the master of the fort who gave us an overview tour (all the while in character and interacting with other costumed staff) of about 45 minutes. After that we were free to wander the fort's 42 buildings and we took advantage of it, asking many, many questions. This is apparently a good summer job for students and they do a great job of staying in character yet answering questions about things that haven't happened yet by 1815. We began our visit at about 0930 and broke for lunch at 1300, thinking we were nearly done. We returned for an event at 1400 and continued wandering about until finally tiring out at 1700.
We had a light supper in the parking lot, then drove across town to the Kangas Saunas where we booked a medium sauna room for the normal hour-and-a-half (for $25). Our sauna suite consisted of three rooms: a changing room with long benches and a toilet-and-sink alcove, a tiled shower room with two showers and a redwood sitting bench, and a large sauna room with raised redwood bench and large sauna heater. A bucket of cool water with a dipper had been left in the sauna room and we would occasionally put that on the very hot rocks atop the sauna heater, instantly filling the upper half of the room with mentholated steam. After a few rounds of sauna and showers we retreated to the changing room and toasted our little adventure with some tawny port we had bought at the LCBO on the way to the sauna. Boy, that was good!
After we dressed we stepped into the small restaurant beside the sauna complex and had a bit of dessert to celebrate (and gain enough muscle tone to walk again!).
Since it was still early to return to the Wal-mart for the night, we drove to Thunder Bay’s International Peace Garden and visited the monuments erected by various local communities of immigrants. Local Ukranian, Slovakian, Finnish, Lithuanian, Polish, Italian, German, Filipino, Chinese, Portugese, Hollander, and Scottish communities had each built a monument to peace. A very nice little park.
After our very full day, we retired to the Wal-mart to read and blog. We have a dozen or so other travellers in the parking lot with us.
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Wednesday, 18 June -
After an excellent night in the freebie spot behind May’s Gift shop we stopped in to say thanks. The ladies behind the counter were very nice and one asked if we had seen any bears. We said we had seen one outside of Marathon yesterday and she said, “No, I meant in your campsite; we’ve had a bear hanging out back there for the last week or so.” But we were so hard asleep the bear would have had to shake the van for us to notice
Today our goal was Thunder Bay, about 200 miles west. Along the way we toured the small towns of Rossport and Nipigon, both nice little communities on bays formed by offshore islands. At Rossport we stopped in and talked with the owner of Superior Kayak Adventures and enjoyed chatting about the trips he runs in the area and sea kayaks in general.
We arrived in Thunder Bay by mid-afternoon and asked at the visitor’s center about free or cheap RV overnighting and were directed to the Wal-mart. We thought we’d better check for ourselves and indeed it looked fine—a large lot and plenty of space. And in the same mall is a Starbucks in a ‘Chapters’, a Canadian version of a Borders or Barnes and Noble bookstore. Does it get any better than this?
We then drove over to Confederation College which hosts the Thunder Bay Art Museum. Luckily we had arrived on a Wednesday, free-admissions day. We spent 90 minutes or so touring exhibits of high-quality First Nations art from Northern Ontario and Northwestern British Columbia, both heavily infused with drawings of spirits and spirit-beings.
We then drove downtown to the Finnish section of town to try a well-known Finnish restaurant called ‘Hoito’ (Finnish for ‘hope’). This restaurant opened in 1918 after the large community of Finnish bush-workers complained of having no reasonably-priced place to eat. A group organized the men to contribute small amounts of money totaling $300 to fund the opening of the restaurant and it continues today to offer low-priced, hearty meals. We wanted to try some Finnish specialties so I had the Fried Finnish Sausage meal and Labashi had ‘karjalan piirakka with egg salad’. The karjalan piirakka consists of rice wrapped in wheat dough and baked. Both were very good. We still had some room left over so also ordered an open-faced salt-fish sandwich consisting of heavily-salted fresh salmon (i.e., not cooked) on a slice of dark bread and covered with chopped onions, scallions, and a slice of tomato. The salt-fish alone was too salty but with the topping it was pretty good. I don’t know that I’d order a salt-fish sandwich again but was glad we tried it.
After supper we walked across the street to the Finnish deli and bought a small box of dark chocolate with orange peel and a small bag of Finnish black licorice (“Panda: the REAL taste of licorice”). The owner-lady very enthusiastically told us about the local Finn community and when we said we were thinking of trying a real Finnish sauna she directed us to Kangas Sauna nearby.
We then drove to the bay-side park where the Wednesday-night open-air concert was just getting underway on this perfect-for-it balmy summer evening. We took a leisurely walk through the concert lawn, the nearby marina, and old railway station and went upstairs there to the Thunder Bay Model Railroad Society’s HO-scale railroad. The older gentleman manning the model railroad layout was happy to hear we are from Pennsylvania. His specialty in the club is the Pennsylvania Railroad and he has been to the railroad museums in Strasburg, Altoona, Scranton and the one he likes best--- some little town he can’t remember (but the model railroad was built by a priest) and it’s somewhere near Jim Thorpe, PA!
We then returned to Wal-mart for the night and did some shopping for essentials before retiring to blog and read.
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Tuesday, 17 June -
Last night was a pretty noisy night because of the nearby trucks on Highway 17 and a busy truck stop nearby. But we did OK and were glad to have the freebie spot given the outrageous prices for camping in the Provincial Parks.
This morning we headed West again and before long came upon a red fox jogging along the side of the road. He (or she) was carrying a large rodent and was just trotting along just off the white-line at the road’s edge. We pulled ahead and Labashi jumped out to take pictures. The fox crossed to the other side of the road and sprinted past us, then crossed back to our side and continued on. We followed and the fox would stop and turn toward us once in awhile, then trot out ahead again. Eventually the fox turned into the woods and was gone. Very cool!
An hour or so later Labashi cried out “There’s a bear!” and I had a very brief glimpse as I hit the brakes. I turned around and we couldn’t find it at first but then did and stopped for a few pictures of the little guy. This was a young one, probably a year or two old and we wondered if Mama was nearby so didn’t venture too close.
We then came to the visitor’s center for Marathon, a pulp-mill town which now has Canada’s largest gold mine. There we learned of two possibilities for free overnighting. We then went downtown to the library where we used the internet terminal to check our email and had a nice chat with the librarian about our travels. Then we drove back west a few miles to Pukaskwa (locally pronounced, believe it or not, “PUCK-a-saw”) National Park. I thought we’d have to pay the $9 day-use fee and was surprised when the attendant asked if I have a National Parks Pass. Well, yes we do. It has been hanging on Mocha Joe’s mirror since last summer when we bought it for use in the Canadian Rockies.
There at Pukaskwa we hiked the Coastal Trail, a backpacking trail along Lake Superior, for four miles or so. After our return to the visitor’s center we started out the Southern Headlands Trail but turned back about half-way; we were just too tired out from our other hike.
After supper in the parking lot we drove to the free RV camping spot at May’s Gift Shop and learned that, yes, it really is free and, no, there are no strings attached. We learned that the previous owner of the property had been developing a small campground for RVs but had been killed when he fell off his tractor and was run over by it. The current owners have not decided whether to go ahead with adding the electrical and sewer hookups or not but in the meantime have opened it up to anyone who wants to stay without hookups… just perfect for us.
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Monday, 16 June -
We again slept like kings last night. I still can’t believe how long the days last here on the western edge of the time zone. We took pictures of the sun setting into Lake Superior at 21:43 last night. I was hoping to see stars or perhaps some passing satellites but I couldn’t stay up long enough for the sky to darken. At 23:00 I could still see some faint touches of reddish color in the western sky and could only count eight stars (actually, at least two of them were planets—there’s no mistaking super-bright Venus low in the western sky or red-red Mars in the southern sky).
The cooler weather led us to sleep in until 08:30 and our showers were a ‘nit bippy’ until we had the hot water full-on. We headed back out on Highway 17 West, back on the North-Shore-of-Superior circle route, still within the Lake Superior Provincial Park. In a few miles we came to the trailhead for Orphan Lake, one of the hikes recommended by the Visitors’ Center folks. We hiked to a pretty little overlook and back for a round trip of about two miles, most of it through sugar maple and birch forest.
We then drove on to the mining town of Wawa. At the visitors’ center I saw an internet terminal ($2 for 20 minutes) so asked if any of the businesses in town had wireless. The girl told me the Columbia Restaurant has it so we thought we’d have lunch there and pick up our email at the same time. Wrong! They don’t have wireless but they did make a nice cheeseburger for Labashi and an excellent poutine for me. We first saw poutine (pronounced 'poo-TIN') in Quebec and once I heard what it is, I had to try it. Take a heaping helping of French fries and generously add white farmer’s cheese curds, then cover it all with a light beef gravy. You may want to also order a diet coke with this meal because it’s got to have a through-the-roof calorie count and fat count. On the good news side, you won’t need anything else to eat until tomorrow. Maybe the next day if you order a large one.
After our late lunch we explored the area around Wawa. We took a dirt road back into the bush toward Michipicoten. We happened upon the Anishinabe First Nation lands near Michipicoten Harbour—a very interesting place! The First Nations people (which we silly white people sometimes call “Indians”) have a small town there. We weren’t sure we would be welcome to look around there but soon came upon a sign along the dirt road which said “Ahniin, Boozhoo (Hello)”, then one which said “Aniish na geyg (How are you?)”. That settled it--- we were welcome to continue on to the village. There we saw a small village of perhaps 30 houses, all modestly built and very neat. We only saw a few native faces, though. The guys coming out of the Carpentry Shop waved at us as we went by but otherwise there were only a few people around.
On the way back out to the hard road we turned down another dirt road, this one leading to ‘Naturally Superior’, a sea kayaking outfitter. The dirt road got smaller and smaller but came out on a point formed by the Michipicoten River and Lake Superior. It made a perfect sea-kayaking training and touring center. With the river running down into the Lake and the winds blowing up toward the river, this made for spectacular standing waves, a great playground for the VERY experienced sea kayaker. A small bay to the side made a perfect training area for ocean kayaking given its nice, regular wind-driven waves breaking on the fine sand beach of Government Dock. We visited the well-equipped Paddling Shop but didn’t find any have-to-haves. But we did see a spectacular photo of sea kayaks in heavy waves—and it was taken right here. Each October Naturally Superior hosts a world-class big-wave ocean-kayaking event here. I’d love to see it.
We then continued west on 17 to White River. There we stopped at the local visitors’ center and found it’s dedicated to Winnie-the-Pooh. It seems the real Winnie-the-Pooh was an orphaned bear found near White River around 1915 after it’s mother was killed by a hunter. The cub was brought to White River and became the property of a Canadian soldier and the mascot of his unit. When the unit was deployed to England, the soldier took his bear, ‘Winnipeg’ (named for the soldier’s home town) along. But when the unit was deployed to France, ‘Winnie’ couldn’t go so the soldier made arrangements for Winnie to live in the London zoo. There Winnie became a celebrity and the story of ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ began.
ANYway, at the Winnie-the-Pooh visitors’ center we asked about free RV parking and learned that we were welcome to stay in the parking lot of the visitor’s center. Perfect timing! We were tired of traveling for the day and here was a freebie overnight site.
Not long after picking our spot for the night a pickup with a camper pulled in. I was curious to know how they knew about the free overnighting here so walked over to ask. I met Jerry and Annette from Sudbury, ON who told me they’ve been driving this road (the TransCanadian Highway) for years to visit their daughter in Red River (Alberta) and have used this spot many times. That, in turn, led to an invitation for Labashi and I to join them in their camper for the evening. We chatted for a few hours and we learned about their trip to Alaska and the Yukon and had a wonderful time.
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Sunday, 15 June -
Last night was one of our best Wal-mart stays ever--- super quiet and very little traffic passing nearby. After our busy week we were ready for a recovery night and this filled the bill magnificently.
We crossed the border into Canada at Sault Saint Marie and stopped at the Visitor’s Center for literature. We drove a few blocks to the Canadian Bush Plane Heritage Centre and spent the rest of the morning admiring the bush planes in this excellent and comprehensive museum. I loved the vintage movie footage of the planes and seeing equipment I’ve only read about, like aircraft and helicopter engine heaters, water-bomber roll-over tanks, portable fire-fighting pumps, and sectional canoes. Examples of all the historic planes were there: Noordyn Norseman, DeHavilland Beaver, Otter, and Twin Otter, Gypsy Moth, Tiger Moth, Fairchild, Curtiss Silver Dart, and many others. We had a chance to board a Canadair C210 water-bomber and took simulator flights around the Soo Locks and Agawa Canyon. Well done, Canada…
After lunch in the museum parking lot we headed out Highway 17 toward Thunder Bay, some 450 miles away around the north shore of Lake Superior. By 1600 we had made it to Lake Superior Provincial Park. We were shocked to find the camping prices starting at $22.75 a night for a primitive campsite back a pot-holed dirt road and no water or showers in the campground. We drove on to the Visitor’s Center on Agawa Bay and enjoyed a movie about the park and loved seeing a velocipede they had on display. We then took a hike to see Ojibwe pictographs on cliffs along Lake Superior. We elected to stay the night at the Agawa Bay campground which was a bit more expensive ($27.75) but gave us a pretty site right on Lake Superior plus showers. And later as we walked the Coastal Trail we found $8.75 in Canadian change lying in the middle of the trail—that helps!
Gas prices in Sault Ste. Marie on the US side were $3.31 per gallon. On the Canadian side, gas is $4.36 a gallon at Sault Ste. Marie and $4.46 once you get out of town.
Lake Superior is spectacular up here. The water is clean and clear and very cold, averaging only 58 degrees on the surface in August! The air temperatures at night have been in the high 40’s and the daytime highs in the mid-Sixties.
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Saturday, 14 June -
The reunion is over so today is pack-up-and-move-on day. We awoke to a persistent rain but it lightened a bit as we packed. We then all went to a late breakfast at the Bavarian Bakery, declared the reunion a great success, then went our separate ways.
While everyone else headed south, Labashi and I pointed north. We drove up the Lake Huron shore, passing through Rogers City, Cheboygen, and Mackinaw City before crossing the spectacular Mackinac Bridge to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. By Sault Ste. Marie we were ready to stop for the evening and found the local Wal-mart easily. After supper we spent the evening reading and blogging in good ol’ Mocha Joe.
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Friday, 13 June -
Today was jet-ski day at the reunion but I’ve been-there-done-that so I went hiking. I drove out to the Eastgate site of the Huron National Forest and walked the Eagle Run trails for two hours. The trails run through lush, green forest but where they run through fields you are pursued relentlessly by horseflies. I had some Maxi-Deet along and that helped back them off a bit but I had a few times where I just stopped and swung my hat like a crazy guy to get them away from me. I’ve got to see what the locals do about these nasty little guys.
Back at our motel, I saw the group on the beach watching the jet-skiers and joined them. The jet-skiers had been having a blast on Lake Huron in the chop set up by a strong onshore wind. One jet-ski wasn’t working well for the moment, though, and just as I walked up the other one overturned far off the beach. That one had two teenage girls completely new to jet-skis and unable to make any attempt at self-rescue. That got interesting in a hurry. The girls’ Dads started swimming out while the kid on duty for the jet-ski rental vendor fiddled with the other dead jet-ski. I walked back to Mocha Joe and pulled it as close as I could to the beach and started unloading a kayak in case the other jet-ski wouldn’t start. As I was walking to my van one of the adults associated with the jet-ski business asked if everything was ok. I said we had two kids in the water and they were ok for the moment but we had no way to get them back in. He zoomed off to ‘get the guys’ and called for another jet-ski to be brought in (but it was 20 minutes away). One of our adults helped me unload and carry my kayak to the water’s edge. Fortunately, by that time the situation had improved a lot. The two Dads had reached the girls and had managed to turn the jet-ski upright, get it started, and start idling back toward shore. In a few minutes they came to a sandbar and were able to stand up and it became apparent that the emergency was over. But that pretty well ended the enthusiasm for jet-skiing today.
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Thursday, 12 June –
Today was canoeing day on the Au Sable River for our family reunion group. Labashi and I joined a two-canoe group with our sea kayaks for the two-hour trip and another two canoes made the four-hour trip. We had a fantastic day for it with temperatures in the mid-Seventies and a gentle breeze blowing downriver. The Au Sable is famous for its yearly canoe race, some 120 miles and five dams from Grayling to Oscoda. The river is crystal clear with a sandy bottom and lots of waving underwater growth for the fish. We joined the group at Oscoda Canoe Rentals and paid $10 each for the shuttle ride to our put-in at ‘Whirlpool’ in the Huron National Forest. We had decided we had better trail along with the less-experienced group because those two canoes each had a Dad in the stern and a young boy in the bow and we didn’t know how much maneuvering would be required of the youngsters. But the Au Sable turned out to be perfect for this. It has a gentle but insistent three-knot current pulling the canoes downstream and there are very few obstructions. The paddling team only has to keep the canoe more or less straight and even that’s not really required. I believe you could even do this trip without paddles if you wanted to.
After the trip Labashi and I took it easy for the rest of the afternoon, then drove to Desi’s Taco Lounge for supper. We picked Desi’s after I happened upon a passage about it in ‘The Oscoda Murders’, a fantastic little book written by a local guy, Jim Dunn, in the mid-Eighties. We had seen it at the library a few days ago. The book is a farce murder mystery done in the style of the pulp detective fiction of the Forties and Fifties. Our protagonist, Nick Nails, is Oscoda’s only private eye and he has seen the underbelly of the beast that is (sleepy little) Oscoda. In Chapter Six, Nick goes out to Desi’s for ‘the best Mexican food around’ (and the only, I believe) where he spots ‘that weasel Raoul’ and another miscreant faking a sale of illegally-snagged salmon to the commanding officer of the Wurtsmith Air Force Base to cover up (it turns out) a plot to sell cruise-missle plans to the Commies.
ANYway, we had a nice evening at Desi’s and loved the fajitas even if we didn’t get a chance to meet that weasel Raoul (That’s because Raoul had been murdered by Chin, the Chinese guy who bought out Oscoda’s Ford dealership a couple of years ago as a cover for his nefarious plot to steal the cruise-missle plans).
========================== END OF 7/19/07 POST ========
(This post covers 12-19 June, 2007. Sorry for the long time between posts but there are few (or no) free wireless hotspots on the north shore of Lake Superior between the Soo (Sault Saint Marie) and Thunder Bay. The libraries have internet connectivity but only for use on their PCs and file uploads are not permitted. I could retype my blog entries into Blogger but, hey, we’ve got things to do out here. We have been checking our email at the libraries via our provider’s webmail interface. Also, --- for family ---- please note that our cell phones do not work in this area)
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Thursday, 19 June –
Our Wal-mart night last night was a pretty good one even though we had a rolling thunderstorm for a few hours and a very active Canadian Pacific rail-line only a block away. The great thing about most of the Wal-marts here is they close at 22:00 or 23:00 so the parking lot clears out and that calms things down immensely.
Today we spent the whole day at Fort William, a reconstructed fur-trading fort. The time period is 1815 and Fort William is the inland headquarters of the North West Company. It is competing with the Hudson’s Bay Company for dominance of the Canadian fur trade and is doing quite well at this point. Of every 14 furs traded out of Canada at this time, 11 of them are traded via the North West Company, two by the Hudson’s Bay Company and one by independents. The North West Company traders are known for going out among the First Nation people rather than waiting for the First Nation people to come to them. (Unfortunately, their business declines later on and the North West Company is absorbed by Hudson’s Bay Company) and ceases to exist.
We first came upon an Ojibwe camp outside the fort. There we learned about reed-mat making, bannock-making, and building of a bark-covered tipi. We also had a sample of the delicious deep-fried bannock.
We then met voyageurs camped just outside the main gate of the fort. The voyageurs are renowned for paddling their canoes 50- 70 miles per day (!!!), with record trips in excess of 120 miles in a day. They carried 90-pound packs over portages and had a workday of 15 to 18 hours--- and loved it!
We then met the master of the fort who gave us an overview tour (all the while in character and interacting with other costumed staff) of about 45 minutes. After that we were free to wander the fort's 42 buildings and we took advantage of it, asking many, many questions. This is apparently a good summer job for students and they do a great job of staying in character yet answering questions about things that haven't happened yet by 1815. We began our visit at about 0930 and broke for lunch at 1300, thinking we were nearly done. We returned for an event at 1400 and continued wandering about until finally tiring out at 1700.
We had a light supper in the parking lot, then drove across town to the Kangas Saunas where we booked a medium sauna room for the normal hour-and-a-half (for $25). Our sauna suite consisted of three rooms: a changing room with long benches and a toilet-and-sink alcove, a tiled shower room with two showers and a redwood sitting bench, and a large sauna room with raised redwood bench and large sauna heater. A bucket of cool water with a dipper had been left in the sauna room and we would occasionally put that on the very hot rocks atop the sauna heater, instantly filling the upper half of the room with mentholated steam. After a few rounds of sauna and showers we retreated to the changing room and toasted our little adventure with some tawny port we had bought at the LCBO on the way to the sauna. Boy, that was good!
After we dressed we stepped into the small restaurant beside the sauna complex and had a bit of dessert to celebrate (and gain enough muscle tone to walk again!).
Since it was still early to return to the Wal-mart for the night, we drove to Thunder Bay’s International Peace Garden and visited the monuments erected by various local communities of immigrants. Local Ukranian, Slovakian, Finnish, Lithuanian, Polish, Italian, German, Filipino, Chinese, Portugese, Hollander, and Scottish communities had each built a monument to peace. A very nice little park.
After our very full day, we retired to the Wal-mart to read and blog. We have a dozen or so other travellers in the parking lot with us.
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Wednesday, 18 June -
After an excellent night in the freebie spot behind May’s Gift shop we stopped in to say thanks. The ladies behind the counter were very nice and one asked if we had seen any bears. We said we had seen one outside of Marathon yesterday and she said, “No, I meant in your campsite; we’ve had a bear hanging out back there for the last week or so.” But we were so hard asleep the bear would have had to shake the van for us to notice
Today our goal was Thunder Bay, about 200 miles west. Along the way we toured the small towns of Rossport and Nipigon, both nice little communities on bays formed by offshore islands. At Rossport we stopped in and talked with the owner of Superior Kayak Adventures and enjoyed chatting about the trips he runs in the area and sea kayaks in general.
We arrived in Thunder Bay by mid-afternoon and asked at the visitor’s center about free or cheap RV overnighting and were directed to the Wal-mart. We thought we’d better check for ourselves and indeed it looked fine—a large lot and plenty of space. And in the same mall is a Starbucks in a ‘Chapters’, a Canadian version of a Borders or Barnes and Noble bookstore. Does it get any better than this?
We then drove over to Confederation College which hosts the Thunder Bay Art Museum. Luckily we had arrived on a Wednesday, free-admissions day. We spent 90 minutes or so touring exhibits of high-quality First Nations art from Northern Ontario and Northwestern British Columbia, both heavily infused with drawings of spirits and spirit-beings.
We then drove downtown to the Finnish section of town to try a well-known Finnish restaurant called ‘Hoito’ (Finnish for ‘hope’). This restaurant opened in 1918 after the large community of Finnish bush-workers complained of having no reasonably-priced place to eat. A group organized the men to contribute small amounts of money totaling $300 to fund the opening of the restaurant and it continues today to offer low-priced, hearty meals. We wanted to try some Finnish specialties so I had the Fried Finnish Sausage meal and Labashi had ‘karjalan piirakka with egg salad’. The karjalan piirakka consists of rice wrapped in wheat dough and baked. Both were very good. We still had some room left over so also ordered an open-faced salt-fish sandwich consisting of heavily-salted fresh salmon (i.e., not cooked) on a slice of dark bread and covered with chopped onions, scallions, and a slice of tomato. The salt-fish alone was too salty but with the topping it was pretty good. I don’t know that I’d order a salt-fish sandwich again but was glad we tried it.
After supper we walked across the street to the Finnish deli and bought a small box of dark chocolate with orange peel and a small bag of Finnish black licorice (“Panda: the REAL taste of licorice”). The owner-lady very enthusiastically told us about the local Finn community and when we said we were thinking of trying a real Finnish sauna she directed us to Kangas Sauna nearby.
We then drove to the bay-side park where the Wednesday-night open-air concert was just getting underway on this perfect-for-it balmy summer evening. We took a leisurely walk through the concert lawn, the nearby marina, and old railway station and went upstairs there to the Thunder Bay Model Railroad Society’s HO-scale railroad. The older gentleman manning the model railroad layout was happy to hear we are from Pennsylvania. His specialty in the club is the Pennsylvania Railroad and he has been to the railroad museums in Strasburg, Altoona, Scranton and the one he likes best--- some little town he can’t remember (but the model railroad was built by a priest) and it’s somewhere near Jim Thorpe, PA!
We then returned to Wal-mart for the night and did some shopping for essentials before retiring to blog and read.
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Tuesday, 17 June -
Last night was a pretty noisy night because of the nearby trucks on Highway 17 and a busy truck stop nearby. But we did OK and were glad to have the freebie spot given the outrageous prices for camping in the Provincial Parks.
This morning we headed West again and before long came upon a red fox jogging along the side of the road. He (or she) was carrying a large rodent and was just trotting along just off the white-line at the road’s edge. We pulled ahead and Labashi jumped out to take pictures. The fox crossed to the other side of the road and sprinted past us, then crossed back to our side and continued on. We followed and the fox would stop and turn toward us once in awhile, then trot out ahead again. Eventually the fox turned into the woods and was gone. Very cool!
An hour or so later Labashi cried out “There’s a bear!” and I had a very brief glimpse as I hit the brakes. I turned around and we couldn’t find it at first but then did and stopped for a few pictures of the little guy. This was a young one, probably a year or two old and we wondered if Mama was nearby so didn’t venture too close.
We then came to the visitor’s center for Marathon, a pulp-mill town which now has Canada’s largest gold mine. There we learned of two possibilities for free overnighting. We then went downtown to the library where we used the internet terminal to check our email and had a nice chat with the librarian about our travels. Then we drove back west a few miles to Pukaskwa (locally pronounced, believe it or not, “PUCK-a-saw”) National Park. I thought we’d have to pay the $9 day-use fee and was surprised when the attendant asked if I have a National Parks Pass. Well, yes we do. It has been hanging on Mocha Joe’s mirror since last summer when we bought it for use in the Canadian Rockies.
There at Pukaskwa we hiked the Coastal Trail, a backpacking trail along Lake Superior, for four miles or so. After our return to the visitor’s center we started out the Southern Headlands Trail but turned back about half-way; we were just too tired out from our other hike.
After supper in the parking lot we drove to the free RV camping spot at May’s Gift Shop and learned that, yes, it really is free and, no, there are no strings attached. We learned that the previous owner of the property had been developing a small campground for RVs but had been killed when he fell off his tractor and was run over by it. The current owners have not decided whether to go ahead with adding the electrical and sewer hookups or not but in the meantime have opened it up to anyone who wants to stay without hookups… just perfect for us.
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Monday, 16 June -
We again slept like kings last night. I still can’t believe how long the days last here on the western edge of the time zone. We took pictures of the sun setting into Lake Superior at 21:43 last night. I was hoping to see stars or perhaps some passing satellites but I couldn’t stay up long enough for the sky to darken. At 23:00 I could still see some faint touches of reddish color in the western sky and could only count eight stars (actually, at least two of them were planets—there’s no mistaking super-bright Venus low in the western sky or red-red Mars in the southern sky).
The cooler weather led us to sleep in until 08:30 and our showers were a ‘nit bippy’ until we had the hot water full-on. We headed back out on Highway 17 West, back on the North-Shore-of-Superior circle route, still within the Lake Superior Provincial Park. In a few miles we came to the trailhead for Orphan Lake, one of the hikes recommended by the Visitors’ Center folks. We hiked to a pretty little overlook and back for a round trip of about two miles, most of it through sugar maple and birch forest.
We then drove on to the mining town of Wawa. At the visitors’ center I saw an internet terminal ($2 for 20 minutes) so asked if any of the businesses in town had wireless. The girl told me the Columbia Restaurant has it so we thought we’d have lunch there and pick up our email at the same time. Wrong! They don’t have wireless but they did make a nice cheeseburger for Labashi and an excellent poutine for me. We first saw poutine (pronounced 'poo-TIN') in Quebec and once I heard what it is, I had to try it. Take a heaping helping of French fries and generously add white farmer’s cheese curds, then cover it all with a light beef gravy. You may want to also order a diet coke with this meal because it’s got to have a through-the-roof calorie count and fat count. On the good news side, you won’t need anything else to eat until tomorrow. Maybe the next day if you order a large one.
After our late lunch we explored the area around Wawa. We took a dirt road back into the bush toward Michipicoten. We happened upon the Anishinabe First Nation lands near Michipicoten Harbour—a very interesting place! The First Nations people (which we silly white people sometimes call “Indians”) have a small town there. We weren’t sure we would be welcome to look around there but soon came upon a sign along the dirt road which said “Ahniin, Boozhoo (Hello)”, then one which said “Aniish na geyg (How are you?)”. That settled it--- we were welcome to continue on to the village. There we saw a small village of perhaps 30 houses, all modestly built and very neat. We only saw a few native faces, though. The guys coming out of the Carpentry Shop waved at us as we went by but otherwise there were only a few people around.
On the way back out to the hard road we turned down another dirt road, this one leading to ‘Naturally Superior’, a sea kayaking outfitter. The dirt road got smaller and smaller but came out on a point formed by the Michipicoten River and Lake Superior. It made a perfect sea-kayaking training and touring center. With the river running down into the Lake and the winds blowing up toward the river, this made for spectacular standing waves, a great playground for the VERY experienced sea kayaker. A small bay to the side made a perfect training area for ocean kayaking given its nice, regular wind-driven waves breaking on the fine sand beach of Government Dock. We visited the well-equipped Paddling Shop but didn’t find any have-to-haves. But we did see a spectacular photo of sea kayaks in heavy waves—and it was taken right here. Each October Naturally Superior hosts a world-class big-wave ocean-kayaking event here. I’d love to see it.
We then continued west on 17 to White River. There we stopped at the local visitors’ center and found it’s dedicated to Winnie-the-Pooh. It seems the real Winnie-the-Pooh was an orphaned bear found near White River around 1915 after it’s mother was killed by a hunter. The cub was brought to White River and became the property of a Canadian soldier and the mascot of his unit. When the unit was deployed to England, the soldier took his bear, ‘Winnipeg’ (named for the soldier’s home town) along. But when the unit was deployed to France, ‘Winnie’ couldn’t go so the soldier made arrangements for Winnie to live in the London zoo. There Winnie became a celebrity and the story of ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ began.
ANYway, at the Winnie-the-Pooh visitors’ center we asked about free RV parking and learned that we were welcome to stay in the parking lot of the visitor’s center. Perfect timing! We were tired of traveling for the day and here was a freebie overnight site.
Not long after picking our spot for the night a pickup with a camper pulled in. I was curious to know how they knew about the free overnighting here so walked over to ask. I met Jerry and Annette from Sudbury, ON who told me they’ve been driving this road (the TransCanadian Highway) for years to visit their daughter in Red River (Alberta) and have used this spot many times. That, in turn, led to an invitation for Labashi and I to join them in their camper for the evening. We chatted for a few hours and we learned about their trip to Alaska and the Yukon and had a wonderful time.
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Sunday, 15 June -
Last night was one of our best Wal-mart stays ever--- super quiet and very little traffic passing nearby. After our busy week we were ready for a recovery night and this filled the bill magnificently.
We crossed the border into Canada at Sault Saint Marie and stopped at the Visitor’s Center for literature. We drove a few blocks to the Canadian Bush Plane Heritage Centre and spent the rest of the morning admiring the bush planes in this excellent and comprehensive museum. I loved the vintage movie footage of the planes and seeing equipment I’ve only read about, like aircraft and helicopter engine heaters, water-bomber roll-over tanks, portable fire-fighting pumps, and sectional canoes. Examples of all the historic planes were there: Noordyn Norseman, DeHavilland Beaver, Otter, and Twin Otter, Gypsy Moth, Tiger Moth, Fairchild, Curtiss Silver Dart, and many others. We had a chance to board a Canadair C210 water-bomber and took simulator flights around the Soo Locks and Agawa Canyon. Well done, Canada…
After lunch in the museum parking lot we headed out Highway 17 toward Thunder Bay, some 450 miles away around the north shore of Lake Superior. By 1600 we had made it to Lake Superior Provincial Park. We were shocked to find the camping prices starting at $22.75 a night for a primitive campsite back a pot-holed dirt road and no water or showers in the campground. We drove on to the Visitor’s Center on Agawa Bay and enjoyed a movie about the park and loved seeing a velocipede they had on display. We then took a hike to see Ojibwe pictographs on cliffs along Lake Superior. We elected to stay the night at the Agawa Bay campground which was a bit more expensive ($27.75) but gave us a pretty site right on Lake Superior plus showers. And later as we walked the Coastal Trail we found $8.75 in Canadian change lying in the middle of the trail—that helps!
Gas prices in Sault Ste. Marie on the US side were $3.31 per gallon. On the Canadian side, gas is $4.36 a gallon at Sault Ste. Marie and $4.46 once you get out of town.
Lake Superior is spectacular up here. The water is clean and clear and very cold, averaging only 58 degrees on the surface in August! The air temperatures at night have been in the high 40’s and the daytime highs in the mid-Sixties.
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Saturday, 14 June -
The reunion is over so today is pack-up-and-move-on day. We awoke to a persistent rain but it lightened a bit as we packed. We then all went to a late breakfast at the Bavarian Bakery, declared the reunion a great success, then went our separate ways.
While everyone else headed south, Labashi and I pointed north. We drove up the Lake Huron shore, passing through Rogers City, Cheboygen, and Mackinaw City before crossing the spectacular Mackinac Bridge to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. By Sault Ste. Marie we were ready to stop for the evening and found the local Wal-mart easily. After supper we spent the evening reading and blogging in good ol’ Mocha Joe.
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Friday, 13 June -
Today was jet-ski day at the reunion but I’ve been-there-done-that so I went hiking. I drove out to the Eastgate site of the Huron National Forest and walked the Eagle Run trails for two hours. The trails run through lush, green forest but where they run through fields you are pursued relentlessly by horseflies. I had some Maxi-Deet along and that helped back them off a bit but I had a few times where I just stopped and swung my hat like a crazy guy to get them away from me. I’ve got to see what the locals do about these nasty little guys.
Back at our motel, I saw the group on the beach watching the jet-skiers and joined them. The jet-skiers had been having a blast on Lake Huron in the chop set up by a strong onshore wind. One jet-ski wasn’t working well for the moment, though, and just as I walked up the other one overturned far off the beach. That one had two teenage girls completely new to jet-skis and unable to make any attempt at self-rescue. That got interesting in a hurry. The girls’ Dads started swimming out while the kid on duty for the jet-ski rental vendor fiddled with the other dead jet-ski. I walked back to Mocha Joe and pulled it as close as I could to the beach and started unloading a kayak in case the other jet-ski wouldn’t start. As I was walking to my van one of the adults associated with the jet-ski business asked if everything was ok. I said we had two kids in the water and they were ok for the moment but we had no way to get them back in. He zoomed off to ‘get the guys’ and called for another jet-ski to be brought in (but it was 20 minutes away). One of our adults helped me unload and carry my kayak to the water’s edge. Fortunately, by that time the situation had improved a lot. The two Dads had reached the girls and had managed to turn the jet-ski upright, get it started, and start idling back toward shore. In a few minutes they came to a sandbar and were able to stand up and it became apparent that the emergency was over. But that pretty well ended the enthusiasm for jet-skiing today.
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Thursday, 12 June –
Today was canoeing day on the Au Sable River for our family reunion group. Labashi and I joined a two-canoe group with our sea kayaks for the two-hour trip and another two canoes made the four-hour trip. We had a fantastic day for it with temperatures in the mid-Seventies and a gentle breeze blowing downriver. The Au Sable is famous for its yearly canoe race, some 120 miles and five dams from Grayling to Oscoda. The river is crystal clear with a sandy bottom and lots of waving underwater growth for the fish. We joined the group at Oscoda Canoe Rentals and paid $10 each for the shuttle ride to our put-in at ‘Whirlpool’ in the Huron National Forest. We had decided we had better trail along with the less-experienced group because those two canoes each had a Dad in the stern and a young boy in the bow and we didn’t know how much maneuvering would be required of the youngsters. But the Au Sable turned out to be perfect for this. It has a gentle but insistent three-knot current pulling the canoes downstream and there are very few obstructions. The paddling team only has to keep the canoe more or less straight and even that’s not really required. I believe you could even do this trip without paddles if you wanted to.
After the trip Labashi and I took it easy for the rest of the afternoon, then drove to Desi’s Taco Lounge for supper. We picked Desi’s after I happened upon a passage about it in ‘The Oscoda Murders’, a fantastic little book written by a local guy, Jim Dunn, in the mid-Eighties. We had seen it at the library a few days ago. The book is a farce murder mystery done in the style of the pulp detective fiction of the Forties and Fifties. Our protagonist, Nick Nails, is Oscoda’s only private eye and he has seen the underbelly of the beast that is (sleepy little) Oscoda. In Chapter Six, Nick goes out to Desi’s for ‘the best Mexican food around’ (and the only, I believe) where he spots ‘that weasel Raoul’ and another miscreant faking a sale of illegally-snagged salmon to the commanding officer of the Wurtsmith Air Force Base to cover up (it turns out) a plot to sell cruise-missle plans to the Commies.
ANYway, we had a nice evening at Desi’s and loved the fajitas even if we didn’t get a chance to meet that weasel Raoul (That’s because Raoul had been murdered by Chin, the Chinese guy who bought out Oscoda’s Ford dealership a couple of years ago as a cover for his nefarious plot to steal the cruise-missle plans).
========================== END OF 7/19/07 POST ========
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 23:59
1 Comments:
Thanks for reading the Oscoda Murders!
-Jim Dunn
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