Joe & Wilma's Excellent Adventures

 Sunday, May 26, 2024

Around Thunder Bay, Ontario

Happily, we found a McDonald’s again so we were off to breakfast at McDonald’s. The menu is different up here which was kind of surprising but we found enough to make us feel normal.

 Our first excursion was a drive 30 mile drive back the road we drove yesterday to one of the amethyst mines. We thought we were going to Diamond Willow Mine , but there was another mine right before that final turn off that was Blue Point so we stopped there. The bugs were terrible. They just swarmed us and we of course forgot the bug spray back at the RV .They had a gift shop, of course, nothing fancy and I found one inside there that I like that he priced me for five dollars US.  We looked around there and got information and instruction,  then we walked up the road to the rock pile. We got our walking sticks out of the jeep. He provided us with a bucket and any tools that we wanted so we took a hammer and a pic.  The first place we stopped, I took about a step forward on the pile and saw a stone I liked to I backed up a step and stumbled backwards and fell all the way to the ground. Joe tried to help me up, then he fell down so we both managed to scramble our way back up, but that was not a very good beginning.   I fell mostly on my back and skinned my hand just a little bit, but my shoulder is really sore now so that’s not good. We did pick up about 3/4 of a bucket of rocks and went back in the gift shop where I bought the one in there that I liked.   He sold it all to us for $25 Canadian or $20 US. I used some of my Canadian money from last night to pay for it. He told us the best place to find animals was out on the Sleeping Giant  Peninsula which is a wilderness preserve.  That is on our way back so we’ve got three stops to make on our way back. Everything I was carrying went flying -- my walking stick, bucket, pic, purse. I’m probably done mining for the day-- for this trip-- so we’ll see what we can see from the jeep now.  Joe is a little sore on the butt but he says he's not too bad.They told us to use iron out or something like that to get the rust out and then he uses a sander.  At Blue Point, we could walk up to the pit that was fenced off. It’s not open to the public and it’s flooded right now, but he told us that they allow groups to come in who are carrying their own liability insurance. He also said they see black bears back there frequently and run them off or they call the Mounies who come in and yell at the bear and spray them with pepper spray. He said if we happen to see one too close all we have to do is yell and hold up our hand and they will expect to get sprayed so they will takeoff. 

This small raging creek or river was on the road back to the mine.  They said you can pick up amethyst rocks on the banks but we didn't think that was our cup of tea.

A pile of rocks to pick through, this is where we fell.

The pit.

Doesn't he look like a prospector -- especially with the turquoise purse.

Inside this "gift shop".

We just had to walk this little short road back to the pit.  Which was a good thing.

Diamond Willow and Blue Point are the two mines on this road .  We did drive back to the other one.  They had a beautiful gift shop and beautiful pieces of washed, shined up amethyst. They were a little pricier, but their gift shop was really nice and they had quite an inventory of amethyst outside

Some  beautiful pieces.

Back on the road, we turned off on the .Sleeping Giant road, again on the lookout for wildlife.  At the end  of this road, right back at Lake Superior, was a surprise -- a general store and a community called Silver Islet.  There was a harbor which gave boats a direct run to Lake Superior,  This was 23 miles from the main highway one way, and we went by a few side roads that led to campgrounds, and houses.

.

.

.

.

Joe took one of his kind of side roads down to Moonlight Beach on Lake Superior.  He took a video of this little drive so I’ll see if I can include that on this Blog; thank goodness for roads marked private road -- otherwise we would never get back to civilization. We finally saw was one deer and one hawk and it was 58 mile loop. We messed around on this backroad for about 3 hours, came out at the turnoff to the amethyst mine, 7 miles back.

.

We first thought this might be a swan but we think it's a white pelican, which is what we probably saw yesterday.

Some pretty sturdy boats back here.

This is the road to Moonlight Beach.  We could have driven into the water.  Not much beach though.  Apparently, the video won't load, but this is the road.

We headed back toward Thunder Bay, but stopped at the Terry Fox Memorial, honoring the Canadian, a young, one-legged cancer victim who ran across most of Canada in support of cancer research.  He eventually succumbed to cancer just up the highway from this Memorial.  It’s a very nice statue and has a nice visitor center. It looked like, but it was closed. 

Then we came into town to find some dinner -- we had missed lunch and its now 6:00 p.m.  We had a bag of potato chips and two muffins in the jeep, and so we’re starved. We were looking for a steak place and ended up at a steakhouse called Prospectors, which is across the street from the casino we were at last night. We circled it 3 times looking for a parking space and ended up parking at the casino. The block in front of the restaurant is closed for construction and the street beside it was one-way the wrong way for us.  We decided to make this our "goodbye to Canada meal," and it was certainly pricey, but everything was good.

After dinner, we tried to find the ship terminal or harbor.  We drove up and down along the Lake but it took a while to find the roads that would actually take us to the boats and ships.

It was a long day, from 10:00 am to 10:pm, still daylight when we got home. My shoulder is pretty tender so tonight should be interesting.