Friday, May 24, 2024

Nipigon, Ontario

First of all, we want to congratulate our grandson, Andrew, on successfully graduating from 5th grade today.  He will move on to middle school in the fall.  We were really sorry to miss this event in his life.  I texted Bridgette, "a small step for Andrew, a giant step for Bridgette," since she is having a little issue dealing with him growing up.  She agreed.

We really like this campground, and our campsite is nestled in the trees, just a short walk to Lake Superior and the rocks.

Since Joe has never been able to contact anyone in Nipigon about his tire issue, he decided we would drive over there and try to find a tire dealer.  We will be traveling these same miles tomorrow, but he needed to resolve the tire thing. BUT -- the most exciting thing happened on the way to Nipigon -- WE SAW 2 BEARS!  They were right beside the road but we didn't see them until we were right beside them, and I yelled 'BEARS'.  Joe stomped on the brakes, then backed up but I guess all that spooked them because they were gone.  But we slowly moved forward, and we found them again.  Now they were hidden in the brush, but there actually is a black spot just left of the dark evergreen tree, and that's a bear.

We continued on to Nipigon with our eyes peeled now, but we didn't see anything else.  As we approached this town, this bridge welcomed us.  This bridge failed in 2016, it lifted the road up, and had major repair.  It is very pretty, and has blue lights that we think shine brightly at night.  This bridge separates East and West Canada.

This is the view of the bridge from downtown.

So we found the towing company that had been suggested (the person across the street had given us the wrong phone number and no name, so Joe had never got to talk to them.)  Ironically, we had to wait for a semi backing up into their garage for us to park.  It turned out the semi was delivering a truckload of truck tires.  Unfortunately, nothing fit our needs.  But they did agree to rotate the bad tire to the back and the back tire to the front for us, so we are stopping here tomorrow to get that taken care of, then we will continue on to Thunder Bay.

We drove around the town a little.  We passed this one house with the yard full of decorations, especially gnomes.  I think Brenda would be impressed with this.

There is a marina/campground here but it isn't open for the season yet.  We did drive through it, and saw the boat ramp.

We saw these large white birds on a little sandbar in the Nipigon River.  I thought they might be swans, or white pelicans.  Hannah's job in Oregon as a park ranger had an assignment one day of counting the swans in the park.  Maybe she can tell what these are.

They had carvings and statues in town.  I particularly liked this one of the bears.  They also had a big fish, a wolf, and an eagle. 

As we drove out of town, a train was passing the bridge.  The trains up here are very long, and they come through quite often.

Joe wanted to drive a little up Highway 11, so we took a side trip past Lake Helen.  This highway is a scenic loop road connecting with highway 631 to White River, then back to Nipigon on Highway 17.  Too many miles for a day trip.  But we turned around after 8 miles.

There was road construction on this highway, and when we came back through it, we got between two constructions vehicles with yellow lights flashing.  We felt like we were being escorted, maybe as a "wide load."  The second picture is through my side mirror so it isn't very good, 

Back on Highway  17 and heading back to camp, we stopped at an overlook.  We were in view of Lake Superior most of this drive.  

Joe climbed up the boulders to the higher level for a better view, but had to give some thought as to how he was going to get down.  Good thing the fence was there.

We made note of the location we saw the bears and a side road just past that, so on our way home we drive that road.  We started seeing deposits of scat (bear? moose?) and continued on for an hour or so (17 km) but never saw any sign of the depositors.  And we looked hard.

This road had lots of ponds, creeks, some lakes, some rivers.  This one was running really hard.

This is our idea of a "moosey pond."  There should have been one standing in there, but no.  It was empty of wildlife.

I persuaded Joe to turn around so I could get back to my rock collecting.  I got my feet wet yesterday (who knew to bring rubber boots?) so I came up with a plan -- to wrap my shoes with grocery bags.  Well, that worked for a while, but not long, and I ended up with wet shoes and wet feet again. 

But the rocky ledge I had wanted to wade out to was closer in today, and there was a dry, rock pathway  to it, so I got to collect rocks from there.  I'm sure they were better than the ones on shore.  I do think I found an agate, which was exciting.

This creek runs right behind our campsite and into the Lake.  It was running hard today.  Most of the rivers up here are this tea-color.

Here I am with my scooper, hard at work.  I keep thinking if Brenda was here with me, she would be saying, "Oh, look at this one."  

After about a half hour, my back was killing me so I worked my way to the bank with my heavy bag of rocks.   Joe stayed down with me today and had occupied my chair for a while, but he finally started walking the beach and picking up a few rocks too.  So I continued rockhounding from a sitting position.

Joe carried my heavy bag to the Jeep and I carried the chair.  It was all we could do to get back to the RV, get out of the Jeep, and get up the 6 steps into the RV.  I'm pretty sure we are too old for this hobby of mine.  And I'm very sorry about that because collecting rocks is one of my favorite activities.  I just wish it didn't hurt.

 May 23, 2024

Thursday

Rossport, Ontario, Canada

This morning we left Marathon and moved down the road 72 miles to Rainbow Falls Provincial Park just outside of Rossport. 

It was 36 degrees last night, 39 when we were de-camping.  No heat wave up here.  

Joe noticed something he didn't like on the left front tire of the RV, so now we have that to deal with.  He's on the search for a new tire but shopping up here is not that easy.  We stopped at Canadian Tire but they were no help, and the place in town they recommended was getting ready to close for a 3-hour lunch.  Go figure.  He's going to make some calls tomorrow and see if he can find something in Nipigon, otherwise we will have to proceed carefully to Thunder Bay.

We bought our first Canadian fuel today for the RV, $1.699/liter translated to $4.72/gallon.   We have fueled the Jeep several times but this was our first big hit -- $224.13 in U.S. dollars, 47.47 gallons. It was our first fuel stop for the RV since crossing the border at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.

As we drove this road yesterday and again today, we saw lots of raging creeks and streams along the highway, from the heavy rain Tuesday night.  Water was streaming off the rocks lining the highway too.  This is Mink Creek.

We had tried to find a campground further up the road in Nipigon but didn't have any luck -- the campgrounds didn't answer the phone and we couldn't leave a message so we booked in here. This is our first provincial park. But this is great because our campsite is perfect!  We are about 100 yards from Lake Superior shoreline, a pebbly beach, a clear view from the RV.  This first picture is the view from inside the RV, with the Lake just right there!

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Just look at those rocks!

 We arrived at our campsite at 1:30 and after lunch I drove the Jeep down to the shore, set up my chair, and spent an hour collecting pretty rocks.  A couple walked by and asked what I was catching (I was using my rock scoop).  I told them "rocks."   

I got my shoes wet today, accidentally.  I had taken my chair down and kept moving it back, but the water kept lapping up on my feet.  But this little rock shelf -- I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to wade out to it tomorrow.  I am hoping for sunshine.

 Just as I walked up the little bank with my bag of rocks to the Jeep, Joe walked down (after I carried my bag of rocks up).  He did take my chair.  My new friends walked by just as we got to the RV so we visited with them for a while.  Then he felt like he needed a real meal and our only 2 choices that we knew of were a fancy restaurant ahead, and a restaurant/bar behind us.  We had not been impressed with the fancy restaurant in Wawa so we drove back to Schreiber to a restaurant/motel named Hungry Moose.

Well, it turns out it was Senior Night and Bingo Night.  The only place to sit was at a 4-seat table that had one person already seated.  So we joined him.  We did not play bingo (we didn't have daubers, or Canadian dollars -- but they would have provided them to us.)  The food was not great, Joe had his first taste of perigones with smoked sausage.  I tried to play it safe and went for a cheeseburger, but it didn't even taste that good.  

When bingo was over, everyone cleared out and we visited with the owner.  He had started the bingo games during the pandemic for something for people to do.  Very nice guy, interesting to talk to.  When we left, we drove on through this town, which is famous for its railway history and has a 3-train museum.

We saw these train cars on the tracks, probably 15 of these that look like apartments or something on flatbed trailers.  We never did figure out what they were -- maybe living space for railroad workers?

Also in the literature was this Catholic Grotto, behind the church.

We drove down to the beach but couldn't get that close.  There are hiking trails here from the beach.

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On our way back to the campground, Joe took a side road "shoreline drive," which was pretty awesome.  We ended up right on the shore, and believe me, Joe drove right out to the shore.

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As we left, we caught a photo of the sun reflecting on the water.  

And we found a family of "Canadian Geese" in Canada.  We thought they were all in Vincennes and Fort Wayne.  We actually had a small flock on the golf course in Marathon, but these were really cool because they had babies with them.  And the adults kept protecting them because we had a hard time getting a picture with the babies in in -- the parents kept hiding the babies.

We crossed another raging creek, Hewitson Creek, which was really pretty.  I climbed over some brush to get a good picture.

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There are frost warnings out here for tonight, low of 37, but tomorrow is supposed to be 53, sunny in the morning and partly cloudy in the afternoon.  It will be interesting if the lake has fog on it in the morning, we have seen that more than once.  And we would have a birds eye view if that occurs.