Day 22 - Steinbach to Fort Frances. Our room last night had the quietest air-conditioning and fridge so far, but we were unprepared for the nightclub attached to the motel! Luckily for us, our room was the furthest away, so all we could hear was the bass. Fell asleep around midnight after spending an hour or so trying to figure out the next leg of our journey at and after Toronto.
We decided to follow Lonely Planet's suggestion of getting off the main highway for a more scenic drive towards Thunder Bay, and it was certainly a pleasant change from looking at lots of road to lots of trees and lots of lakes!
We stopped at Kenora for lunch and went for a stroll to get my next 'big' photo next to Husky the Muskie (a Muskellunge, which is the largest member of the pike family and native to North America).
Arriving at Fort Frances late afternoon (lost another hour when we crossed into Ontario), we went for a walk along the shore of Rainy Lake, and looked across the water to International Falls in Minnesota! Its's a new concept for the kids, being able to see another country within swimming distance!!
Day 23 - Abi's 9th birthday! Happy birthday to our wonderful little girl, and thank goodness it's finally her birthday, as we have been hearing about it for almost two weeks, starting on my birthday...
"Guess what? It's only 11 days to my birthday! Where are we going to be staying?"
"Guess what? It's only 10 days to my birthday! What are we going to eat for my dinner?"
"Guess what? It's only 9 days to my birthday! Will I be going to a theme park?"
She was a very excited little girl! Each proclamation was also followed by an ever-changing list of what she'd like to eat or do. We'd given her an early birthday present at the zoo in the form of a cuddly snow leopard, but Dan went on a "petrol" run last night to Walmart to grab a few little gifts. It was quite a challenge thinking of something that wouldn't take up space in her tiny rucksack, so some sweets, sunglasses, and an awesome headband were absolutely perfect and made her day.
Today was a four and a half hour drive in the rain from Fort Frances to Thunder Bay, so as a birthday treat we loaded their Chromebooks with a couple of downloaded videos on Netflix; it was also a treat to us as we got four hours of silence! The drive was quite pretty, and Dan and I spotted four beaver dams in amongst all the little lakes.
Chippewa Park campground in Thunder Bay sits right on the shore of Lake Superior, the world's largest freshwater lake. Because of the intermittent rain, there was only a little bit of exploring to be done, and no "but-you-said-we-could" campfire. Chippewa Park also has a small fairground, with a carousel that's over 100 years old, so technically Abi got to go to a theme park. We also (eventually, after three failed attempts) found her requested sushi for dinner, and back at the cabin we had birthday cake, and blew up some LED balloons (so cool!) and had a dance party in the cabin!
Day 24 - Thunder Bay. We lost yet another hour getting to Thunder Bay yesterday, and I tell you what, it is seriously playing havoc on our sleep patterns - it's effectively perpetual daylight savings adjustments! We didn't feel tired until around midnight and woke up at 9:30am! We've still got more time to lose the further east we head, but at least we can get it all back when he eventually start heading west.
The rain had partially cleared in the morning, so I decided we could do with some exercise after a few days of nothing more taxing than getting in and out our car. Mount McKay (Animikii-wajiw) is something called a mafic sill, and is just over 300m tall. We drove halfway up to the lookout, then climbed up a fairly steep and shingle-y slope through Mosquito City to the top. What a view! We could see the Sleeping Giant and out over Lake Superior.
In the afternoon we wandered around the waterfront of Thunder Bay, dodged rain by hiding under trees and behind buildings, admired the public art, and watched a trainee sailor capsize his dinghy (don't worry, there was someone on an IRB out with them, who came to his rescue when we responded to Alex's "are you going to help him?" with "no!").
Day 25 - Thunder Bay to Wawa. This was a big drive. Five and a quarter hours! We'd looked at staying the night at somewhere halfway-ish, but decided to save the money and just stop somewhere halfway-ish for lunch instead. First pit stop, not long out of Thunder Bay, was to the Terry Fox monument.
What an incredible guy. Diagnosed with cancer, and losing his leg to it at just 18, he began his Marathon of Hope with the plan to run across Canada from east to west. After 143 consecutive days of running 26 miles EACH DAY (for a whopping total of 5,373km), he succumbed to a recurrence near where this memorial was eventually built. (And yes, I'm aware of the change in measurement...).
Back on the road and we stopped again at a random lookout in Nipigon, where we crossed an impressive cable stay bridge. Coming down from the lookout, Dan spotted a black bear cub! Of course, this was the one time I'd left my zoom lens in the car, so the only photo I got was with a regular lens. It was still pretty awesome to finally see a bear in the wild, even if it was just a cub, which ran across the road into some houses. No sign of mum, luckily for us!
Another brief stop at a place called White River, where the original Winnie (of -the-Pooh fame) came from. A lieutenant on his way to war, stopped at a trapper who had a rather docile black bear cub for sale for £20. He bought her, and managed to get her on the ship to England. He housed her at the London Zoo, and after the war donated her to them. A. A. Milne would take his son Christopher to the zoo, who would spend ages watching Winnie and even fed her honey from a spoon! Christopher named his cuddly bear after her, and the rest is history.
Numerous arguments from the kids for the rest of the journey:
Stop touching me!
You're on my side of the armrest!
Why can't I have anymore chips?
Why can't we watch our chromebooks?
We made it to Wawa at 6:45pm, which was too late for their supermarket.
"Luckily we have plenty of food, so, cereal or sandwiches for dinner?"
Day 26 - Wawa to Sault Ste. Marie.
WE. ARE. SO. OVER. OUR. KIDS.
"He's on my side of the bed!"
"She keeps pulling the covers off!"
"The bed's too small!"
"She's taking up all the space!"
This started at 8:30pm when they went to bed, through 10pm when they were still fighting, started again at 4am, and didn't stop until 6am when I'd had absolutely enough. Imagine, if you will, a loud, hissing type of whisper shout:
"That's IT! We have HAD ENOUGH! You two are being BLOODY RIDICULOUS! Yes, the bed is small, but you don't hear daddy and I fighting, and we are BIGGER THAN YOU and take up LOADS MORE ROOM! So SHUT UP!!"
"Shut up" means business - it's very much a 'no-no' in our house.
"Your bed is bigger than ours".
They couldn't just 'shut up', could they?
"RIGHT! OUT OF BED! GRAB YOUR PILLOW. YOU CAN SIT ON THE FLOOR! "
The two hours sleep we got then was quite lovely, despite the incredibly small and narrow bed with a super soft and saggy mattress!
Today's drive was beautiful, even though we were in no mood from any rubbish from our children. The trees, the lakes, all gorgeous, and all skirting Lake Superior. We bought a provincial parks pass so we could stop at the rest areas on the way, and we're so glad we did!
There really was no way you could tell we were by a lake and not the sea, when you're standing on a sandy beach and looking at an endless expanse of water!
Our next exciting pause was to see the Agawa pictographs. These paintings on the side of a sheer rock face were made about 150-400 years ago, and are incredible to see. The path to the pictographs was rocky, and their location treacherous (depending on the weather), but we were very fortunate the lake was still, and got to see them before the approaching clouds rolled in.
We carried on towards Sault Ste. Marie, stopping briefly at Pancake Bay for our lunch - again, a beautiful spot, with the sun shining on a still lake. Alex and Abi played in the sand for a bit while I sat and enjoyed the warmth of the sun without the burning!
Once we'd dropped our bags and food off at our motel for the night, we drove into town and were incredibly fortunate to be in time to watch a couple of sightseeing cruise boats go through one of their lock gates - Alex even got to push the button to open the gate! There is a 6.4m height difference between the gates, and takes eight minutes to empty, and when they were built they were the longest in the world.
On the way back to the car, Alex asked Dan to race him. Which he did. And in order to keep his pride when Alex started going faster, Dan, too, had to go faster. At which point he clutched his left hamstring and started hobbling. Shit.
"Are you okay?" I pointlessly asked when I caught up to them, as I wasn't foolish enough to race Alex!
"Sure," Dan replied, with one of those grimace-type smiles. "But it went 'pop'."
Bloody hell. Here's hoping some anti-inflammatories and elevation for the evening fixes it...
Day 27 - Sault Ste. Marie to Sudbury. Time to put on my big-girl pants and get behind the wheel! Dan insisted he was fine to drive, but since he's going to be laid up for the next few days at Sudbury while I go sightseeing with the kids, I reckoned it was best to get practice while he was in the car.
"Stay on the right, yellow line to the left, stay on the right, yellow line to the left."
Nothing like practising over 286km in the rain - eek! I don't much like driving in the rain, I mean, does anybody really? I am proud to say I managed about 90% of the drive, and only with a couple of drifts towards to the edge of the lane. But when we got closer to our destination and I had to start making turns, the panic started to kick in. It didn't help that the rain was even heavier, I could barely see the lanes, and I couldn't hear the navigation lady give directions. Dan to the rescue...
"Well done, but how about you pull over now and I'll drive?"
"I'm fine!"
"No, you're starting to panic."
"But I need to practice driving in towns too..."
"Yes, but not in the rain!"
I admit, I was rather glad to swap, but tomorrow I'll still have to drive by myself. We drove into town to find some form of compression bandage for Dan's thigh, and he continued taking anti-inflammatories, but despite us putting on a brave face for the kids, we both know it's not a 24-hour recovery.
Day 28 - Manitoulin Island.
2:12am I got up to go to the bathroom. I stood in a puddle of something near the bathroom door that wasn't there before I went to bed. I worried about a leak from somewhere. I fumbled around for a light switch and cleaned up the mess with toilet paper (including my wet footprints trying to find the lightswitch). The toilet paper being yellow assured me it wasn't a leak from something mechanical.
2:18am I heard some noises.
2:20am I worked out the noises were our children. For goodness sake! I went in to confront them and found the two of them mucking around under the covers and reading their kindles. I 'questioned' them on the puddle and was informed it was Abi, and her sopping wet pyjama bottoms on the floor were evidence. 'Told' the kids to go to sleep once I'd removed the kindles.
2:21am I heard more noises so went back to their room and hauled Abi out, and made her sleep on the couch.
6:28am Abi had taken herself back to their room, and the two of them were mucking around...again, so she was hauled back out...again.
Fortunately, Dan had slept through the whole thing, so it was just me feeling weary when we got up. It's getting oh-so-repetitive and I really don't see how or when they are going to change.
Dan's leg was, surprise surprise, still the same, but he decided to join the kids and I on our day trip to Manitoulin Island. He figured sitting as a passenger was the same as driving, and more interesting than sitting on a couch. I drove all the way there, but by the time we arrived I was ready for him to take over! Windy roads and lots of oncoming traffic had given me a headache with all the extra concentrating. But, on the way I had driven through some roadworks and a few intersections, so "well done me!".
Manitoulin Island is the world's largest freshwater island, and to get to it you have to drive over a swing bridge (the entire bridge pivots from its centre to either join or separate the island to the mainland); this bridge is closed most of the time, and opens for boats on the hour, every hour, for 15 minutes only. When it was first constructed, it stayed mostly open, and would only close for trains (which no longer use it).
We went to Bridal Veil Falls, and the kids and I walked the 1.2km while Dan stayed with the car and picked us up at the other end. On our walk we saw some frogs and a snake! We were told it was a garter snake, or maybe a garden snake - there was some debate between Alex and I as to what we heard.
The waterfall tumbles off a horizontal ledge 34m above the ground, and there were heaps of people cooling off in the shallow water at the bottom. The height is deceptive, due to the curvature of the rocks behind the waterfall.
Our initial plan of driving all round the island was soon changed to just half the island, when we realised the scale of it. As Dan kept reminding me, it is the "world's biggest" freshwater island!
We then went to see Treasure Island, which is an island in a lake on an island in a lake!! Treasure Island sits in Lake Mindemoya, which is on Manitoulin Island, which is in Lake Huron. Pretty crazy, huh?
We carried on round a bit more until we reached South Baymouth, and were there in time to see the ferry to Tobermory depart. We had previously looked at hopping on, but it made the drive back to Sudbury exponentially longer.
We left Manitoulin Island not long after that (it wasn't as picturesque as we had imagined, with lots of roads and trees and not much else), with Dan again insisting he was fine to drive. However, his insistence at joining us walking around the supermarket to get things for dinner, was an insistence too far, and he wished he had stayed in the car. Pretty sure tomorrow will be one on the couch, and that our upcoming time in Toronto will be me showing him photos at the end of the day.
Oh, and great news! On the way back from the island, we got a phone call from Airbnb mediation - they were also unable to get in contact with our host, so they have approved our two nights' accommodation refund from the dreadful place in Winnipeg!
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