“Lost’ in Sault Ste Marie

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“Lost’ in Sault Ste Marie

Thursday, 16 August 2007

Today we drove to the Soo. It was way too windy for little old me to try to bike it, so to keep up my pace I had to walk. After we checked in & I dropped off the laptop - the shop actually shares parking space with the motel - we drove to Kinsmen’s Park, where we’d had a nice off-leash walk with Panna on our trip out (two whole months ago!). The three of us (Bob, Panna, & myself) had a nice walk through parts of the park, although for some reason the water didn’t tempt Panna as much for swimming as it had in June (of course the temperature was a lot more reasonable than it had been then). It was so nice to be able to let her go off-leash & not have to worry about her running onto a major road or bothering people who don’t care much for dogs.

However that was only about a 2-kilometre walk, so to reach 10 kilometres I had decided I should try to walk back to the motel, which was maybe 7-8 km from the park. So Bob & Panna drove off & I hit the pavement, as they say. It was a pretty pleasant walk, but at a critical point I turned left when I should have gone straight. The road didn’t look overly familiar, but I knew that if I’d stayed on one of the roads for too long it would have taken me to downtown Sault Ste Marie, which was not where I wanted to be. So I stayed on the road I’d taken, even though, after a while, I was certain it wasn’t the right one. There were some fairly nice homes along it, some not so nice, and it wasn’t too heavily traveled, so I really had no complaints.

If worse came to worse (and, yes, it did) our cell phones were working again (yahoo!), so I could have called Bob and asked him to pick me up. But I was hoping there’d be a way which would lead to the motel again, even if by a rear approach. There did seem to be a very inviting trail at the end, and I figured I’d take it for a while one way or the other. But a big sign at the entrance to the trail notified everyone that it was on native land, no trespassing, and fines would be enforced for trespassing. So…it was time for “Plan B”, and I had to call Bob to come meet me at the corner where I’d taken the wrong turn. Sigh - it would have been so nice to walk on a trail instead of on the pavement.

One note of interest, on my return to that corner, a couple of big dogs, who were loose in their front yard, barked then came up to investigate the passer-by. I talked nicely to them, let them sniff my hands, then told them “no, go home” & basically ignored them till they did in fact go home. You never really know but they did seem like nice dogs, just curious.

Also, on our return to the motel, as he was getting something out of the van (probably for me, it’s always for me), Bob hit his head really hard on the door-frame of the van. Just about knocked himself out & he felt it all the way down his back - maybe a bit of a whiplash thing. All these times going into & out of the van & all it takes is one little miscue - OW!!

For dinner we ordered pizza from a local pizzeria, which seemed to have an interesting menu. Alas, I don’t want to say it was awful, well, but it was pretty darn close to awful. The crust was too thick, the sauce non-impressive, and the cheese tasted almost like the melted cheese which comes with movie-theatre & stadium nachos, just more like mozzarella than cheddar - OK, it WAS awful!

DAY 49: 10.3 km, on foot

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