Advertisement
Published: August 16th 2015
Today we left Thunder Bay for Sault Ste. Marie. The views were stupendous - islands bathed in mist, Jack Pines bent and weathered, abundant lakes and creeks. I turned my iPod on to Gordon Lightfoot. It seemed only fitting considering where we were and the fact that he is from Ontario and is a Canadian icon. The song "Carefree Highway" came on and I sang with it - "Carefree highway, let me slip away, slip away on you", and just then, Lake Superior came into view around the bend. I must admit that my heart swelled and I got a little teary. This was a part of Canada that I'd heard about all my life and always dreamed of seeing and now here I was.
There is a lot of pink granite in this area, jutting out in big jagged outcroppings on each side of the highway and appearing in distant cliffs as well. It is referred to here as "Red Rock" and many local landmarks use red rock in their names. Little Inukshuks appear on top of the outcroppings in some pretty hard to get to places. They are literally everywhere. Who creates these, we wondered?
Of course
we had to stop in Wawa to see the famous 28 foot statue of a Canada goose, which was built in 1960. Wawa takes its name from the Ojibwe word for "wild goose". We found it easily so luckily we didn't have to go on a wild goose chase. We also got our first ding on the door of our new car there. Bastard Wawaian or whatever you call yourself! We cried "wah wah" when we saw it. I think that's how Wawa really got its name.
We noticed that there is a lot of French spoken in this area, which surprised us. As my Dad and Tim's Mom were both French Canadian, it's kind of nice to hear. It reminds me of the times when my French relatives used to come to visit.
We stopped at the Aguasabon River Gorge to view the Aguasabon River which plunges down almost 100 feet at the Aguasabon Falls. We also turned the car off the road at Old Woman Bay, which has a beautiful sandy beach beneath 650 feet cliffs. We almost had the whole beach to ourselves and took the opportunity to dip our toes into the water. It
is our goal to do this in all five Great Lakes and both oceans. First lake? Check!
Finally we arrived in Sault Ste. Marie. I have to remember to stop calling it "Salt Ste. Marie". I finally looked up the history of how it was named as the pronunciation didn't make sense to me. Turns out it's French. French colonists referred to the rapids on the river as Les Saults de Ste. Marie and the village name was derived from that. We pulled into the driveway of the house of Tim's cousin Meredith and her husband Jared. It's a very old, small three storey brick house typical of Ontario with creaky floors, rounded doorways and hardwood floors. I loved it immediately. Meredith and Jared are away but graciously offered us the use of their house. It comes with two cats whom we've dubbed Sneaky and Needy. Needy wants to be constantly pet while Sneaky sneaks up slowly on unfamiliar things to investigate them... like my sandals, or the cooler, or a backpack. If you make a noise when he's almost at the object of attention, he'll jump about a foot. So funny!
Time for a good sleep and
tomorrow we explore The Sault, as it's called here. Nighty night.
(Scroll to bottom to see more photos.)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.055s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 11; qc: 34; dbt: 0.0272s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Claude and Ginette
non-member comment
Thanks for the trip
We really enjoy traveling with you on this trip! We learn so much about our great country. Couchsurfing seems to be enhancing your travels. Till the next blog...regards, Ginette and Claude