Lake Superior Circle Tour-Day 5 to Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, Canada

Wawa, Ontario to Sault Sainte Marie was about 146 miles so we had all day to enjoy the drive.  Our first stop  was a place I was looking forward to.  It was the Agawa Pictographs.  It is a group of Indian rock paintings that are hundreds of years old.  They can be seen on a cliff towering above Lake Superior.  The hike is short but rather wet, rocky and steep.  We entered the park and made our way to the beginning of the trail.  There was a park fee for this.  It was self service so I went to fill out the registration and pay the fee.  There on the board were two things that got my attention.  The first notice said that there was a rock slide that was blocking some of the trail.  The other notice said there was a bear sighted in the area and to proceed with caution.  Even with those two pieces of information we were trying to decide if it was worth it.  Then a lady came over to us and said to be really careful if we do the trail because in order to get a good view of the pictographs we would have to walk out on a narrow ledge of some sort.  I know we had recently walked the long suspension bridge but it had a lot of safety features built in.  It looked scary but was relatively safe.  In this case we were not about to take our life in our hands just to see some pictures on the side of a cliff.  She said the best way to see them was from the water, and we obviously didn't have a boat so that was out.  I went on the internet and saw them just fine.  Most of the photos have a copyright so I can't show them on this blog.  They would have been nice to see, but that's how it is sometimes.  We took a photo of the boat launch and were on our way.

I can't say which leg of our journey was the most beautiful.  It was all gorgeous.  The road was curvy and went up and down hills.  I can see how building this highway was a huge undertaking.  Apparently this section of the highway was one of the most difficult.

At times it looked like we were going to drive off the edge of the earth.  

 

Notice how all the signs are also written in French.

Before we knew it we were at the next stop.  We needed a break and there was a wayside park at Chippewa Falls.  This is not the Chippewa Falls we are familiar with as Wisconsinites.  In fact, it is the exact middle of the Trans Canadian Highway.

There was another plaque that describes how Dr. Perry E. Doolittle was one of the first people to identify the need for a Trans-Canada Highway.  He was one of the first Canadians to have a car and in 1925 took his car and drove across Canada.  When there was no road he used railway wheels which were fitted to his car and he travelled the rail tracks.  Over 500 miles of his journey were travelled this way.  Even though he was the "Father of the Trans-Canada Highway", he died thirty years before it was officially opened.

Can you imagine traveling all the distance in a Model T Ford?  It's hard enough on a good highway in a modern car.

Chippewa Falls is a small falls compared to the huge falls we have already seen, but it fun to walk to the top and look down.  The pink granite at the falls is so hard it won't erode as quickly as some other rock types can.

You can see the remnants of log jams from days gone by.

Canada uses solar energy.  We saw big solar panels sitting out in fields.  Even this wayside park was lit with solar panels.  Each yard light was powered by a solar panel.  It seems like a very good idea to me.

It was supposed to be a 45 minute drive to Sault Ste Marie.  It ended to be a little longer because of road construction. Just before we got to Sault Ste Marie we had another unfortunate happening.  A big semi passed us by and kicked up some rocks.  A couple hit the windshield and cracked it.  A rear fender bender and now a cracked windshield.  Hopefully they both will be easily fixed.

Before we knew it, we were seeing signs of a metropolitan area.  We were entering Sault Ste Marie.  I didn't realize how large the Canadian city was.  It has close to 80,000 people compared to a much smaller Sault Ste Marie on the Michigan side.  Since we would be crossing over into the United States early the next morning, we did a little sightseeing.  We went to the canal and happened to see a couple of the tour boats go through the locks.

We saw the boats at the top of the bridge. 

 

In a few minutes we could see the doors start to open. 

 

And there they were. 

 

We went to eat and spent the last of our Canadian money.   Then we settled in for our last night in Canada.

Lake Superior Circle Tour-Day 4 to Wawa, Ontario, Canada

Leaving the B & B and continuing on our journey was a beautiful drive.  There are so many gorgeous lakes and forests.  Every 25 or 30 miles we saw a Moose crossing sign.  Most of them said night danger, but I was hoping to see one.   I carefully looked for a moose along the shore of every lake we passed.    I didn't see one moose.  In fact, I didn't see any eagles either.  I see them all the time around our area, but I thought I would see more in Canada.

Our first stop on our fourth day was Terrace Bay.  It was the stop for our fourth stamp.  Nearby was Aguasabon Falls.  The falls are part of a hydroelectric power plant which has been operating since 1948.  Kakabeka Falls, which we saw yesterday began producing power in 1906.  The Aquasabon generating station can produce enough power for 45,000 homes.

We left Aquasabon Falls and continued to White River.  There was more beautiful scenery along the way.

When we arrived in White River it looked like it was pre-tourist season.  None of the planters were filled with flowers, and the park was overgrown with weeds.  It appeared that spring had barely arrived.  The photos we had seen of this town had it all decked out.  They celebrate a Winnie the Pooh festival every summer, but it doesn't happen until the third week in August so I guess they have time to clean up.  As the story goes, an Army veterinarian named Lt. Harry Colebourn was assigned to take care of Army horses.  These horses arrived by steam train on August 24, 1914.  He noticed an orphaned black bear cub for sale on the train platform  He bought the 6 month old bear cub for $20.  He formed a bond with the bear and named her Winnipeg after his home town.  He called her Winnie for short.  Winnie became Harry's pet.  When Harry was called to England, Winnie went along.  She went to live in the London zoo when Harry was sent to serve in France.  Winnie was very tame and gentle.  She was the most popular animal in the zoo.  Five years later Harry gave Winnie to the zoo permanently.  She lived for 20 years.  The author A.A. Milne and his son Christopher Robin Milne loved visiting the bear.  In 1926 A.A. Milne wrote the famous children's book Winnie the Pooh based on Harry Colebourn's black bear named Winnie.  We read that if you see a black bear in the area it is probably a descendent of Winnie.  From now on, the black bear we saw near Rossport, Ontario, Canada will also be called Winnie.

Entrance sign to the park

 

In 1992 this sculpture was donated to the community of White River.

We left White River and arrived in Wawa, Ontario in the early afternoon.  We couldn't get into our motel room for a couple hours, so we spent time looking around.  We went to the Wawa tourist information center for our fifth stamp.  There was a lot to look at there.  It was informational as well as having beautiful views.

There is a big Wild Goose statue at the tourist center.  The famous Wawa goose looks out over the Trans Canada Highway.  Wawa was probably named after an Ojibway name for goose.  The name for snow goose was wewe and the name for "clear water springs" was wawagonk.  At some point they came up with Wawa.  There was a time when the community tried to change the name, but it wasn't successful.

It wasn't until 1960 that the final link of the Lake Superior section of the Trans Canada Highway opened.  Early people traveled by railroad or steamship, then a rough road was cut but it was difficult to travel on.  I imagine the highway opening was very welcomed and opened up the area.

After visiting the travel center, we still had time to fill.  I had seen a lot of waterfalls, but we decided to see another.  It was the Scenic High Falls of the Magpie river.  We followed the signs and had to travel about 1.5 miles on a gravel road.  It had rained before we got there so the potholes were filled with water.  By the time we arrived, our car was really dirty.  You couldn't even see the damage from our fender bender a couple days earlier.

The area near Wawa and probably this whole area north of Lake Superior was based on the natural resources available.  Animal fur, fish, iron, gold and logging.  Workers would log out the forests and float the logs down the rivers.  Sometimes the logs would jam at the dams and waterfalls.  Even now you can see piles of old logs accumulated nearby.

The last place we visited before we settled in for the evening was Young's General Store.  Needless to say, I didn't use the restroom (or washroom as the Canadians call it).  I had seen enough of disgusting facilities along the waysides.  I love nature and the outdoors, but I'm an indoor plumbing kind of girl.

I did see my first moose at this general store.  It was not alive, but it is probably the closest I will ever get to one.

After a bite to eat, we finally settled in for the night.  In the morning we ate breakfast at an interesting restaurant.  We met some people who were from North Carolina.  They had driven to Vancouver and were heading across Canada to New Hampshire.  They had put on more than 7000 miles so far.  It made our little trip kind of puny.  That was a huge undertaking I wouldn't have been up to.

We are off to Sault Ste Marie-Canada.

Lake Superior Circle Tour-Day 3 to Rossport, Ontario, Canada

We left Thunder Bay Ontario after breakfast and began day three of our Lake Superior Circle Tour.  About twenty miles out of town was a very nice park with a beautiful waterfall.  It was a short walk on a nice boardwalk which was a welcome relief from the tiny path we walked on the day before.  It was called Kakabeka Falls.  It is the second highest waterfall in Ontario.  It had very nice views of the falls and the gorge below.

View of Kakabeka Falls from the boardwalk 

 

View of the gorge 

 

We didn't stay here very long, we had bigger plans ahead.  We had heard about Canada's longest foot suspension bridge, and we wanted to walk on it.  The bridge was another half hour from the falls.  It was down a long dirt road and for a moment I wasn't sure what kind of situation we were driving into.  Then the sign appeared.

I can't imagine doing the zip line but the suspension bridge was exciting.  There were two bridges.  The smaller one which spans 300 feet across and 125 feet above the canyon and the other was 600 feet across and was 152 feet above the canyon floor.  This property is privately owned and was originally purchased for logging.  After it had been logged out, the owners brainstormed as to what to do with it.  They came up with the idea of building the suspension bridges and the zip line.  We signed a waiver that they were not responsible for accidents.  We had the option to walk or ride to the first bridge.  We chose to ride so they gave us a ride up the hill.  They dropped us off, and we were on our own.  We started across the shorter bridge.  

It wasn't so scary.  When we got to the other side, we walked up to the longer bridge.  There was no one else on the bridge and no wind.  I went first.  

When I was about half way across, my husband started out.  He waited to see if I fell over the railing before he mustered up the courage.   It went well until we started walking in step.  The bridge started to sway back and forth.  I shouted for him to stop for a minute until the bridge settled down, and then we continued on.

When we got over both bridges, we had to walk back down into the gorge.  The only way down was a long and winding road or a set of steps.  We chose the steps.  I wish we would have counted how many because there were hundreds.

This is a view of the steps from the bridge. 

 

It was a long way down but we needed to walk the road on the right to get back to our car. 

 

When were almost back to the parking area, I looked back.  There was a view of both bridges.  I can't believed we actually walked over them and lived to tell about it.

It was time to move on.  Rossport, the town we chose to stay in, only had Bed and Breakfast's.  I wasn't thrilled about that, but it would be another new experience.  Before we got there we had to get our third circle tour stamp in Nipigon Ontario and eat lunch.  This part of Canada doesn't have any big box stores or even chain restaurants.  The only one we saw was Tim Horton.  We chose a small diner and were on our way.  We found the house we were staying in.  It had a view of Lake Superior.

It was fine but it isn't tourist season yet so we didn't talk to anyone.  The owner made herself invisible.  After we were settled in, we found another nice waterfall called Rainbow Falls.  It was a pretty little woodland park.  We were the only ones there which made me a little nervous.  My husband had spotted a bear just before we got to our Bed and Breakfast.   There were about a 190 steps but they weren't straight up so it was manageable.

Mike resting before the hike back up the steps. 

 

Tons of wild blueberry bushes but they won't be ripe for quite some time.

It stayed light until well after 10:00 pm, but we didn't want to venture out anymore.  After our visit to Rainbow Falls we had walked the shore and found some driftwood and pretty stones.  It had been a busy day, and we actually slept pretty well.  In the morning, our host served us breakfast, and disappeared again.  We packed up, left our key and headed out for day four.

Lake Superior Circle Tour-Day 2 to Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada

After breakfast we left Duluth, Minnesota and headed out on Highway 61.  Our first stop was Gooseberry Falls State Park.  Gooseberry Falls is in Minnesota and is known as the gateway to the north Lake Superior shore.  It has several waterfalls and many points of interest.  There is no way we could get to see all of them.

There was an Upper, Middle and Lower Falls as well as a place called Fifth Falls.  The fifth falls was only a .7 mile hike, and we decided we were up for it.  Little did we know what a challenge it would be.  We started off on a nice path but because the signs were a little confusing, we didn't know exactly which way to go.  We asked a few people but they were also tourists so nobody knew any more than we did.  Finally someone told us they saw a sign for Fifth falls down the path a ways.  We kept following the signs which were few and far between.  The path was dirt with roots and stones protruding all along trail, and it was only two feet wide.  We got to a point where we crossed a bridge.  We saw other people crossing the bridge so we followed, but somehow got side tracked along the "scenic" route.    We walked on what seemed forever until we got to a big rock flat with no obvious way across the river.  We pondered our situation and decided to go back the way we came.  Then had second thoughts and turned back around again to further look for a continuation of the trail.  By this time some "real" hikers had appeared.  They wore hiking boots and carried walking sticks, and they showed us the way out.  Our .7 mile walk had turned into a 3.3 mile hike.  I was so happy to see the parking area and our car.  However, that was short lived.  As we were getting ready to back out of our parking spot, the person behind us backed right into us.  My husband had seen it happening in the rear view mirror but couldn't honk the horn in time.   They insisted that both of us were moving and that we were both at fault.  They were wrong but we couldn't really prove it, so we exchanged information and took pictures of the damage.  They only had a scratch on their bumper, but we had two broken light covers and some scratches.  We have to get a damage report when we get home and deal with that further.

It was hard not to let this ruin our day, but we moved on.  We saw another nice waterfall called the Cross River Falls which could be seen from the roadside.  A short distance from this falls was a city called Grand Marais, Minnesota.  The information center in Grand Marais was the location for getting the second circle stamp.

We were approaching the United States/Canadian border.  At the border is the Grand Portage State Park.  It has the tallest waterfall in the state of Minnesota which is 120 feet on the Pigeon River.  It drops 3200 gallons of water per second.

You can view the falls from either the U.S. or Canadian side.  We chose to view it from the United States side.  It was an easy walk from the welcome center.  The waterfall was pretty amazing.  The power behind all that water is so strong.  I kept imagining what the Indians thought the first time they heard and viewed this powerful waterfall.  It is called Grand Portage because the Indians and explorers had to portage many miles around with their supplies and canoes.

This view shows the United States on the left and Canada on the right.

This land is part of the Grand Portage reservation.  The Lake Superior band of the Chippewa Indians and the State of Minnesota have partnered together to allow visitors.  It is more than the beauty, it is a way to learn about the past and present Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) life.  This is interesting to us because of a book series we read by William Kent Krueger.  The main character is part Anishinaabe and lives near the reservation.  He references their language and culture often in his stories.  Whenever they meet someone they say Boozhoo which means Hello and Miigwech which means thank you.

Just a short distance from this park, we crossed the border into Canada.  The border guard checked our passports, we moved our clocks to Eastern Standard time and we left the United States.  We entered Ontario.

Things are different in Canada.  The speed limit signs are in km's (kilometers), the gas is sold in liters, the temperature in Celsius and the money is really confusing with different colored paper money and different types of coins.  We found an ATM to get some cash, but most places take debit or credit cards.  If you use the card, the exchange rate is automatically figured out.  We got out 100 Canadian dollars and about $77 was deducted from our account.  We found our hotel in Thunder Bay, and went to a nice restaurant for dinner although I really messed up the tip for the waitress.  I don't think she got a good impression of old Americans who are not familiar with Canadian money.  To me a Loony is not a dollar but how I felt in this foreign territory.   The restaurant was a learning experience.  Overall the Canadian people were wonderful and very friendly in spite of how the United States government is treating them right now.  Our goal tomorrow is to get to Rossport, Ontario.