Heading north

May 27, 2023

Thursday May 25: Minden

A couple more photos from our evening at Prince Edward park last night. The beach was very reminiscent of a Hawaiian beach, other than the temperature.

Funny to be feeling like we are heading into the great northern wilderness of Ontario, when we are still roughly in parallel with Portland, Oregon. But the towns are certainly smaller, and we are approaching the endless bush and granite of the Canadian Shield.

Most of today was northward along the Trent Servern waterway, starting northward from Cobourg, with pit stops in Peterborough, with its famous lifting lock system, and Lindsay with a pretty little mill remnant. We watched some quite big fish being caught along the canal in Lindsay.

The goal for the evening was a free camping at a Walmart parking in Minden Ontario, but when we got here... no Walmart! Double checking my App, I realized it was referring to Minden, Louisiana! A bit too long of a drive this evening. We did find a very nice campground just beyond Linden on a pretty little lake. Being the only game in town, they charged $60.

Friday, May 16:

We are trying to rack up some mileage.... we drove from 9 am til 4 pm, but somehow Google maps thinks it's only 4.5 hours, but what do they know?

Anyway, we are camped at another little lake near Español, about halfway along the north side of Lake Huron. The first part of the drive was fairly interesting smallish highway through some pretty little lakeside towns, but we soon hit the 400 freeway which got some miles under our belt, but pretty boring!

The one highlight of the day was a stop in Parry Sound, which is a fairly large town with malls and car dealerships abounding, but also a quaint little downtown, and a waterfront bike trail which we took advantage of for an hour or so.

Saturday, May 27: Feeling a little Superior!

Fairly easy little drive from Española to Sault Ste. Marie this morning, about 2 hours with a little coffee stop at this pretty little lake.

At "the Soo"we pulled off our bikes and rode around the waterfront for a couple of hours, including a Starbucks break and a picnic lunch. It is quite the city, with it's geographic location at the intersection of the three Great Lakes, it's historic seaways as a fishing centre for the First Nations, navigation waypoint for the voyageurs, hot spot for the American/British wars, and modern industrial centre with world class steel production. And right at the edge of it all is the river and rapids, and a natural stretch of beaver ponds.

Further northward later in the afternoon, for a couple more hours to settle into the Agoma campground in Lake Superior Provincial Park. It is a semi-primitive campground (pit toilets, no showers), but with almost 300 campsites stretching along at least 2 kilometres of pebbly beach. Only a few dozen are occupied at this time of year, but one can imagine the buzz on summer weekends!