Tennessen Weil mile by mile: 2016 Road Trip: Lake Superior Circle Tour

Days 8 and 9: R&R

Gitchee-Gami Totem Pole

Memories:

Danny: Really good dinner from the restaurant in Wawa; soaked to the chin in freezing lake water at Sandy Beach with one dry patch of t-shirt on my shoulder; restaurant that had no foot long hot dogs

Grace: Went to a beach that actually had sand; sleeping in the dome; grasshopper jumping on me

Therese: Saw one meteor; lots of conversations with people at the lodge

Gordon: Noisy family next door in the motel; saw lots of meteors at 2:00 am in Wawa

It’s hard to believe we’ve been out for a week!

The first experience on Saturday morning was listening to the family next door leave around 4:30 in the morning. Their kids had been loud and bumpy in the room but that really doesn’t phase us as we’ve been there, done that. However, everyone was at top volume in the morning while packing. The kids were running around, the parents were yelling at their kids and yelling packing instructions. It went on forever. After that, it was hard to get back to sleep.

Later that morning we said goodbye to the very helpful and kind owners of the motel at Terrace Bay. Before we left, they gave us directions to a secret pebble beach just down the road from their property. We decided to check it out.

We followed the directions down a seemingly endless gravel road (note: in the future, this would be one of the smaller gravel roads we traversed.) We were told to park at the end of the road and then walk across the railroad tracks and follow a path that led to the beach. There was no one around and the path did not seem to be leading to a beach. Just when we thought we were in the wrong spot, we broke through the trees to an endless span of completely deserted beach. The pebbles ranged from pea and grape sized pebbles closest to the shore to golf ball and orange sized at the far point from the shore. They made a wonderful sound underfoot and we couldn’t help but fill our pockets with more rocks.

Heading out to the Pebble Beach

We stopped in Marathon, the last stop on the top of the lake, at the visitor’s center and were given a list of things to see in Wawa and points further. We learned that the reason the highway veers inland after Marathon and continues until Wawa is because the high rocky cliffs have so many chasms and canyons from their geological formation that it would have required 27 bridges over about 100 miles to complete the project. We also stopped at the only cafe in town for a late lunch. The kids were excited about the “foot longs”. Gordon and I not so excited at the $12.99 price tag. The waitress solved all our problems when she explained that the foot-long referred to upgrading the sub sandwiches. The hot dogs were regular sized and $3.99. Whew! A couple cups of coffee later, we were off to Wawa.

View from the rest stop in Marathon

Rest Stop Wisdom

We made one more quick stop based on the recommendation of the motel owners. White River, Ontario is the home of Winnie the Pooh. Someone purchased a bear cub from this city and eventually donated it to the London Zoo. The bear was named "Winnie" short for Winnipeg. A.A. Milne frequently visited this zoo with his son, Christopher Robin who couldn't pronounce "bear" at the time and called the bear at the zoo Winnie the Pooh. There you have it!

We arrived in Wawa and headed to the “General Store” which looked pretty cool in the information I researched. Kind of like a mini-Wall Drug Store of Wawa Ontario. It may well have been, but the place was packed with people who were in town for the drag races. It was hard to browse among hoards of leather jackets. Their summer sausage is supposed to be outstanding and so is the fudge and big dill pickle from a barrel. But we left without anything except two frustrated kids who wanted ice-cream but didn’t care for any of the flavors. The next stop was the grocery store. I had a planned dinner already stocked in my camp pantry but the sight of instant food was too appealing. Chicken tenders were on sale, they were warm and they smelled delicious. The guy gave me way more than advertised for the same price so I returned to the car with warm chicken, brie cheese, crackers and beer. Oh - wait! No beer, you can’t buy beer at the grocery store in Canada. In fact, you can’t buy it at the liquor store because such a thing doesn’t exist. We learned that beer, wine and spirits sales are run by the government. The stores are clinical and often low on stock. We went to “The Beer Store”. A limited supply of cans are available. Customers can also use the computer kiosk to search for available beers and order them. They are then delivered on a conveyor belt to the cash register. I asked for some help picking a regional brew for the campsite. Fast forward to dinner - the beer was mediocre at best: pretty much Miller in a fancier can.

We arrived at the Lodge and what seemed at first sight to be a beautiful place just got better and better as time went on. I was a little disconcerted at first because things seemed to be pretty loose and unstructured. Dinner was being cooked when we arrived and there was no one to take us to our site. We were on our own to get settled in. The site was a cool geodesic dome tent. The inside was lined with a string of tiny lights and included a number of battery operated candles. We all had air mattresses so no need to unpack the tent or tent pads. We laid out our picnic dinner and to our surprise, after all the feasting, the huge box of chicken was reduced to just two pieces. A few visits to the main lodge area made us more comfortable with the laid back style and we soon had everything we needed.

We started our fire and waited for the arrival of Andrea and her family. This was something I’d been waiting for since the beginning of our vacation. Serendipitously, the first conversations Andrea and I have had in probably about a year included me talking endlessly about our trip. She and Terry were looking for a five day get-away and my description of the Lodge seemed to fit what they were looking for. For whatever reason, the Lodge which usually fills up months in advance had a room for just the time they were looking for. So our visits were to overlap by two days. Two whole days! We’ve been trying to have coffee for over a year and finally accomplished this by meeting in Ontario!

The Shaker Check family arrived and met us down at the campsite. We all got to mutually admire each other’s children. Luca and Iris are now young adults who can hold their own in adult conversations about world views and local politics. Luca also has a pretty wicked sense of humor and Iris is so well informed and self assured. And of course, none of our kids turned down toasted marshmallows!

We all headed to our respective beds with sugar and good conversation in abundance.

Then came the air mattress nightmare. I learned several years ago at a friend’s house that air mattresses are just about the worst thing to sleep on on a chilly night. The cold air not only circulates over the body, but under it as well. There is no opportunity to build up a layer of heat insulation. The night was chilly and just as I had discovered years ago, our beds were freezing. I put a blanket under my sleeping bag but was still freezing and got very little sleep. The next morning at breakfast I mentioned it to the owner of the place and he was very attentive and said they were still trying to find just the right set-up for the dome. I was able to get some foam sleeping bag pads which did the trick for the following night.

Breakfast was a wonderful occasion. All meals are served at a community table and we were able to meet many of the guests and hear many stories of water adventures. Andrea and I chuckled over the fact that there were so many interesting people that we STILL weren’t getting time to chat!

We had a leisurely morning watching Andrea’s family get a kayak lesson. I’d highly recommend this place for their outdoor adventures which is their speciality. Training was thorough and the group looked like they were having a great time. We had other plans, however, which involved doing very little.

We headed to Magpie High Falls to see a beautiful waterfall. Our original plans were to hike the 5K to the next falls over but kids are awfully hard to drag somewhere they don’t want to go. So instead we drive to a nearby wild blueberry farm and purchased some delicious berries. Like everyone we met on the shore of the lake, we were treated to wonderful conversation and information about the job of berry picking from the student working there.

We returned just in time to see Andrea and family coming off the water from their kayaking lesson. A quick lunch and it was off to more paddling for them and more of not much at all for us. We headed to Sandy Beach and spent several hours watching the kids play in the sand. We brought books to read but once the kids were near the water I couldn’t really focus on reading. I’m probably about 20 pages into the book I brought on this trip! We laughed over the kids who started out squealing over the cold temperatures and ended up neck deep in chilly Lake Superior water.

I never tire of taking kid/beach pictures!

The two families had originally planned on cooking together at the campsite but different schedules made that tricky. So we planned to stop at one of the “Chip Stands” for Poutine, a regionally famous fries and gravy and anything else you can think of to add. But different tastes made that tricky so we settled on a recommendation of the lodge staff of a place that had a fusion of Caribbean, indian and Italian food. We’re still having shell shock over Canadian prices. The US dollar is nearly 25% up on the Canadian dollar. But prices here would be high, anyway. Our meal was $105 - yikes! That was before the tip! We brought it back to our campsite and ate every bite. Delicious! I ordered the whitefish which was a food on my list while on Superior.

One more night with Andrea and her family. We gathered around the fire and chatted, kids and adults. Danny remembered the mystical fire packets - the packets that turn the fire different colors - so we added that to our fire and laughed about how the next people to have a fire on the beach would marvel at the mysterious colors since the packet often has a bit of residual color.

A late goodnight and we were off to our now toasty beds in the magical dome. The wind had picked up and we fell asleep to the lapping of waves on the shore 20 feet from our tent.

Oh yeah - somewhere during all that time I saw one meteor streak across the sky.