Yukon Ho!

May 26, 2006: Sault Ste Marie to Thunder Bay

May 31, 2006 on 1:27 am | In Uncategorized |

We woke up about 8am thanks to the bird-mating that was going on all over the park.
Sean and I rode our bikes through the campground, investigation-style, and totally made friends with this awesome flower-eating rabbit. After biking around the sites a bit we found a path that led us to the beach where Lake Superior was completely still and huge and clear. Southern Ontario needs to clean up its act cause we should have lakes like this one too.
Anywhoooo we packed the site up around 10am and scored a free clothesline some other camper had left behind, got the GPS working and headed for Wawa. It took a couple hours to get there and we were pretty psyched to finally arrive because en route we’d seen some signs advertising a Canadian Tire in “Downtown Wawa” and even better than Canadian Tire is the fact that downtown = coffee.
Or so we thought. There was one lousy coffee shop in the town and it was closed. Fortunately Young’s General Store offers free fresh-brewed coffee to all browsers and since we spent a whack of cash on gas, sunglasses, an address book and pepperettes, we felt entitled to an entire pot of our own. Take that Wawa! That’s what you get for not delivering! No free coffee for your own kin!
On our way out we got a picture of that giant goose on the hill and made for White River -home of Winnie the Pooh. Sean was fully expecting a giant bear monument of some sort but all we saw was a lame little fibreglass tree with a tiny Winnie waving from the branches.
On the upside, White River did have a Robin’s Donuts and lots of coffee. On the downside I got yelled at by their teenage staff. “Small or large? SMALL OR LARGE!?”
We also saw a cop cruiser labelled “Chris Sheriff” so there was a whole day’s worth of speculation as to whether or not he was the White River sheriff and his name was Chris, or his full-on name was Chris Sherriff.
About an hour later, in Marathon, our wildlife-watch vigilance paid off when we saw a black bear chilling out and eating grass by the side of the road. We took some pictures from the safety of the van and rolled our eyes at the one other chick who pulled over and climbed out to snap shots.
In Terrace Bay we stopped at my Uncle Mike and Aunt Elise’s place where they had huge hugs, beer, wine, popcorn, more pepperettes and a case of water for us. All of us. Even Dave and Campbell. Hugs all around!
En route to Thunder Bay we saw another bear (yawn -got any other wildlife in the woods nature?) and checked out the 1KM deep Ouimet Canyon. For fun, and to freak ourselves out about the depth, we threw some rocks and dead tree branches over the edge of the observation deck. Then in a fabulous display of herculean strength, Sean ripped an entire tree out of the ground and hurled it into the canyon. RRRAAAWWWWRRRRR! After that we drove back out to the main highway where we saw a lonely, fuzzy cub because bears loved us up North and wanted to put on a bit of a show.
In T-Bay (that’s what you call it when you’re local) we bought the essentials -some dinner, some beer, and a cheap Canadian Tire sleeping pad for Dave, who was nearly crippled after spending the previous night on the ground. It was still light out when we hit the LCBO and we were psyched that we’d be able to enjoy some sunset beers at the campground, but the Great T-Bay power outage of 2006 kept us in Canadian Tire for 45 minutes while the teenage staff hummed, hawed, sighed and swore their way through checking us out manually, so it was 10pm before we found food.
However, since Kakabeka Falls Campground was only half an hour from the downtown, we only almost hit one foolish deer, and were set up before midnight for the first time in three days.
So.
We got drunk.
Amy

(View all of our pictures here: http://www.burak.ca/gallery/v/YukonHo/)