Pigeon River

The Pigeon River marks the Minnesota - Ontario border for a few tens of miles before it enters Lake Superior.  It was a significant route inland from the Great Lakes for those folks trying to get their canoes and pelts back and forth from the west.  But first they had to portage some significant waterfalls where the river makes the final plunge to lake level.  This is the high falls - just a mile or so inland from Lake Superior.

Thunder Bay

Thunder Bay marked the eastern end of our slightly circuitous trip to Minnesota.  As usual, I was up early and drove out to Chippewa Park south of town and then to Marina Park in the north part of the city.  The lake was remarkably calm on this beautiful morning.  Despite this being the largest of all lakes, Thunder Bay is still a bay and its horizon is marked by the "Sleeping Giant" on the Sibley Peninsula.

Eventually, I retrieved M and D, we checked out, and then drove up to Mount McKay for an overview of the city.  Then it was off for the border and a return to the U.S.

Kakabeka Falls

The Kaministiquia River flows east into Lake Superior at Thunder Bay.  20 miles west of the city and conveniently near the highway, it plunges 130' over Kakabeka Falls.  We pulled in just at sunset for a brief sightseeing stop at the tail end of a very long day of driving.

Western Ontario

You don't have to drive through western Ontario to get from Winnipeg to southern Minnesota, but it helped satisfy my need for geographic variety and completeness.

About 30 miles east of Winnipeg - near Steinbach - the flat, largely treeless prairies end (we're almost 900 miles from the Rockies) and the Canadian Shield begins.  The land starts to rise and the cultivated fields turn to forest. It's another few tens of miles before you begin to see bedrock along the roadside.  And then it's hills and forest and ancient rocks all the way east - although this trip we only went as far as Thunder Bay.

Somewhere between Dryden and Thunder Bay we crossed into the eastern time zone and a little farther on we left the Hudson Bay watershed and entered the St. Lawrence drainage.  I love crossing these continent-scale divides. The so-called Great Divide (the Rocky Mountain crest which divides east and west flowing rivers) is just the most prominent continental divide in North America, but there are many others.  Like this one in Ontario.  Later this trip M and I drove west past a Continental Divide sign on I-94 in North Dakota between Valley City (Sheyenne River - Red River - Nelson River - Hudson Bay) and Jamestown (James River - Missouri - Mississippi - Gulf of Mexico).

Another piece of geographic trivia. When you drive across Canada, you enter Ontario west of Minneapolis and Des Moines.  You leave it at the same longitude as New York City.  That's one wide province!

Point Pelee

My real objective along Lake Erie's north shore - one I've had for many years - was to visit Point Pelee. This is an important birding location but it is also a cool beach and a geographical novelty. Really, it is the convergence of two beaches to form a point that happens to also be Canada's southernmost mainland point.

The park was almost empty - I was surprised, but this isn't migratory season and maybe the summer visitors are just fewer. Maybe they don't like flies with teeth. We managed to catch one of the last shuttle runs to the point. The bugs got worse as we approached the tip, but it was well worth the quick visit and I don't think the flies got us too badly.

We drove back through Leamington, past the Heinz Ketchup factory and along Seacliffe Drive, where we got to see all the huge trees ripped out by last months tornado. Then it was off to Windsor and Detroit and back into the states.

Lake Erie

We stuck to the freeway for the first part of the day, taking advantage of a phone at a rest stop to call Capital One to remove the hold on my credit card - what good is a card you reserve for Canadian use (since no extra service fee) if the instant you start using it in Canada, they get suspicious and stop honoring it. I guess the lesson is to call them first.

I was curious to see the north shore of Lake Erie, so we left the main road and had lunch in Erieau, near Point aux Pins and Rondeau Provincial Park.

Lake Ontario

We spent the late afternoon and evening driving through the Adironodacks. There was ice cream and an iced latte in Lake Placid and Devon and I played mini-golf somewhere along the way. We had dinner at the MacDonalds in Tupper Lake and made to a Comfort Inn in Watertown that night.

I drove out to Sackets Harbor and to Westcott Beach early on Day 16 while the others slept and showered. We grabbed breakfast (probably at the hotel, that's our typical routine) and headed for the Thousand Islands and the bridge into Ontario. We took the coastal route through Prince Edward County, including the little ferry near Picton, and stopped at Sand Banks Provincial Park for the beach guy. We played in the water and threw the frisbee for 30 minutes or so, then piled back in the car.

We weren't quite sure how to handle Toronto. We ended up having dinner at a place in the Beach neighborhood where I had eaten a couple years ago (Quigley's) and then stayed in Burlington at the west end of the lake. We considered the CN Tower, but the between the late hour, the haze, and finding parking while there was Blue Jays game going on, we settled for a quick driving tour.

CN Tower

I checked out of my Scarborough hotel at 8:25, just in time to join the rush hour traffic down the Don Valley Parkway, but I was still able to find a parking place near the tower by 9AM. I was one of the first ones up and for a little while I had the Sky Pod all to myself - 147 stories above the city. Clear blue skies would have been better, but the views were still spectacular. This tower dwarfs Toronto - and puts the Space Needle in perspective.

Then it was time to race to the airport so I could stand in line for customs, then head back to Seattle.

Toronto

Toronto is the largest city in Canada and seems most like Chicago geographically - a large city perched on the edge of a Great Lake. I left myself little more than a day in the city and spent most of that wandering the shoreline from Scarborough to the west side of Humber Bay. I had a nice lunch at Quigley's in the Eastern Beaches district and spent several hours walking along the downtown waterfront.

Tobermory

This little town is the end of the road at the very tip of the Bruce Peninsula. A car ferry continues across the mouth of Georgian Bay to Manitoulin Island but this was as far I was going to go on my little weekend jaunt from Seattle. The Grandview was pretty basic lodging, but it had a great dining room, where I watched the sun set Saturday night while eating local whitefish.

Tobermory is the end of the Bruce Trail, which extends almost 500 miles along the Niagara Escarpment to Niagara Falls. I stuck to a couple of short sections along the spectacular cliffs and beaches east of Tobermory (Storm Haven, Singing Sands, Halfway Log Dump, Flowerpot Island, and Cabot Head - all at Gravel Beach).

Ontario

The prospect of a long Memorial Day weekend. M had papers to grade. D had school projects to work on. I decided to check out some new beaches. So I flew to Toronto and rented a car. (It wasn't quite this impulsive. I made the decision last December 31st. I had finally accumulated enough miles for a free trip - I'd never done that before - and United was threatening to yank them.

I had originally thought of checking out Long Point and Point Pelee on the northern shore of Lake Erie, but gave them up for Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. I also left a little time for Toronto, since I'd always wanted to see the Scarborough Bluffs and the city's urban waterfront and shoreline parks.

What a neat weekend! As usual, lots more pictures at Gravel Beach.