June 6, 2019 - Thunder Bay, ON to Wawa, ON

June 6, 2019

We left Thunder Bay and headed along the northern shore of Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world. It’s so immense, it very much feels like we’re on the West Coast. The day was overcast and surprisingly cold. When the highway dipped down along the shoreline, the temperature dropped to 9-10 degrees. When it climbed up higher and headed inland a bit, the temperature peaked around 18. Not a very warm day but we were grateful to have missed all the rain that apparently had come in the days before we arrived. 

We learned an interesting fact. All traffic going across Canada HAS to go along the Trans Canada between Nipigon and Thunder Bay. There’s no other road through. Consequently, it’s an extremely busy section of road but there are surprisingly few gas stations. We managed to make it into Nipigon but Lynn was on fumes. I have no idea why, for all the traffic that comes through this area, there aren’t more places to buyfuel. 

Heading east, the road skirts the coast and here and there, you begin to get lovely glimpses of the lake and shoreline. The road is single lane, for the most part, so it’s impossible to travel very fast. With all the truck traffic, you just have to sit back and enjoy the ride and not worry about pushing it. 

We swung in and saw the Aguasabon Falls which is part of a waterway of a hydro dam. Big falls and a gorge that dumps into Superior. 

We also stopped in White River where the bear cub was adopted by a Canadian soldier and ended up in the London Zoo who captured the heart of A. A. Milne and inspired his Winnie the Pooh stories. 

We were held up for about 40 minutes at a construction area because they had crews blasting rock along the highway. During our wait, we chatted with one of the construction crew and he told us to swing into Rossport to a little cafe there to warm up and have a coffee so, after we got through the blast area, we did. We found Serendipity Garden Cafe and ended up staying for lunch we had the fresh lake trout, caught in the bay that morning. Kathy, the manager, told us that they have a fellow int he village who fishes solely for the cafe and they serve whatever he happens to bring in. Today was the lake trout and it was perfection. 

Back on the road, the weather darkened and got colder. We had to stop to put on more gear. We road through Schreiber and Terrace Bay and not far past the turn to Marathon, the road heads inland and got noticeably warmer. 

This whole are is made up of hilly terrain, blanketed in thick forest. There is a lot of birch in this area and the birch leaves are just starting to unfurl. Their lacy lime green canopies are tucked like fans in between the arrow point spruce and fir trees, making the hillsides a painter’s study in greens. Spring has definitely been late in arriving (according to the locals) and apparently, we are on the leading edge of the good weather. They’ve had heavy rain for the past few days and the waterline has gone up significantly. If you think about the size of the Great Lakes, that’s a LOT of water to raise the waterline! 

We had intended to make Pancake Bay today but, between being held up for rock blasting and then stopping a time or two to warm up, we didn’t make as many miles as we had hoped. Consequently, we decided to pack it in in Wawa. We found a campsite and then went into the town of Wawa and took a chance on Lai’s Chinese Restaurant which turned out to be very good. 

Back in the campground, we had a neighbour come by with his camera before we were even off our bikes, wanting to see how our tent trailer opened up and asked to take pictures. For some reason, people are very fascinated by it. :) We decided to take a serviced site because we knew it would be cold and, in the end, we were glad we did. We used our little interior car heater in our tent for the first time and were VERY happy to have it. It dropped to freezing in the night.