Kenora to Thunder Bay, Ontario ~ The Terrain Change

Before I start today’s blog, I need to update information I just learned from a fellow camper. Remember the Seagulls in yesterday blog? She is from Manitoba and tells me that they are called Field gulls, exactly the same as seagulls but native to the prairie states. (End of mystery)



The Rock Formations!

The Cloud Formations!

 We left Kenora early and headed east on PH17 toward Thunder Bay, ON. I noticed the terrain changes abruptly into small hills and curves for the first hundred miles or so. What is unusual is the rock formations. The land doesn’t have much soil over the ledge outcroppings. Some of the ledge and rocks are smooth in nature, while some are shattered and piled like slabs vertically and horizontally. The colors range from grey to pink to rust colored. I guess I wasn’t the only person who noticed this, because we came to a huge plant that processed this stone. They had four to five hundred feet of tailings of these beautiful rock slabs. I would have loved to have my dump truck here for a free load. The terrain here is also laced with ponds and lakes. Every corner has a sign with the name of the lakes. One that I recognized was “Lake Wabigone” mentioned on PBS radio show “Home on the Prairie”

The other item worth mentioning were  the clouds here in this part of Ontario. They were fairly low with dark grey below and very silvery around the edge. It was sunny all day except for a rain shower at 5pm here in Thunder Bay. It is an odd thing to think and look at clouds as you’re driving, but it makes the journeys interesting. After all, discovering new things about places is what I came here for.

We pulled into Thunder Bay around 2:30, went to the Terry Cox Scenic Outlook & Visitor Center for info and a remembrance of Terry Cox who jogged across Canada with one leg. Terry had cancer and passed away in this town. He was jogging across Canada for a cure for Cancer. In 2005, Helen and I had stopped here and the memorial statue of Terry Cox had impressed us enough that we needed to visit this place again.

The Terry Cox Memorial Over Look!

We spent the rest of the afternoon touring around Thunder Bay. It is a city of over 100,000 people. I must say the traffic was heavy, but we managed to get around. I did check on "Gas Buddy" for the best gas prices. $1.19 a litre was  the bottom with $1.35 tops. I set the GPS to the so called "Gas Bar". The price was indeed $1.19 a litre, but we had to cross a railroad bridge with loose steel plates and as wide as a normal sidewalk. It was a adventure!



Driving on the Sidewalk for Cheep Gas!

Tonight, we are staying in a KOA campground, because I needed to have excellent WiFi and a quiet location for the Berlin Water Works monthly board meeting tomorrow at noon. The camp ground owners said they would set me up in the game room with hardwired DSL. They would also shut the game room down from 11:30 to 1:30 for my meeting. I hope everything goes according to plan.

That is what we did and saw