The Road Through Northern Ontario - Day 2

Friday, June 25, 2010
This leg of the journey has been another marathon, and fittingly, there is a town called Marathon halfway between Thunder Bay and Sault Ste Marie.
Some people may refer to this part of the country as Onterrible, but according to the profile on the town of Rossport, this is one of Canada's most spectacular drives. Hundreds of kilometers of highway wind around the north shore of Lake Superior through the boreal forest,around inland lakes, over rivers and streams. The area is rich in mineral deposits and the small town of Dorion has experienced an economic boom in mineral exploration, particularly for uranium deposits.
We are still in Red Green country. This is the place for hunters, fishers, kayakers and conoers. We are following the trail that the voyageurs came along. (Voyageur literally means "traveller"). We are also in the same part of Northern Ontario where members of the Group of Seven including Tom Thomson, Arthur Lismer, A Y Jackson, & Lawren Harris would come to sketch. They would return to Toronto in the winter to paint.
At 6pm we stopped to see the Agawa Rock Indian Pictographs 2 hours out of Sault Ste Marie. The weather had started to change and there was a soft rain. At the head of the trail were signs, in red, warning of the hazardous trail conditions and the potential for loss of life due to slippery cliffs. Those types of signs make me nervous and I would have rather gone back to the car, but Mr. Wilderness convinced me to carry on and even though we couldn't really make out any pictographs, we were rewarded with some incredible views.
After a late start in the morning and a couple of construction delays, we finally arrived to a rainy Sault Ste Marie. We pulled into the KOA. Ed was keen to set up camp in the rain. But he could tell by the look on my face - like my cat had died - that perhaps the cottage option was the better choice. It was simply a log cabin with bunk beds and a double bed - the washrooms/showers were still a good walk across the compound - but given the weather conditions, it was paradise. We were able to get a good night's sleep and a shower in the morning. After a comfortable, dry sleep and a shower in the morning, we felt ready for another day on the road.