2004/04 Boston and South Carolina trip - Georgian Bay |
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Tuesday April 13th
We drove down to the river mouth at Paradise (no, I didn’t think it was), and along the shore of Whitefish Bay, which was still covered in ice. We’d taken the kids swimming in this bay back in June of ’89. It was sunny but cold as we crossed the bridge and border into Ontario and Sault St Marie. As well as the usual Canadian Immigration we also had to deal with an “exit interview” with the security people on the USA side before we were allowed to cross the bridge to Canada.
We set off east on the TransCanada Highway, not that there are many roads to choose from in those parts. At every junction there were signs warning us not to drive on the hard shoulder. We could only assume that paved shoulders are a novelty there and the local Ontarians feel compelled to drive on them. We didn’t see any offenders so the signs must be a success.
We had sunshine all the way along the north shore of Lake Huron and no snow patches. This is mainly Canadian Shield country, just rocks and trees and water, with the occasional tiny town. We cooked lunch by the Mississagi River, and set up the satellite phone to contact the Internet. I was relieved to find that it worked OK in Canada after the failure in Australia.
We turned south just before Sudbury, heading down the east coast of Georgian Bay. The scenery was more rugged here, and the road had been blasted through long cuttings of colourful rock. The towns though were scruffy with lots of closed businesses. I guess it’s tough to make a living here with such a short season.
We took a number of side trips checking out provincial parks and their campgrounds, but found that all the parks were still closed with locked gates, so we couldn’t even sneak in. When the road turned into the 400 motorway we didn’t even have any towns. We decided to head for a campground in Craigleith park on the south side of Georgian Bay, in Nottawasaga Bay, that supposedly was opening on this day.
We got there about an hour after dark, after a miracle of navigation through the town of Collingwood, and had to phone Ontario Parks to get a reservation, go through the whole rigmarole of picking a campsite number, and listen to the agent telling me all about the campsite that I was reserving, and giving me a confirmation number. This was doubly absurd as there were about 100 campsites, and we were the only people there. It was also the agent’s first night on duty, and we were her first customer.
We’d chosen a lakefront campsite and found we had a great view of the pile of ice and snow that filled the beach. The wind had blown all the remaining ice from Georgian Bay south into this bay. However, it was great to be in!
Wednesday April 14th
We were headed to Ron and Junie’s in Hamilton and had arranged to be at their house for around 4 pm, so we had a lazy morning enjoying the sunshine and staying out of the wind. Craigleith is famous for its fossils but they were all buried under the ice.