We were going to follow Highway 11 west towards Thunder Bay. We took this route as we'd already driven the route along Lake Superior's north shore. It turned out to be a somewhat uninteresting road. The towns try to liven things up with some quirky town emblems. We saw flying saucers, black bears, moose and wolves, and even a garden of inukshuks, anything to get you to slow down and maybe spend some money. The road took us through Driftwood, Moonbeam, and Kapuskasing, where we saw General Motors' cold weather research lab, one of the many places that Debbie had worked, if I remember correctly. Although we were in Ontario with its bilingual signs we saw many ads that were all in French and some of the people had strong French accents. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised as those French Canadians spread over a lot of North America. We even have our own Vadnais and Gervais families in our area, descendants of the original Little Canada colony.

We passed a plaque for the Reesor Siding Incident, commemorating a deadly shootout during a strike in the 1960s. I can see why they wanted us out of the way back at the dispute on the Porcupine River. Our last town for the day was Hearst, the terminus for the Algoma Canyon railroad, another trip I'd like to take.

West of Hearst we needed to find a campsite, and we took off north to Fushimi Lake park. As expected the park was closed, as this holiday is the last day open for most parks, but alongside was an abandoned logging track. A sign said that it was maintained by the fishermen of Hearst, for which we said thankyou and then followed it for a few miles. We came to a muddy pulloff alongside some nameless lake and that was it for the day. Sandie made it downhill with the camper through the mud to the lake shore, but there was some doubt about whether we'd be able to get back out uphill in the morning.

It was a clear cold night and a perfect half moon was rising. John had mentioned that he wanted some pictures for his Half Moon resort, so I fired off a few shots. I couldn't get the perfect picture of the moon just above the trees and lake as I couldn't get far enough through the mud.

Tuesday October 11th

It was a cold night and the mud and puddles were frozen in the morning.We should have left then before the ice melted, because we were well and truly stuck in the mud later. It took a lot of rocking to get enough space to cram some branches behind the tyres and back out. Sandie found me another route outthrough the woods, and I blasted through and back onto the track. I guess that's the reason we spent all that money on four-wheel drive, skid plates, and a brush guard.

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