2007/09 Ontario trip - Brule River |
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Dear All,
This trip to Ontario was to be our second vacation of the year, a break for me from fixing up the house and a break for Sandie from home care visits. As it turned out, Sandie had another break a couple of days beforehand when she broke a bone in her foot on some damaged steps at a client’s house. This ended up setting our schedule for the trip, as Sandie had to be back to see the doctor in a couple of weeks.
We were heading to Ontario primarily to visit my cousins Ron and Junie and Sandie’s brother Jeff and his wife Debbie, and we also hoped to travel in a loop around the Great Lakes and catch the autumn colours. For Sandie, most of this would have to be viewed from the camper, as she wouldn’t be able to walk far. She had a strap-on boot for her injured foot, and would have to wear that when walking, and for climbing the ladder into bed.
Our plan was to finish varnishing the floor and then leave it to harden while we were gone, so we couldn’t plan the trip until we were confidant of when we’d be done. Until we talked to our relatives we didn’t even know which way we were going to travel the loop, but we were a bit concerned that Superior’s North Shore might be too cold if we did it at the end of the trip. As it turned out, that was the best choice, as we had the coldest weather at the beginning of the trip, with frost and freeze warnings all over the state in September, and even some snow just north of us.
Saturday September 15th
Well, our area just escaped the frost so our flowers survived, but it was in the mid-30s as we left home on the trip. Michael was packing his stuff up to leave too, moving to a room in a friend’s house across from White Bear’s Central school. We were taking the route through Sault Ste. Marie and around the north shore of Lake Huron, not as direct as the route through Chicago and Detroit, but definitely more scenic! The drive across Wisconsin was familiar and we studied the maps to find some new roads to drive. The countryside is mainly forest, swamp, and lakes, good for fishing and hunting, but little topsoil for farming. We passed a few isolated patches of yellow and red leaves, but most trees were still green.
choose from. We picked one on the Brule River, at the border with Michigan. The Brule looked to be a good river for canoeing, but we hadn’t brought a boat this time, and the water was probably rather chilly anyway. According to the radio, temperatures had been in the low twenties the previous night, a hard freeze. We had the campground to ourselves, so we picked the site right on the river bank. Next