Grand Marais Campground and Marina, Grand Maria, Minnesota (20 miles south of Canadian Border)
It was a dark and foggy morning . . .
I absolutely loved it! I don’t know why. Must be the Dark Shadows influence from my teen years. Anyway, I took an early morning walk, using the time to take in the atmosphere (literally and figuratively), and talk to God some along the way.
There’s a lighthouse out there somewhere. . . .
Remember the first picture I took here when we arrived?
Blaine was a bit concerned about having to drive in it, but by the time we left it was fine.
There she is!
I tried to take the same picture as earlier.
In my rush, I cut off the picture a bit.
Lilacs! Can’t you just smell them? Ahhhhh . . . .
But we ran into fog remnants along the way.
They aren’t using the orange flags, plus they’re crossing in front of a bus!
Better hurry girls!
No more fog.
You know the saying, “Bad things come in threes”? Well, that was us today. First (and worst in my humble opinion) was my personal encounter with a large, eight-legged menace. I was sitting in the passenger seat, all nice and happy and mellow from my fog encounters, when I felt something tickling my right arm hairs. I glanced down and there it was! A great big spider! I yelled, smacked and flung it in one fell swoop, then ground it into the rug at my feet. Thank goodness I was wearing shoes, because sometimes I travel in bare feet. Of course, Blaine was no help sitting over there in the driver’s seat. Probably snickering under his breath, because he wouldn’t dare laugh out loud at me.
Can you say, adrenaline rush? My mellow mood was gone. Instead, I was left with deep breathing to keep from hurling my lunch.
Then, shortly after, we hit a small bird. We’ve never hit anything but bugs before. ☹
And third? When we left the gas station, we scraped the paint off the underside of the front of the coach because the dip and incline at the exit wasn’t suited for the length of our coach. Bad planning on their part, because the station is designed for trucks. Blaine says it’ll be fine because it’s fiberglass. But still . . .
And all this before we even crossed over the border!
I’m happy to say, three was the end of it.
Until we got into Canada.
We crossed into Canada today about 30 minutes into our hour and a half, 106-mile drive. It’s a lot easier to get in than it is to get out. We just told them where we were going, how long we planned on being in country, and we didn’t have any contraband. Although they took our word for it on that. Hmmmm . . . .
Fort William Historical Park, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada
Hey! That’s a canola field!
We remember those from New Brunswick last year.
And antoher!
We determined this is some kind of pulp factory.
Partly by what we saw when we drove by, partly by the nice cut wood smell. : )
We went through a residential neighborhood to get here.
We’re about 35 miles into Canada at this campground connected to an historical park. Blaine finds the best places for us to stay! But I think he picked this one because he likes the name of the town . . . Thunder Bay!! You have to boom when you say it to get the full impact. : )
We have a nice view of the Kaministiquia River and lots of open space – no mowing required by Blaine. No one can park on our right, and our next door neighbor (at least for now) is a Prevost – – with a Smartfortwo car painted to match their motorhome and complete with personalized tags. Geesh! Oh. And a Prevost is only $2.5 million. Just in case you were thinking you might want to pick one up and join us on the road.
There we are. On the end.
Hey! Look! Canada geese!
In Canada! : )
These are the bathrooms (left) and showers (right). : )
We were in need of groceries and set out for a nearby WalMart, only to discover that they had no groceries – just a couple of things like paper products and chips, etc. So I asked an employee where we could find an actual grocery store and she said, “Go to the back of the store and out down the hallway to the Metro. That’s our grocery store.”
So we did. It was like leaving WalMart and walking into a Mall. Weird. As soon as we went inside the store, I told Blaine something smelled like it was burning. It was pretty strong. We had two items in our cart when they made an evacuation announcement. We left our cart and walked calmly to our Jeep. On the way, we heard the sirens, so we stayed around to take a picture. By the time we left, there were actually two trucks there. Blaine thinks it was probably an air handling unit.
And we lost an hour – finally. 😊 We’re back on Ohio time now, aka Eastern Standard!