Canada rocks!

Thursday, August 30, 2007

SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN PARK, ONT. — This park just outside of Mattawa is the same one we stayed in on our first day of the trip. We took a stroll after supper, crossing the footbridge over the small stream that flows out of the Mattawa River, and entering the woods beyond. There were tall red pine trees standing like columns along the road, and soft bars of evening sunshine sifting through them onto the needled forest floor.
Out on the water was a group of people gliding along in a red canoe, while tiny clusters of insects buzzed about above the water’s surface, and mossy seaweed undulated in the current of the stream below. The smell of campfires wafted through the air, and we could hear a comforting crackle of dry wood burning, along with children laughing and the low voices of tired parents.
The peace and beauty of this provincial park is a lovely way to bring our long trip to a close. The cool air and silence will be a tonic tonight as we spend our last night in our little cottage on wheels. There is much work to be done to get it ship shape again, after its daily barrage of road dust and all the jumping around the contents have endured.
Today we encountered a few miles of less than optimal road conditions, so one last time I had to rebuild the shoe tower by the trailer door. When I opened the cupboard under the sink, I was amazed to see the two remaining stacking bowls (the largest one succumbed to a bumpy road weeks ago) on the floor of the cupboard, intact, when their last resting place was on the shelf above the floor, about 10 inches higher up! I had put rubber matting between them, but there was nothing but hard linoleum flooring under them! We did lose one of our drinking glasses today, though. One dipsy-doodle too many for it, I guess.
As we drove from Sault Ste. Marie along Highway 17, I tried to look at the familiar landscape around us with the eyes of someone from, say, South Dakota, to see what might strike me as different. The biggest feature of the drive was the rocks. The pre-Cambrian shield is a huge feature of northern Ontario, and this was very much in evidence by the roadside. Some rocks were so huge they had to blast through them to cut a path for the highway. There were lots of different colours of rock as well, from charcoal grey to rust colour and beige, and some that were almost purple.
We saw a number of farms, and passed little roadside stands where people were selling sweet corn and ripe tomatoes. But this stretch offered nowhere near the amount of arable land that we had seen in Wisconsin, for example, where the fields covered hundreds of uninterrupted acres of land.
We passed a couple of very long trains of double-stacked cars sitting motionless on the tracks. Just as I remarked to Val that it must be frustrating for the people expecting these shipments to know they were not moving, we passed a repair crew cleaning up after a derailment, where several stacked cars were on their sides next to the tracks. That explained a lot.
Mother Nature provided beautiful weather today, with sunshine most of the way and a gentle temperature of about 21 degrees. The air in northern Ontario is so clear and refreshing; I just love to fill my lungs with it whenever we come up here. The water of Lake Huron was a sparkling blue as we passed near it not far from Sudbury. The pull of the north was still there when we got to North Bay and passed the familiar turn-off for Highway 11 up to Cobalt, Haileybury and New Liskeard, where Val grew up. But our horizons were elsewhere this trip.
Tomorrow will be our last day of travel. By the time we get home, we will have covered some 25,000 kilometres and seen some of the world’s most beautiful countryside. It’s hard to believe it’s almost over.