Day 83, 84 & 85 - Sault Ste. Marie to Nipigon, Ontario

Day 83 – Sudbury to Sault Ste. Marie
September 19, 2008

It was another beautiful morning to wake up to. A person could get used to this sunshine. We are now really on our way back home as for the first time we will be travelling again the very same roads we travelled going East. The only difference is that we will not be staying at the same campgrounds we stayed at when we drove through at the beginning of our vacation except the one in Sault Ste. Marie.

We got to Sault Ste. Marie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sault_Ste._Marie,_Ontario) early enough for us to do some sight-seeing around the town itself. We had a look at the old Canadian side lock here, a national historic site. It was built after the Americans, on whose soil the lock of the day had been built, refused to allow a ship of Canadian troops through on their way to suppress the Riel rebellion. The Canadian government then resolved to build a lock on fully Canadian territory so such an incident could not happen again. We also did some walking along the shore of the St. Mary River here. But before we went for our walk we noticed a train station downtown which advertised train tours to the Agawa Canyon on the Algoma Central Railway.

According to Leo this is a very famous train ride in Canadian railfanning which dates back pretty well continuously to the 1920s when well-to-do families would take this train to the Canyon from Sault Ste. Marie to have a picnic there, particularly during the show of wonderful fall colours which the maple trees in this section of Ontario provide. We checked on space for the trip set for the next day, and found that 16 of 600 seats were still available. We then and there booked two seats for the next day. Leo did kind of hesitate as he did not know what the weather would be like and if it was the right enough time of the year for good fall colours and such, so I went ahead and booked the seats on my own initiative. I can tell you already we were not sorry we did.

Then back to our campsite we went to upload some of our blog pictures and write more blogs as we are way behind schedule because of lack of internet access at the last few campgrounds at which we have stayed. As well, we had get to bed early as we had to be at the train station by 7:30 am.

Pictures for today are combined with tomorrow’s pictures.




Day 84 - Sault Ste. Marie
September 20, 2008

We were hit by a thunderstorm during the night and somewhat worried as to what our day on the train would be like. But we only had clouds when we woke up and they cleared up by late morning. We got to the Algoma Train Station by 7:30 am and the train left as advertised at 8 am. (http://www.algomacentralrailway.com/content/gallery/index.html?id=52)
The train ride was spectacular in that the maple trees were just starting to turn or had fully turned depending on the altitude of the location we were at. Leo did not take a lot of pictures during the train ride as the car windows were not clean enough. The train took until 12:30 to make the 114 mile trip to the Agawa Canyon where it was scheduled for a 90 minute stop to allow passengers to detrain, have lunch and hike if they wished to one of four waterfalls in the immediate vicinity or else to a lookout point over the canyon. Leo did walk up to the lookout point and took pictures of the Canyon from there (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agawa_Canyon )

All in all it was a very pleasant train ride and we got back around 6:30 pm so it turned out to be quite a long day. We had some supper on the way back to our campsite, uploaded another 2 days of blogs and pictures and went to bed to rise early next day to bring ourselves ever closer to Calgary again.

Pictures for today can be found here.


Day 85 – Sault Ste. Marie to Nipigon, Ontario
September 21, 2008

It is already the 21st of September, so the first official day of autumn. There are only a few days left of our vacation as a result. Looking back at it all it sure has been a fantastic holiday, and we hope to repeat this trip in the near future to see everything again, and more.

After we had to set the alarm clock yesterday for our train trip we woke up early on our own this morning. The sun decided to cooperate again and show her face for most of the day. Today our end destination was Nipigon, Ontario (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nipigon,_Ontario ) or somewhere close to it. We have set a goal of travelling 500 km a day for the way back home. Today was a really nice scenic drive around the top of Lake Superior with wonderful views of the lake shore but also a very pleasant road to drive. The boring part of the road will come tomorrow after Thunder Bay when we climb out of the Lake Superior basin to the Arctic watershed where water no longer flows into the Great Lakes and hence to the Atlantic Ocean but instead ultimately into the Arctic Ocean via Hudson`s Bay.

With our early start we were sure to make it to today’s destination point. We stopped for lunch at White River (yes this is where the other stabbing on the Greyhound bus took place) and got to our campsite around 6 p.m. As we got closer to the campsite clouds started to appear and it really looked like rain. We just got the trailer set up before the rain started and we were then treated to a few thunderstorms throughout the evening as well, but we were nice and dry, and ….. we had internet again so that we could upload another couple of blog days and pictures! Tomorrow we will be moving on to Kenora or somewhere around there.

Leo did take a few pictures today of the fall colours which can be found here.