The restaurant and the rooms were wildly decorated.

The next day we continued north, driving through North Bay and Sudbury. We followed the road closest to the shoreline of Lake Nippising. North Bay's municipal lakefront was clean and attractive, with lots of parkland and beaches. The low number of people we saw may be because, like many Canadian cities, the railroads form a barrier between the downtown and the lake making a visit to the water into a deliberate affair. Though I do suspect that the area can get quite inhospitable during the winter.
Leaving North Bay and heading west, just north of the lake, I was surprised at the lushness and seeming success of the farms. I had expected forest, not an agricultural landscape. Before reaching Sudbury, the forest did return, and then got very sparce and bleak. Downwind of the mines and smelters, life must struggle against the toxic sulphuric fumes and metallic poisons belching from the forest of tall smoke stacks that define the Sudbury basin, a landscape believed to have be created as result of an ancient meteorite impact. One of the few plants that thrives in the acidic soil is the wild blueberry, and as we pass through the region it seems that everyone is selling them, from stands along the highway to entrepreneurs working from the back of their cars. I control my desire for the wild blue treat by thinking about how much of the contaminating arsenic, nickel and copper the berries might be taking up from the soil. Sudbury is so beautifully ugly and full of interesting sites, we must spend a day or two there sometime. But this trip we race on to Manitoulin Island.

Here's a rare picture of the three of us together.

Our destination was Manitoulin Island, and a camp site at the Janet Lighthouse Campground near Gore Bay.

A stoney beach, lots of small trailer sites along the shoreline, with the natural campsites generally behind them. Knowing we'd be arriving late, I'd reserved a site by phone. Our 'assigned' site was just too busy, with roads on 2 sides and a very convenient washroom building on the third side. Luckily a quick drive found us a more secluded location, up against the bottom of a wooded escarpment. With a 'be quite, no music' policy, we enjoyed a campfire into the night, listening to the sound of the lapping waves being reflected back down at us from the cliff right behind the campsite. We were in the forest, over 100 yards from the rocky beach, but all night, the waves sounded just outside the tent.

One joy of living with a dog is having an excuse to get up before sunrise and go for a walk, and be there to record the gorgeous dawn light.

We originally planned to take the ferry to Tobermory on the Bruce Peninsula, but after checking out the zoo of people, the waiting times, the drizzly weather, and South Baymouth, the uninspiring village that lives off the four daily pulses of people waiting for and disenbarking from the ferry, we decided to drive back. Passing Sudbury again, and then south on Hwy 69, evening found us in the French River district, famous for being on the route of the voyageurs and more recently for the great fishing. We stayed in the historic Beausejour Motel (est. 1936), nice and quiet, near Alban, off the main highway and fronting onto the river. We arrived about just before the restaurant kitchen was set to close, just enough time to cook up a fantastic pickerel supper and sandwich that we ate in our room.

The next morning we headed south, and home.

On a side trip, just off the main highway through unpopulated First Nation land, we spotted a black bear walking on the side of the road. As we drew close, the first bear Marsh had seen outside of a zoo, lumbered off into the bush.

Some extended shopping time in Parry Sound, and quick tours through Midland and Penetanguishene led to plans for a small-town weekend-getaway in the near future.

In the fading light, at the end of our mini vacation, we took a nostalgic trip along Wasaga Beach.