September 5 - Drive to Rainbow Falls, Ontario

I awoke to the sound of rain pitter pattering on the roof of the trailer, but since I was warm, dry, and cozy I promptly went back to sleep. The rationalization, if one was needed, was that breaking camp is much more pleasant when it is not raining, so we might as well sleep in and see if it quits. The rain did in fact let up as we were having a belated breakfast, but the day continued to be cool, damp, and foggy. In a way that was a shame as we continued our drive along the northern shore of Lake Superior and had repeated grand vistas of fog enshrouded lake. Moody it certainly was, but picturesque it was not.

Still, the drive was interesting in part for what was there and in part for what was not. What we saw were endless miles of forests. The composition of the forests shifted from white and yellow birch to solid conifers such as fir and spruce (I think). Sometimes these shifts happened quite abruptly and I puzzled over whether the cause was natural or due to the effects of logging. Since the shifts happened so rapidly, sometimes within a quarter of a mile, any natural cause would have to be something like soil composition or drainage that can change that quickly. But possibly we were just seeing a natural succession process after clear cutting from the pioneer species like birch to the climax forest of conifers.

What we did not see was anything other than forests, and that included people. There were stretches of many miles where there was no trace or sign of people at all except for the road itself. We saw no driveways or mailboxes much less houses, and I'm pretty sure that no one really was there. It became downright spooky and sparked off thoughts of how I would get help if our truck broke down. Clearly walking over to the nearest home or farm and asking to use their phone would simply not be an option, and I had a hunch that our cell phone wouldn't do us much good either. We could ride the bikes to the nearest town, but in these deserted stretches the nearest town was sometimes 50 miles away over fairly hilly roads, so that alternative wasn't too attractive.

We wanted to have lunch at some kind of fast food joint along the way, but that plan came a cropper because of the complete lack of commercial development. The only fast food outlet we saw in 200 miles was one place that combined a Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet, and we had to rule that out because of our low fat dietary restrictions. We continued doggedly on in the hopes of finding something in one of the small towns that were dots on our map, but we never did even see some of those towns and certainly never found another place to eat. I distinctly remember asking about the town of Rossport when the GPS said we should be passing it, and Monika replied, "Oh that must have been the driveway leading over to that island out in the lake!" So let this be a warning to all you fast food junkies who might have a yen to drive around Lake Superior: sometimes you'll just have to sit down and eat in a normal restaurant. Being hardcore, we decided that we would stoop to the expediency of cooking our own lunch if we couldn't find anything by the time we reached our intended campsite, and that turned out to be the case.

Despite our late start and partly because we never did stop to eat or refuel, we made it to our selected campground at Rainbow Falls Provincial Park about 1:30, a lot earlier than we normally stop on our travel days. But it was nice to stop early and that way we had our pick of the available campsites. The park had two sections, one down on the shore of Lake Superior and one inland, and we chose the on beside the lake. In part our decision was caused by the information that the inland park section was closing on September 6th, and we wanted to at least have the option of staying two days.

As it turned out, we found a very nice campsite about 100 feet from the water where we could hear the waves breaking on the beach, a very soothing sound in my opinion. Lunch was the first order of business and showers were the second, after which we succumbed to the lullaby of the waves and turned in for a Supernap. Apparently I was still paying installments on my accumulated sleep deficit. Of course, I awakened in time for dinner; after all, I try to never miss a meal!

After dinner we walked up and down the beach for a while, which is almost always fun. This beach was composed mostly of pebbles and cobblestones, which made walking quite difficult, but we had nice views of the fog shrouded shoreline and some islands just offshore. We also found some blueberry bushes hugging the ground next to some rocky outcrops that were just loaded with tiny blueberries (possibly huckleberries), so we had a kind of natural desert. There's not much to a wild blueberry, and I really wondered how the black bears ever manage to get fat eating them. I admit the thought of picking a bunch and trying to make a batch of blueberry jam flitted across my mind. But I also had some sympathy for the local critters that were depending on those berries to help them survive the long, hard winter, so I gave up the idea.

I also found what I considered to be extremely late blooming flowers thriving in the cracks in the rock where some soil had accumulated. Summertime was clearly coming to an end and I wondered if the plants would really have enough time left to grow the seeds before succumbing to the fall frosts. In fact, the folks at Fort William had said that they had a light frost of about 31 degrees Fahrenheit already two weeks back, so these plants were really taking a chance by blooming so late. Still, it was nice to have fall flowers brightening an otherwise rather bleak and severe landscape.

Finally having some spare energy, I chopped some wood for an evening fire, the first for the trip, and we spent a couple of hours playing with it as well as enjoying it. A steady onshore breeze helped keep the fire going and for once we didn't have to shift our chairs around to avoid the smoke, which was nice. We doused it shortly before dark and retired into the trailer for the evening, which gave us time for computer work and a little bit of reading before turning in for the night.

The night turned out to be quite an experience. Along about midnight the sound of waves crashing on the shore was joined and then overwhelmed by the sound of the wind gusting through the trees. Thunderstorms rolled in about an hour later, but even after they had passed we had bouts of heavy rain interspersed with light rain. The wind also continued strong and gusting, but we didn't feel it in our trailer so much because we had picked a site where the trailer was headed directly into the wind gusts. We were still hitched to the truck and that steadied the trailer to the windward side a lot like a sea anchor would steady a drifting sailboat under similar conditions. However, the shifting cacophony of noises kept us awake at points during the night, so we awakened the next morning still snug and cozy but shortchanged in the sleep department.