It is 188 km (118 miles) via Highway 3 from Winkler to Boissevain so we knew we had time to do an Adventure Lab in Morden before we left. Adventure Labs are a new element of geogcaching that take you to several places in a community or countryside where you find the answer to a question about what you have come to see. The Lab in Morden took us to see five of their old brick or stone buildings.

The old post office. Built between 1913 and 1915.

The Morden Court House was built 1905 on nine acres that the Manitoba government purchased for a court house and gaol. It opened in 1906 and Morden became the seat for the Southern Judicial District. There were cells in the basement as well as an apartment for the resident caretaker.

This is a Queen Anne style of architecture. The house was built in 1894 for a pioneer grain merchant. The brick was manufactured locally. It was designated a municipal historic site in 1995 and has been carefully restored.

This was my favourite. Another Queen Anne style. Built in 1899 for Morden’s first medical practitioner who arrived in 1884.

I couldn’t get a photo of the last house. It was too close to the road with too many trees. The one below is also quite hidden by trees. It was across the street from the house above and equally as nice. It may be a B & B.

So, it was after 11 before we left Morden and embarked on our tour through several little communities on the way to Boissevain.

We stopped in Manitou to see the information about Canadian women’s rights activist and author Nellie McClung. We had hoped to see the houses she lived in to learn more about her, but they were all closed.

Coming from BC as we do, this is not an exciting image. But in Manitoba where so much of the land is flat this forested, winding downhill stretch of road into La Riviére and Oak Valley is quite novel. Actually this part of southern Manitoba is dotted with gullies, and gulches, and small hills and lakes.

La Riviére is home to Holiday Mountain Ski Resort. These are the runs. They even have a chair lift.

The Resort complex is the red-roofed A-frame cottages.

As long as we are on the prairies there are going to be pictures of fields and big sky. I love the wide open spaces.

The mound was also a directional marker for early fur traders, explorers, and settlers.

Killarney is so named because the lake here reminded one of the early settlers of the Kerry Lake district back in Ireland. And the town has embraced it’s Irish link wholeheartedly. Even the fire trucks are green! Many street names and businesses have Irish Names. And in Erin Park on the shores of Killarney Lake you will even find a “Blarney Stone.”

We arrived in Boissevain at 4 and spent a half hour doing another Adventure Lab that took us to some of the 15 murals around town. Murals seem to be a recurring theme in a lot of places, but they are usually very well done.

Boissevain was on the Northwest Mounted Police Boundary Commission route. This mural shows Commissioner George Arthur French leading the first troop across Western Canada in 1874. The Northwest Mounted later became the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The little boy on the left is listening to the stories about his great-grandfather Commissioner French and is so fascinated he becomes an RCMP office when he grows up – as depicted by the Mountie on the right.

This mural depicts the first locomotive to arrive in Cherry Creek around 1886 as a result of Adolphe Boissevain (portrait on the right) selling shares in Europe to raise the funds. The town was later renamed in his honor.

Any murals on the walls of Canadian Legions rightly commemorate the huge sacrifices made for our freedom by so many men and women. And rightly so. They should never be forgotten.

Our hotel is across the street from Tommy the turtle. He waves both a Canadian and a US flag because the American border is only 25 km south of here. The Boissenvain, Manitoba – Dunheith, North Dakota border crossing is adjacent to the International Peace Garden that spans the border into both countries. It was established in 1932 not long after the border crossing was opened. We toured the Peace Garden when we did our 17 States road trip in 2017.Tomorrow we drive north about 73 km to Brandon. Along the way we will stop in Souris to find my mother’s foster parent’s graves. We spend two nights in Brandon and then drive west again into Saskatchewan to do some touring about the southern small towns of that province.

We spent most of the day in Morden, which is only 14 km west of Winkler. There was another geocache trail on power poles just west of Morden that we decided to find. There were 25 caches in total and we found them all except one.

At home we often have to do some bushwhacking to get to a cache, but here it was grasswhacking. We really appreciated the roadside sections that were mowed. They had so much rain here this spring that everything has had a good growth year. I almost stepped on a frog at one cache location.

After we completed our trail we went to find a cache hidden in a metal sculpture made by a retired farmer that he called the Covid Warrior.

One more of the things we put under the category of “We would never have seen this except for geocaching.” It is 11 feet tall. Very nicely done.

There was a geocache and a virtual cache overlooking the dam on Lake Minnewasta. And this sign.

Across the lake is a lovely sandy public beach and campground managed by the City of Morden.

This is an awesome, and obviously very popular, water playground. The kids were having a blast.

We had lunch on a shaded picnic table and watched the kids play for awhile then drove back into Morden and headed for the Thresherman’s Museum, which is located halfway between Morden and Winkler.

This is a lifesize model of a Xiphactinus; a ferocious marine predator. Fossil remains of several of them have been found in the Morden area. They have a Fossil Discovery Center that displays them and many other fossils. Most of Manitoba was once covered by gigantic Lake Agassiz that was created by the melting prehistoric Laurentian Ice Flow.

I like the steps that you can climb and stick your head inside the creatures mouth.

The Thresherman’s Museum was a collection of buildings, some replicas, some heritage. All were open to walk around in and furnished or equipped with early settler to mid-1950s items.

The sod house was half buried. You went down four or five steps to enter. This would have greatly helped retain heat during the cold winter storms.

There were five or six big sheds with farm equipment and other items in them.

The sun did a real number on the red paint of this old aerial fire truck.

This steam tractor looks a lot like Thomas the Train.

A doctor’s buggy from the 1920s and 1930s.

John and I both liked the collection of farm equipment seats.

We had two fun days of geocaching. We found 38 caches yesterday and 28 today. We leave Winkler tomorrow and head west on Highway 3 as far as Boissevain. It isn’t very far away, only a couple of hours, but I am sure we can manage to take all day to get there.

Today and tomorrow are geocaching days. We planned to find caches on this backroads cross-Canada road trip, and we have found quite a few, but we expected to have been caching more than we have. Between driving time and stopping to see things time we have only picked up a cache here and there. So we came to Winkler to spend two days finding geocaches.

Last night while I wrote my blog John made up a list of caches to find and we headed out an hour or so after breakfast. There were 30 caches hidden on hydro power poles along a gravel road so they were our first goal. The electric company is changing out the poles for taller ones so three of the hides were gone with the old poles. We found all the rest though.

The fifth cache we found today marked my 5,000th find since we began caching in May 2015.

To date, I had found 10 more caches than John, so a little further down the road he got his 5,000th as well.

After we completed the 30-cache trail we drove to neighbouring Morden and had lunch at a park before heading south to Woodhenge. Along the way we found six cute hides. Someone likes to make things.

Called Jimmy, but should probably be Jiminy for Jiminy Cricket from Pinoccohio

This cache was called Bouncy Bunny. The ears and front legs move and the entire bunny moves back and forth on the back legs.

Next we had Arnold the pig from the old TV sitcom “Green Acres.”

The chicken cache was Pat. The wings move and the chicken rocks forward and back on the legs.

Followed by Chrissy the cow.

And finally Rambling Rose, the skunk. The tail lifted up and down. Very cute and very clever.

The Winkler area is old lake bottom and Morden is on higher ground so we actually went up a hill!

When John was looking at the geogcache map to select some caches to find, he saw an earthcache called Woodhenge. Earthcaches have no container with a log paper to sign. They are places of geological or geographical interest. When you go to the co-ordinates you will be asked to submit answers to questions about what you learn in the write-up or information boards or personal observation. Only after you have sent the required answers in a separate email to the cache owner do you log the cache as found. We like Earthcaches because we always learn something as well as stop at places we otherwise may just drive past. As soon as John showed me what Woodhenge was I said we had to go find it.

Woodhenge was created over several years by an art teacher from Morden named Marcel Debreuil. He had been to Stonehenge in England a couple of times and decided to make his own stone circle in Manitoba. He searched for large boulders (erratics left behind by long ago glaciers) in the Manitoba prairies and built a massive Stonehenge-like circle on his property which he called Woodhenge. This overhead image shows what it was like when Marcel owned the property and kept the field mowed.

None of the rocks were located too far away. Most he just found and moved, some he actually paid for. The stones are set in circles divisible by 7. The outer ring is 49 stones and the two inner rings are 7 stones each for a total of 63. He selected each stone for its unique features. There are specific stones dedicated to each of Mr. Debueil’s family members, but he passed away in 2011 so no one knows which they are any more. The new owners have the property posted with No Trespassing signs, but the person that made up the Earthcache obtained permission for geocachers to go and see it. Trees and grass have grown tall so it is not readily visible from the road which helps a lot to keep it undisturbed and preserved.

They are not exactly little! I liked this one because it had a pink quartz vein all the way around it.

I climbed up on one of the shorter, flatter ones and tried to get a couple of photos that show the size of the outer circle.

This one has so many different colours.

This is the only stone that had flowers growing near it. All the rest just had tall grass.

The inner seven. The low one in the center has fallen over. If you look at the overhead photo that I took off the internet you can see that it was originally standing.

I thought it was awesome. The man made himself a huge project and I am glad John saw the cache on the map so we could visit the place.

It was about 30° all day and we had been in and out of the truck finding caches for about five hours so we headed back to the hotel and a cool shower before dinner. More geocaches to find tomorrow. Today was fun!

We checked out of our hotel about 10 and drove to the Forks to have a walk around before we left Winnipeg. The Forks is the historical name for the area of the confluence of the Assiniboine River and the Red River. The Red River was proclaimed a Canadian Heritage River in 2007 because of its significant role in the development of Canada.

There is a large ‘gathering place’ with lovely stonework and carvings around a central celestial marker.

The footbridge across the Assiniboine River where it joins the Red River has a mural painted on the counterweight used to open the bridge.

This metal sculpture on a post on the bridge shows the winding path of the Red River as it makes its way north.

The Assiniboine River.

The name Winnipeg is derived from two aboriginal words that mean ‘Where the river is muddy, or dirty.’ These two rivers are never clear and they can flood during every season of the year – and have done so – more than once. I have a photo of my grandfather using his neighbour’s rowboat to go down the street during one of the big flood years. This spring was a bad one too.

Often at the confluence of two rivers there is a difference in water colour so you can see them merge, here, however it is just muddy water flowing into muddy water.

Since Parks Canada manages The Forks they have set out their red chairs. That means a photo op.

The Canadian Museum of Human Rights opened in Winnipeg in September of 2014 and has quickly become an iconic symbol of the city.

This photo was on a sign board for the Manitoba Trails system, but it is a good image to show the meeting of the rivers.

The Esplanade Riel Footbridge crosses the Red River and The Forks restaurant juts out about halfway across. The footbridge parallels the vehicular Provencher Bridge.

I don’t know if the builders of the Provencher Bridge knew the footbridge was going to be built alongside or if they were just inclined to be artistic since much of it is visible from the lawn at the boundary of The Forks area.

Winnipeg is very much a railway town. My grandfather worked for the Canadain National Railway in Winnipeg before taking early retirement after a heart attack and moving to Victoria and my mother was raised here. The Union Station is a famous city landmark. We drove past it on our way out of town.

Winkler is an hour and a half drive southwest of Winnipeg. As usual we took our time and took a couple of ‘roads-less-traveled’ to get there.

This is indeed the prairies. Flat as far as you can see.

We drove past huge fields of many different crops. This is all dryland farming. No irrigation.

Harvest time is going to begin very soon.

One of the gravel roads we drove on. I thought it was interesting that they bale the hay along the roadside.

I have a large Canada/USA mapbook and in it I draw the routes of our various North American road trips. As I was filling in today’s route (the jigjag line going southwest) it struck me how all roads in Manitoba take you to Winnipeg.

Does anyone need to buy a grain silo? This business seems to have a good number in stock.

We arrived in Winkler and spent a few hours finding some geocaches and doing a couple of Adventure Labs in two of their small parks. The Bethel Heritage Park sat beside the Library and was beautifully maintained. There were plaques throughout the park that told the story of the faith of the people that settled here. There is a very large Mennonite population, but people of many faiths make up the community.

This adorable statue of a boy and girl reading a book sits on the lawn in front of the library and was donated by the artist.

The first hospital in Winkler (Bethel Mennonite Hospital) was on this site. It had 15 beds, a maternity ward and an operating room. It was built in 3 months for a cost of $8,000 in 1938.

The plaque below was on a large curved brick wall to the right of the fountain. I thought it was very interesting information.

We settled into our hotel room, found a restaurant for dinner and worked on making a list of geocaches to go find tomorrow. It is supposed to be 31°, so we will be warm out on the prairie.

We drove about 10 kilometers east to the community of Transcona to vist their museum. We thought it would have a lot of information about the railyards, but it was quite small. As always, though, with museums, there were some interesting things.

The community of Transcona came about in 1908 when the Grand Trunk Pacific (GTP) and National Transcontinental Railway (NTR), looking to build a second railway line across Canada, settled on a large area of unoccupied, flat land east of Winnipeg. This land functioned as the centrally-located site for repair and maintenance of the GTP and NTR railways. The town’s name is a combination of Transcontinental (Railway) and (Lord) Strathcona, Donald Smith who was a former Manitoban who was instrumental in building the Canadian Pacific Railway not too long before.

The Transcona Shops fully built built 33 engines as well as all the maintenance and repairs they did. The first one they built is on display in the Rotary Park. In 1972 Transcona amalgamated with the city of Winnipeg, along with 11 other communities.

After we toured the museum we did an Adventure Lab that took us to five of the nice murals there are around town. As we searched for the specific five we needed we saw many others.

We drove back to Winnipeg to go to the Costume Museum of Canada which I had wanted to visit last time we were here but it was closed. It was closed again today. Rats! So we just drove the short distance to the Museum of Manitoba.

It was a large museum with 9 galleries, some of which we just did a quick walk through. I took lots a photos as usual, but have only posted a few – well, relatively few – here.

Snowy Owl.

There was a small gallery showcasing the photographs of a young Jewish man who lived in Morden, about 125 km southwest of Winnipeg. He was an avid photographer from the age of 12 and did a lot of experimenting with light and angles, and took many self-portraits. His box of negatives was discovered after he died in North Africa during WWII.

Nick Yudell in 1931 on the steps of St. John’s Technical Collegiate.

Taken in 1940 not long before he left for Britian to fight in WWII.

This large wall painting was done by Daphne Odjig. We have a limited print of one of her paintings from the 1980s when she lived in our area. She died in 2016.

As is the norm in most prairie museums there was a section about dinosaurs and also a special gallery and film (accessed by a separate ticket which we did not buy). I had never seen this turtle-type one before. I think he is cute. He is not classed as a dinosaur, but is a mammal.

We spent the most time in two galleries: The Nonsuch and the HBC Collection.

The Hudson’s Bay Company, to commemorate its 300th anniversary in 1970, commissioned a shipbuilding firm in Devon, England to build a replica of the Nonsuch. At the same time the Museum of Manitoba approached the HBC for a contribution to its proposed cultural complex – the new museum. HBC gifted them the Nonsuch.

The shipyard knew they were making a replica for a museum but they also wanted it to be seaworthy and sail. They used historic tools and techniques from the 17th century, including the same types of wood. It took 10 months and $125,000 to build her. The Nonsuch was launched on Aug. 26, 1968 and shipped to Canada. Before coming to it’s permanent berth in the museum it sailed 14,000 km in salt and fresh water – in the Great Lakes of Ontario and Erie and through the Welland Canal. It was also shipped to Seattle and sailed up the west coast of British Columbia, making several ports of call.

The HBC Heritage webs site says:

“At 43 tons, Nonsuch had a deck of about 16.2 metres (53 feet) in length, and 11.3 metres (37 feet) along the keel. Her beam (breadth) was 4.6 metres (15 feet), she had a draft of 2 metres (6½ feet), and was designed to take a complement of six to eight naval cannons. Built in Wivenhoe, Essex in 1650, she began life as a merchant ship before she was bought by the British Navy, subsequently captured by the Dutch, and then recaptured by the British before being sold to private interests. She is generally believed to have been named in honour of Barbara Villiers, Lady Castlemaine, one of King Charles II’s favourite mistresses. The name, meaning “none such” or “without equal,” was a nickname of hers.”

The Nonsuch replica sits as though just returned from her voyage to Rupert’s Land (pre-Canada name) in port at Deptford, England in 1669. The walls that make up the town around the ketch were built after the ship was in place, so Nonsuch is never sailing again.

Even with the upper level viewing area you could not get a shot that showed how high the masts and sails were. Seven people at a time were allowed aboard. There are 4 kilometers of ropes of various sizes on the ship. Rope coils were everywhere. When Nonsuch origianally sailed she had 12 crew. Four slept in the Captain’s cabin at the stern (there are only two bunks but two would be on duty while two were off). The other eight crew slept (usually four at a time unless All Hands were needed due to a storm or something) in the hull below deck.

Captain’s quarters. A bunk on either side with a couple of drawers and a sided desk in the middle.

On either side of the ship there are carvings of a dog. The staff call one of them Wellington and the other Boots. I assume after the seafaring footware.

In 1920, for Hudson’s Bay Company’s 250th anniversary they began to actively pursue putting together an historical collection. Men were dispatched to former posts and the call was issued for items. By 1960 over 10,000 objects reflecting the story of the company and the remarkable people who worked for the fur trade had been acquired. Items are still being gifted to the collection. In 1994 Hudson’s Bay Company gifted the collection to the people of Canada and the Manitoba Museum became its home. There were many, many interesting things in the pieces of the collection on display.

The motto Pro Pelle Cutem translates to For skin, skin – or A pelt for a skin. The motto is often taken to mean “[animal] skins obtained at the cost of [human] skin.”

John and I thought this mantle was made from porcupine quills, but the description list says it is dentalium shells that would have been acquired through trade. It is from the late 1800s and the Northern Plains. Dentalium shells are a type of seashell.

This child’s jacket is made from loon feathers with fur trim. It is Inuit from the early 20th century.

The carvings in the photos above and below are from the Inuit Collection. All are from the early 20th century.

This silver cigar box with the HBC Coat of Arms on the lid was given to Sir Winston Churchill in 1956 to commemorate his honorary postion of Grand Seigneur in the Hudson’s Bay Company. (I wonder how they got it back?)

A replica of one of the large trading canoes.

This HBC coat of arms was on the exterior of the Hudson’s Bay store in Kamloops, BC (an hour from our home) from 1957-1982 when the store was relocated from downtown to the new Aberdeen Mall up on the hill. Our family did some shopping in that store from time to time.

The end of the HBC collection had a display of the Chairman’s office in London, England until the headquarters of the company was moved to Canada in 1980.

Despite it not being the destination of choice for our touristing today, we did enjoy the Museum of Manitoba.

Tomorrow we check out of the hotel and drive to Winkler, which is only 1 1/2 hours away. Winkler is Manitoba’s 4th largest city with a population of almost 14,000. We are spending three nights there as well. But we do not have a list of heritage houses, or historical villages, or musems to see. We plan to do some geocaching!

I had no plans to do a blog today. We were taking a day off. John had a church meeting via zoom to attend this morning and also had to write something in his role as Fire Department Chaplain for a funeral service he won’t be home to attend. I had laundry to do and a good book to read. We do not go at a fast pace on our road trips, but they do tend to be steady, so we figured a down day was in order.

But I snapped a few photos on our walk home from The Forks after dinner, so thought I would post those.

The Canadian Human Rights Museum.

When we were in Winnipeg on our way east earlier this summer we could see this amazing sculpture from our hotel room. It is set up at The Forks on a two year loan from the artist and we walked right past it on our way back to the hotel tonight.

The sculpture is composed of 1254 bicycles and is dismantled and set up by a special team in each location it visits. The artwork bio says: “Titled Forever Bicycles, the sculpture alludes to the bikes that flooded the streets of China, Ai’s home country, during his childhood. Despite their seeming omnipresence, bicycles remained financially out of reach for many, including Ai’s family.”

There is a large skateboard park at The Forks and on a hill beside the deep trough part is this lovely piece of art.

And that, folks is as exciting as my day went. It was actually nice to just veg. Tomorrow we are out and about again. We have plans to go to the Transcona Museum in the morning and the Costume Museum of Canada in the afternoon.

Today was a driving day. We made two quick stops at heritage info signs and other than that it was rest stops and lunch. We left Thunder Bay at 9:30 AM. Along the way we gained an hour, moving from Eastern to Central Time so 12:30 became 11:30 and we had to wait longer before a lunch stop. Haha.

Once we got near Kenora the land flattened out and we started to see more crops.

As we approached Winnipeg we passed acres and acres of sunflowers.

This cloud looks so much like an outstretched hand, there is even a ‘fingernail’ on the ‘thumb’.

We arrived in Winnipeg at 5:15 (6:15 Thunder Bay time) and checked back into the Humphry Hotel where we stayed on our way east. We are here three nights. There are a few things we plan to go see, but we also intend to do a bit of nothing much.

Today was a long driving day necessitated by the difficulty finding hotel rooms. We checked out of our hotel in The Soo and took a look at the lock before driving out of town. We were on the road to Thunder Bay by 10:30 and checked into our hotel here at 8:30. It is 704 km from Sault St. Marie to Thunder Bay.

The Sault St. Marie lock is a Parks Canada National Historic Site and the red chairs were there so – photo op. These chairs even had the Parks Canada logo on them.

All of the buildings at the lock site, as well as the Superintendent’s Residence (above) were made from red rock quarried when they dug out the canal.

A small section of the long International Bridge between Sault St. Marie, ON and Sault St. Marie, Michigan.

An hour or so after we left Sault St. Marie we pulled off to stretch and take a couple of photos at this pretty spot. We were passing the waters that drain between Lake Superior and Lake Huron.

Not too long after this spot we began the long drive along the coast of Lake Superior. We followed the shore most of the way to Thunder Bay. From there the lake arcs southwest and the highway proceeds due west so we lose sight of it after Thunder Bay.

We drove three kilometers of gravel road at Wawa to go to Magpie Scenic Falls where we stopped long enough to have lunch.

From there it was pretty much straight driving until we reached Nipigon and had dinner before doing the last 110 km to Thunder Bay.

The little lakes continue to dot across the land of Northern Ontario.

The sun was low in the sky as we approached Thunder Bay. Tomorrow will be a day like today as we are driving 702 km straight through to Winnipeg where we will spend three nights to recover from the two long driving days. Also, John has a zoom meeting he needs to attend on Thursday and I can do some laundry.

We had to get up early this morning. As in 6:15 early so that we could board the train for Awara Canyon by 7:30. Awara Canyon is only accessible by rail. It is situated four hours into the Canadian Shield from Sault St. Marie. There are many small lakes along the way and lots of them have cabins. We did see gravel roads for quite a distance but I don’t know how far they extend.

During the trip to the canyon the train’s PA system would give geological information about the creation of the Canadian Shield, which are some of the oldest rock on earth, and a history of the developent of The Soo, as Sault St. Marie is affectionately called.

Having driven the highway in Northern Ontario I was fully prepared to spend most of the day looking at trees, which we definetly did, but small lakes broke up the forests every once in awhile. The forests in the Shield are a mix of deciduous and coniferous and if you are ever in the area in the fall I think that would be a spectacular time for this rail tour. The colours would be amazing.

I apologize for the window or interior lights in some of the photos. It was often hard to get the camera up and close enough to the window to block them out. When on a moving train you do not have a lot of time before the view is behind you.

Because we rode through forests for 4 hours to the canyon and 4 1/2 hours back, the majoritiy if this blog post will be pictures of lakes and trees. We were not told the names of any of the lakes.

Every rail car had several TV screens that projected the engineer’s view, which was a pretty nice feature since all you can see from your seat is what is beside the train on your side.

We crossed a very high curved trestle over the Montreal River and had a good view of the hydro plant that was built about the same time as the rail line and has been expanded several times since.

We arrived at the Awara Canyon Park at 12:10 and had to be back on the train at 1:30.

The train has engines on both ends so it drives in with one and drives out with the other. (And, no the gentleman is not waving at me. He was telling a story to his friends.)

If you were capable you could climb to the lookout and get an expansive view of the canyon. This hike took about 35-40 minutes and you had to climb 300 steps. Or you could walk along an easy trail and see three waterfalls. The Black Beaver Falls – North and South – were about a 30 minute (return) walk and you could go a further 10 minutes to see the higher Bridal Veil Falls. And if you could hustle a bit you had time to do both. The couple on the train sitting across from us managed to do that. We walked to the waterfalls.

In the fall these hillsides would be a gorgeous mix of red, yellow, orange and green.

Bridal Veil Falls are 68.5 meters (225′) tall. In the spring or a wet summer there would be two waterfalls here, perhaps three. It is easy to see the wet rocks to the left of the falls, but it also looked like there could be a water path on the right as well.

I took this photo because I liked the mix of ripple and smooth water in the river.

South Black Beaver Falls. 53.3 meters (175′)

North Black Beaver Falls.

For the return journey we traded seats with the couple across from us so we all got to see both views. I took a lot of photos, but with the window and lights reflections I deleted most of them. And after awhile, I just didn’t take any more. I thought, how many photos of water and trees does one need anyway?

There were quite a few places along the journey where I could glimpse some pretty impressive rock cliffs through the trees but never did get a clear view. This one is the only one that shows how rocky the area is.

The up-dam side of the Montreal River Hydro plant.

This area was a very popular with the famous Canadian Group of Seven artists. They spent a lot of time camping and exploring and painting the scenes of Ontario’s north country.

We arrived back in Sault St. Marie at 6:00 o’clock. We were blessed with lovely weather the entire day and we enjoyed our journey into the Canadian Shield.

Tomorrow we are on the road again; back to Thunder Bay.

We took a short drive north of Sudbury to the site of the original Murray Mine that is now filled with water and then headed west to Sault St. Marie.

About 55 km from Sudbury is the small town of Espanola. We had been through there in 2014 when we went over to Manitoulin Island, but decided to take another tour around since we had lots of time and Sault St. Marie is only about 3 and a half hours from Sudbury. There was a geocache hidden at a little park on the way into town that we stopped to find. The park had lots of plaques around a stone wall that told the history of the town. Espanola is a pulp and paper mill town. I did not know pulp paper was created by a Nova Scotia man.

I took this picture to insert in my blog because the caption caught my attention. The little boy on the dog sled in the lower right is six years old and delivering the laundry his mother cleaned for the logging camp. Who knows how far away from his house this little guy came to bring the laundry all by himself at such a young age.

Espanola was a POW camp during WWII. The mill had closed and the big buildings became the camp.

This dam was built to supply power to the paper mill.

Once we left Espanola it was just driving until we arrived in the Soo. Mostly we just drove by Ontario’s many trees, rocks and water, but we also passed some farmland.

We arrived in Sault St. Marie a little after three and decided to go see the Bush Plane Museum. It was a fortuitous decision. They were celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Beaver and admittance was by donation. There were games and balloon animals and food and live music and lots of people enjoying the day.

Bush planes were used a lot in early forest fire fighting in Ontario so there were some good displays about those days. This campsite showed the typical set-up for the 1940’s.

Just a standard canoe right? Nope.

This plane was equipped with skiis for winter landings.

It appears to be birthing a canoe.

The water buckets dangled below helicopters to fight forest fires are pretty big.

We climbed up a couple of flights of stairs to the fire tower and were able to see most of the hanger. There was a big space behind the wall on the left (which is a 3D forest fire display) is a huge area that was set up with tables for food and a large section of the wall was open to the outside where there were more tables and bands playing music. They had gone all out in their celebration.

A 1919 Stanley Steamer

1953 half-ton GMC truck

As we were leaving the museum, which is right on the waterfront, I snapped this photo of a freighter coming up the channel. Sault St. Marie is located at the northwestern tip of Lake Huron where it joins Lake Superior, so is a major point on the St. Lawrence Seaway. The land on the other side belongs to Sault St. Marie, Michigan.

Sault St. Marie Museum.

We found our hotel and settled in before going down to the restaurant for dinner. We have fun trip planned for tomorrow.