Wednesday October 12th
We left gingerly to avoid the
broken glass. We had been looking forward to the scenery around
Thunder Bay, but it had all disappeared into fog and rain. We also
wanted to visit the Ouimet Canyon, but the park was closed. We
stopped at the Terry Fox memorial up on the hill overlooking Lake
Superior. He was the youth with an artificial leg who tried to run
across Canada to raise money for cancer research. After thousands of
miles, his other leg succumbed to cancer near here. For years I've
maintained that his memorial used to be down on the highway but John
is the first person I've met that remembers that too. The current
site is much better.
We filled up with donuts in
Thunder Bay and continued to the border with Minnesota, where we
crossed with no problems. We stopped at the Grand Portage park but
the buildings there were closed for winter, and the Sawtooth
Mountains had also disappeared into the fog. We weren't doing very
well with the sightseeing!
The weather began to clear around
Grand Marais, and we headed inland on forest roads, looking for a
quiet route over to Eckbeck, our favourite campground in the area.
Instead we found another forest campground with a site right on the
Temperance River. The Temperance is a placid rocky river at this
point but a few miles downstream it roars down through its chasms and
tunnels to Lake Superior, invisible in some places but shaking the
ground under your feet.
I cooked bratwurst outside using
up our remaining wood from the Yukon, Minnesota, Quebec, and Labrador.
While they were sizzling I heard
something large walking through the river and then a crashing through
the adjacent site behind me. It was probably a bear following its
nose to the bratwurst, but disappointed to find me there too.