We drove to ThunderBay and found a nice diner to have the famous Finnish Pancakes with wild blueberries and maple syrup and they were delicious!
Then we drove to the local park on the hill for some nice views over the city and the harbour. There is a sunken garden in this park, small but well kept and a large selection of shade plants and a big selection of sunflowers in the centre, beautiful colours.
Around mid day we drove east along lake Superior through very rugged country to Nipigon. The rocky outcroppings are large here, several hundred meters high with the highway cutting through some good sized gorges through the granite.
We stopped for a hike in Ouimet Canyon and our surprise we crossed two suspension bridges across the canyon. From one end of the 600’ suspension bridge was a half mile long zip-line that looked spectacular, unfortunately it was not in operation due to the lack of staffing.
A beautiful canyon nevertheless with basalt pillars close to 100 meters high. The fall colours and the colours of the rock made it a beautiful sight.
We turned off onto Hwy 11, the road to northern Ontario towards Kapuskasing and Timmins.
More highway construction projects with some minor delays. Most of the roads are in great shape along here. Speed limit is 90, but everyone drives at 108…
There are many small lakes along the way here as well. The fall colours are still beautiful, the evergreens are mostly Black Spruce, the same as we saw in the Yukon. Longlac is a first nation community at the north end of an 80km long lake. We got to Hearst late afternoon and found a campground on the edge of town, where we settled in for the night.
We had an early breakfast and drove on eastward to Cochrane where we stopped to take in the polar bear sanctuary.
This is a research facility with 3 bears with a very extensive habitat for the animals. The enclosure is more than 50 acres with a small lake 5 acres in size where they can swim.
There was also a snowmobile museum with 30 - 40 vintage snowmobiles some from the 1950’s and a few more current models.
Then we walked around a small heritage village to end the visit to Cochran.
Then onwards on Hwy 11 to New Liskeard to visit with Linda’s brother John and his family. We stayed there for 3 days, visiting some of Linda’s school mates and old family friends. Lots of good food, daily walks and card games.
