Thursday, June 11, 2009 – Day 14

It was yet another long Drive today but we made enough stops to break it up and let the kids stretch. Being the third of 3 long days of driving. We started our day with a 60 minute drive with our hitchhiker friend Patrick to Sault Ste. Marie. After dropping him off as he continued on his trip to Ottawa, we went into the city of Sault Ste. Marie to visit the locks that move ships between Lake Huron and Lake Superior. We saw the canal and lock that was being repaired and learned a little about how it worked as well as the accident that happened in the lock in the early 1900’s as three boats got banged up as one crashed into the lock doors. The drive to Sudbury was beautiful with rolling hills, pine and birch trees with numerous farms along the way. As we reached Sudbury, we drove around in hopes of finding a high speed internet connection to update our blogs and post some photos. Unfortunately both Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie did not have high speed 3G internet service with Rogers/Fido and so we were a bit handicapped for our three day stint from Winnipeg until we reached Sudbury, the city with the gigantic Canadian Nickel (made out of nickel). While we arrived too late to visit the Science Centre we did have time to catch up on our online updates.

A Mishap at the Gas Station We were warned at this stop to watch out for the black flies that would be between there and Niagara Falls. We decided to fill up with gas so that we would not have to get in and out of our motorhome in the beautiful treed areas in between. As we pulled into the gas station we had a problem with the steps that are supposed to go down when we open the outside door. Unfortunately as we pulled into a very tight spot at a Sudbury Gas Station the steps went down and hit the curb that was on the passenger side of the motorhome. No matter what we tried such as moving the door connector and opening and closing the door, they would come up and then go right back down smacking onto the curb. For about 5 minutes we tried everything we could to get them to go back up without any luck. We even had one of the attendants at the gas station trying to help us move along so that the other people waiting could be helped. In the end we ended up scraping the steps along as we inched the RV over with an audience of bystanders. After filling up we quickly drove away with our steps hanging out. A minute or two later they finally went back up, in time for us to drive on down the highway to the quiet and beautiful town of Parrys Sound. We pulled into Parrys Sound a beautiful lakeside town. As we searched for a quiet street to park at without any luck we noticed what looked like a long quiet cul-de-sac. To our pleasant surprise this led to a lakefront parking area that is generally used by hikers and locals wanting to enjoy the lakeshore. As we pulled in the sun had just gone down and we took in the end to a beautiful sunset over the lake.