Once again, Tim and I have returned from an adventure. This one took in Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and Ontario. Granted, not a great deal of Illinois or Indiana, but there nonetheless.
We started at Chicago O’Hare, which as airports go, isn’t a bad place but then I have never really developed an overwhelming fondness for any airport anyway. What was significant about the use of O’Hare was that we succeeded in getting in at all. We parked on the runway in Atlanta, not for long, but Delta was clever in that they pulled us from the gate and then parked us out behind the international terminal. This accomplishes the purpose of logging an on-time departure since the FAA considers "departure" to be leaving the gate NOT the ground. Travelers might well have a different definition but when looking at those clever on-time stats it helps to know what "on-time" means! We were parked because of heavy traffic at O’Hare which I didn’t think unusual. We discovered later that we were one of the last flights to arrive at O’Hare for hours because the thunderstorms that were wetting us in Wisconsin were closing O’Hare!
In the before Tim time I used to think that I was tad obsessive about getting to airports early, but now I realize that my obsession was strictly amateur. Our flight to Chicago was scheduled for 11:55am, call it noon. We live approximately 1.5 hours from the airport. So naturally as you guessed, we left the house at 5:00am to "make it on time." We arrived at roughly 6:30am and had a nice long sit waiting for our flight. But trust me, this way dealing with Mr. Tim is tolerable. If the clock pushes much towards 3 hours prior to flight time he starts to hyperventilate and get just a skoash (give me a break, I was in Wisconsin!) testy. It is much better to sit in the Crown Room for hours munching the mysterious "date/nut bars" and drinking Bloody Mary’s (drinking after 6pm is for amateurs…I am a pro!) while calling it "breakfast" than to argue.
But of course it really isn’t breakfast, and for me to be up, showered, dressed, and moving before 9:00 AM, someone really should be having surgery, preferably me to justify the exercise of early rising. Note I didn’t include "shaved" in the above list because I still haven’t done that, the better part of 5 days later. I am under there somewhere… The point is, and yes there is a point, that we were HUNGRY when we finally landed. But of course we wanted to get out of the madness of Chicago even though O’Hare is on the north side of town and it was mid-day. There was construction and Illinois takes a DIM view of hitting a highway worker with large signs announcing that if you do you are on the hook for $7,500 AND an apparently mandatory 15 year stint in prison. I like highway workers and all, but seriously 15 years? I have heard of rapists and child molesters getting away for less. Someone must have been lobbied heavily by the highway workers union.
OK, back to the point. We were HUNGRY. And in the East there is this nifty thing called a "highway oasis." Coming from the West I had never heard of these things, and while I stopped at one in Delaware they are still a novel experience. For those of you who don’t know they are very grand rest stops built by the state that have franchised out to restaurants and automotive services. In Delaware this thing was in the MIDDLE of the Interstate, yep, you make a left exit to get into it, but this one was on the side. HOWEVER, it was built OVER the freeway such that we munched gyros while looking down on traffic moving underneath the bridge we were technically sitting on. Supposedly it was a "Homeland Security Area" but as is so often true of that wonderful agency, they were nowhere in sight so I indulged myself by quietly speculating about the havoc I could cause if I were a terrorist packed to the thighs with high explosive. I guess it is a good thing for the state of Illinois that I am lots of things but terrorist hasn’t made it to my resume.
But you have to admit that the highway oasis, even though there were no palm trees in sight, is a pretty nifty idea. In the West you have to hope you pass through a town with some sort of services, and for those of you who have driven I-5 from Sacramento to Los Angeles, you KNOW that at some point you were wanting a highway oasis.
So on we go and we enter Wisconsin which is important to me because I have never been there. From the car what you notice is corn, lots of corn, and an odd profusion of Harley Davidson signed stores and billboards. And I do mean that there is about as much Harley going on as there is corn growing. Somehow Harley hogs were not the type of hog I had coming to mind when thinking of Wisconsin. Well silly me, Harley was founded and headquartered in Milwaukee don’t you know? Again, give me a break, I WAS IN WISCONSIN!!
Milwaukee surprised me since it was a lot larger than I had expected and in general grander as well. The County Courthouse has to be seen to be believed and the sky-high journey over the bridge crossing the Milwaukee River gives a great view of it all. Milwaukee would appear to take religion seriously because the most prominent part of the skyline are the numerous church steeples, built high and, well, steep!
I admit that I was confused about the Museum of the African-American Holocaust since I was pretty sure that the Holocaust happened to the Jews in Europe and that the museum for that is in Washington DC but perhaps all of my history education was wrong and the whole thing really did happen to blacks in the US. Perhaps needless to say, I didn’t stop to find out.
As we continue hugging the coast of Lake Michigan on some US highway or another, we start to find signs indicating that we are on the Lake Michigan Circle Tour! Darn! I thought I was being original in coming up with this idea. But alas, it has been done before. There is a Lake Superior Circle Tour as well, but let me tell you, that is a MUCH more serious undertaking!
At some point a lightbulb goes off in Tim’s head and he remembers that Wisconsin is the land o’cheese! I think this was triggered by a memory of a Frasier episode in which Roz, famously from Wisconsin don’t ya know, is waxing nostalgic about cheese sayings at the family picnic and cheese themed clothing. And of course Tim suffers from being an Easterner and not realizing that REAL cheese from happy cows comes from California, where cows have only heard mysterious tales of bitter winters in Wisconsin but grandma cow won’t talk about her past in Wisconsin, instead only having horrid flashbacks. Imagine my surprise to realize that while everyone has heard and seen the California raisins singing and dancing their dehydrated little hearts out, no one outside of California knows about happy cows and real California cheese. I guess when you have the largest population of any state and the world’s 5th largest economy in your own right you can say the hell with the rest of the country and let them eat Wisconsin cheese from unhappy cows. You have enough folks right at home to eat the happy cheese!
OK, pulling back in here… Tim wants cheese, he likes cheese, and we are in Wisconsin so there has to be cheese nearby. Sure enough he sees a highway sign for Steve’s Cheese, which is a brand don’t ya know, not the name of the store. Oh no, the store itself is a nightmare of grandmotherly chintz and flowery religious sayings "carved" into "stone!" But yes, they do have cheese. Fortunately right before he buys the cheese Tim remembers that TSA frowns on passengers carrying knives on board aircraft since that ended badly once before, so even if he buys the cheese, which he can do, he can’t really cut it (no bad fart jokes here please) and gnawing on a block of cheese is something really not easily done while driving. At this point the nice lady in the back realizes we are not in fact the UPS driver and comes out to see what she can do to help us.
If you ever go to Wisconsin, something you won’t be able to miss, aside from Harley’s and corn, is that people are REALLY nice. They talk funny (hence the don’t ya know, there favorite saying) and if you have ever seen Fargo, the movie not the town, you know the accent I mean. It is EVERYWHERE in Wisconsin and upper peninsula Michigan, which I now feel I can call the U.P. since I have been there, and presumably in Minnesota and North Dakota as well. But once you get past the sound of these folks you realize they are amazingly nice and helpful.
Tim asked the woman if she sold knives and while for a split second I think that scared here (an older lady alone in a store on a country highway with two men clearly from out of town asking for a knife…do the math now) she realized we meant for the cheese, not for her throat, and while she didn’t have a knife per se she did have a cheap cheese slicer since we wouldn’t need the expensive model for just eating cheese in the car. You really have to respect that she didn’t try to sell us a fancy item, instead recognizing our needs instead of trying to make a buck. Welcome to Wisconsin!
But then the cheese lady had a brainwave! Why not just get the classic Wisconsin car snack, cheese curds! And don’t ya know, they are fresh from today, which is why they are not refrigerated, just sitting in bags next to the cash register. "Oh yeah," she says, "people around here are crazy for the cheese curds. They are just fresh cheese you know, young cheese, and people carry them around in their cars just popping them into their mouths as they drive. Where you from that you don’t know from the cheese curds?" That is an intentional grammar mistake by the way, I was in Wisconsin.
So once she understood that we were poor non-cheese curd experienced traveler’s from Georgia, she volunteered to let us sample the cheese curds from the bag she was taking home for her personal use. Hmmm, what does a cheese curd look like you ask? Well, if you have a food processor and have used it to grate cheese, you probably remember the little balls of cheese that get left behind. Cheese curds sort of look like that, but probably a bit bigger. They are yellow, they look like cheese, so they must taste like cheese, right? Wrong.
As the lady pointed out, "Folks ‘round here call it squeaky cheese!" And once you attempt to bite a cheese curd you will know why. It literally squeaks in your mouth as you chew it! To sort of get the effect put a latex balloon in your mouth with a bit of very mild cheddar for flavoring and chew. The curds don’t taste bad, they just don’t taste like much of anything. They are very mild and the most noticeable thing about them is honestly the sound and the texture. Cheese is smooth, curds are not. But with practice and with a lack of anything else in the car to munch on, one finds oneself popping them into your mouth like a local. If you find yourself in Wisconsin give it a try. You might not love ‘em but they are truly a local taste.
Finally, mercifully, we pull into Escanaba, Michigan, our first stop for the night. I confess that I have a method of getting Tim to agree to a road trip route: I don’t tell him exactly how many miles it is from point A to point B. I probably just vaguely say that it is something like 4-5 hours, which could mean literally 4-5 hours but usually means more like 7-8 once you factor in stops, two lane roads, construction, moose, etc. So we were pretty tired when we entered Escanaba. The town used to be a major shipping port for iron ore out of the U.P. to Chicago and south but now focuses more on tourism. Tourism doesn’t really seem to mean summer so much, although there are plenty of summer homes on the lake. Lake Michigan in the U.P. is pretty marshy at the borders, not sandy as it will be in the Lower Peninsula. But what the U.P. does have plenty of is snow. Escanaba gets on average 50 inches, over 4 feet, of snow in winter, but the Lake Superior shore gets 200 inches on average. That is approximately 16 feet of snow!! Winter time is big tourism business.
Since it was past 8:00 PM and since our experience of smaller towns is that everything closes by 9:00 PM at the absolute latest, we first went to eat. Tim has an incredibly fondness for what I refer to as "white people Mexican" food. Again, coming from California which once belonged to Mexico and soon for all practical demographic purposes might as well once again, I am accustomed to more real Mexican food. But I figured what the hell, we were on vacation and why not suck it up for one night, and what better place to bank on truly white people Mexican that Escanaba Michigan. Actually the carnitas at Ferdinands wasn’t bad but what did intrigue me was the bathroom which was clearly designed for one person what with the solo toilet not in a stall or anything such that it, and the person on it, would be the first and probably only thing you would see on opening the door which had the eye for the latch, but no hook and no other lock either. Odd, but with Tim standing guard as doorman I could attend to business.
While driving through Escanaba we encountered a man walking a dog identical to Coach. Well, OK, the coloring was identical and obviously the dog was also a Miniature Pinscher, but I concluded that this dog must be a puppy since it was about half the size of Coach. Tim assures me that Min Pin puppies are MUCH smaller and that Coach SHOULD look more like his cousin in Michigan, but alas Coach and I have an agreement whereby when I go to the bathroom he barks at me and gets a treat, or before movies, or before bed, etc. He knows all the times he is supposed to get a cookie and usually he does, so therefore he and his cousin in Michigan do not look entirely alike.
There are also not a lot of hotels in Escanaba, so for reasons of being cheap and available for one night I chose the Econolodge. There was a time when I enjoyed sleeping on the ground in a tent in a sleeping bag. But those days are gone and if I pay for a hotel I would prefer it not be less comfortable than the old tent and bag days. But this place was "Econo" for a reason! The room was clean and all but the bed was unreal. It wasn’t hard, no they saved that for the pillows, but instead it was so incredibly springy that if you moved you ran the risk of bouncing yourself or the other person right out of bed! Eventually Tim gave up and slept on the floor for part of the night while I just didn’t sleep much. Yikes! Not a pleasant night, but at least they had a cute little lake fish statue out front. That had to count for something…but not enough.
Adjacent to the hotel was the U.P. state fairgrounds since apparently the U.P. of Michigan has its own version of the state fair different and separate from the L.P version. Michigan is truly unique in being a state composed of two peninsulas that really are very different from one another. Also next to the hotel was a sign indicating a major snowmobile route. Now, I have never even been on a snowmobile but they are apparently big business in the far north. As we were driving along we would notice these miniature traffic signs, stop, turn signs, yield, etc, that were facing the woods! This seemed very odd to us because of the size of the signs and because they were facing the wrong way. And now and again there would be strips of concrete across the asphalt road. Ah, we got it! Those are snowmobile traffic signs and the concrete is the crossing point for snowmobiles since the tracks on the snowmobile would shred asphalt. We should have known since one of the big advertising points of the hotel we stayed at in Fort Kent, Maine was being situated at the crossroads of four major snowmobile routes, but living in Georgia we forget these things. But hey, if you have 16 feet of snow, you might as well make a living from it! And at the hotel in Ontario, the hotel owner supplies the cutest cloth bags filled with rags that you can use to clean your snowmobile instead of killing her towels. Seriously, we have a picture of the sign that says so.
Once again the hunt is on for food and we decide to try the Swedish Pantry. This local institution came highly recommended. When you first enter be prepared to be overwhelmed by kitsch. There are literally plastic apples hanging from the ceiling on silk vines. The walls are covered in clocks, cutsie clocks at that, which you can apparently buy. Of course the waitress was incredibly nice because in the U.P. as well, people just are incredibly nice. The breakfast options were all enormous, but the real seal of the deal was that the three bread choices are all homemade. Who knows, perhaps with all that snow the bread truck can’t make it through reliably. I don’t know this to be the case, I’m just saying maybe. But to believe the cinnamon rolls, which are in the bakery case in the front of the restaurant, near the sort of permanent yard sale in the front of the place, INSIDE mind you, not on the sidewalk, you have to see them. OMG! And they were delicious. We split one and perhaps that is why I didn’t actually eat most of my official breakfast.
I don’t know if it is just me or what, but I never eat breakfast at home. Often I only eat once a day, but on the road, breakfast is essential. Maybe it is a response to the pressures or stresses of change, something like that, because only on the road do I eat breakfast.
Tim also spotted that they made a cardamom bread. Tim has a thing for cardamom that ultimately caused us to be in an East Indian grocery store buying bags of green cardamom pods for him to chew on. Personally I don’t get the attraction, but to be fair I eat bouillon cubes and salted plums, so to each his own. Turns out though that the bread was delicious and later that day we sat on the shores of Lake Superior and munched it while watching a golden retriever frolic in the waves (yes, the Great Lakes have waves).
We turned north from Escanaba and headed toward Lake Superior. Where Lake Michigan was marshy at the shores, Lake Superior is rocky with spectacular cliffs in some locations. Lake Superior is also very clear and VERY cold. I didn’t see anyone actually swimming in the lake and if you put so much as a toe into it you will soon know why. Given that it was July I can only imagine it in the winter. Well, yes, the shoreline is frozen in the winter so I guess that gives you some idea.
As we drove through the National Forest lands we passed an entrance to Tahquamenon Falls State Park and decided to check it out. Oh, the name rhymes with phenomenon. It was a relatively short and easy walk to the viewing point and on the way there we discovered that one of our spring time visitors had beat us to the spot! For maybe 10 beautiful days in spring we are treated to the very temporary presence of Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks migrating from the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America back to the north woods for breeding and nesting. We look forward to their arrival because they are stunning to watch. If you are not familiar with them, look them up on line to see what we mean. Apparently the area around Lake Superior is either another stop for them or it is one of the places they head for, for there they were, the Mister and the Missus (that’s what we call the mated pairs we watch). Of course we realize they were highly unlikely to be exactly the same birds, but it is nice to imagine. http://www.wbu.com/chipperwoods/photos/rbgrosbeak.htm has photos of the birds.
The falls themselves are not the highest at 75 feet, or the widest at 125 feet, but they are still stunning due to their location in the wild north woods of deciduous trees including birch and hemlock. But most striking is their color which is a deep brown that is not muddy but clear. This is due to the high levels of tannic acid found in the water that comes from the rich profusion of decomposing plant matter that washes into the river. The water despite the color is still very soft (low mineral content) and a neutral pH of 7.2. It is perfectly hospitable to fish and presumably one could drink it although you can’t really get close to the water nor would it be safe to do so. Reportedly the surface of the falls freezes in winter but water continues to flow beneath the ice over the falls! I think that would be a stunning sight and it would ALMOST be worth braving those 16 feet of snow to be able to see it. Of course, the trail we followed is a dedicated snow mobile route in the winter, so I guess I would have to learn to drive one of those things first.
We elected to follow the Lake Superior Circle Tour road which on the map follows the lakeshore. In reality it is very close to the lakeshore but in the US people can own lake front property and they do. This effectively eliminates your ability to actually SEE the lake unless you are in a state park area or scenic overlook. In Canada you cannot own the lake front. You can own a home on the opposite of the road but there is a clear demarcation that allows the lakeshore to be enjoyed by all. This was true in Rio de Janeiro where hotels and condominiums cannot be located on the ocean side of the street, again allowing everyone equal enjoyment of the ocean and the beaches. Given the contrasting experience between the two, we whole heartedly endorse the Canadian and Brazilian approaches.
Of course in Brazil the spelling is with a S, as in Brasil. I guess that is Portuguese, but here I spell it with the Z so that you all don’t think me illiterate!
We stopped at a lighthouse built in the mid-19th century when the Great Lakes area was just being explored and settled. The lakes are so huge that ocean sized vessels sailed on them, and I suppose a few must still do so. Lake Superior is 1,033 feet deep at its deepest so clearly any ship could sail it. From this point I could get my first glimpse of the Promised Land, which for me is Canada.
I also got my first close up with what would be an ongoing profusion of wildflowers. That far north wildflower blooming is still in the full rush even though it has of course long passed farther south. There were wonderful sweeps of daisy as well as blooms in purple, white, yellow, and red the names of which I don’t know. I did see some people with wildflower identification books in hand however so flower viewing appeared to be a popular activity. In Canada we also spied Monarch Butterflies feeding on the red wild flowers, with which they blend in almost seamlessly. It is amazing to realize that such fragile and small creatures fly on their own power all the way from central Mexico as far north as Ontario to feed and reproduce. I would think there would have to be an easier way, but they do it along with lots of bird species as well. It is truly amazing when you think about it.
To get to Canada one has to get through Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Now seriously, if you didn’t know, as I didn’t know, wouldn’t you call the above city something like "Salt Stuh Marie?" Come on, admit it, you know you would! I now know that it is pronounced "SOOOO Saint Marie" although where they get that from I will never really understand. But then again, Tim pronounces the J in California names like the J in jump or jungle instead of as the "waa" or "hoar" sound every sensible person in California knows to do in San Joaquin (waaa-keen) or Jorge (hoar-hey).
The city was just an obstacle to get past, sort of like the Red Sea, on my journey to bright and shiny CANADA! This is accomplished by crossing the International Bridge, one of the few options for transiting from the US to Canada in this part of the world since those really really big lakes get in the way! The only other options would be in Minnesota or all the down the L.P. to Detroit, so the bridge was pretty busy. We had a mite bit of a time convincing the Canadian Immigration woman that we really wanted to look at Lake Superior (her words when told this were: "Why would you want to do that?"), but Tim becomes both incredibly nervous and incredibly propitiating when talking to people who are authority figures, so he was able to convince her. I think she was playing with him personally…and she really needed to style her hair or something to avoid the whole plain Jane thing that really wasn’t working for her! I mean come on, you are welcoming people to only the greatest single nation on the planet, Canada, look the part!
That reminds me of another curious feature of DRIVING with Timothy in Canada. In the US, he regards highway speed limit signs as mere suggestions that it would be awfully nice if you adhered to (he would do very well in Montana in this regard) but if you don’t it isn’t as though you have broken a law or something. However, in Canada, the highway speed limits take on mythical power and not a single KmPH (it IS Canada and they like the REST of the world use metric) over the posted limit would he drive because as he explains it, "We are guests in their country and we have to obey the rules." The word and concept of rules is magical with Timothy. Most of the time the invocation of the word and concept, as in "It is the rule(s)" explains an action or inaction completely and over time you learn to accept this because not accepting it or asking for a logical explanation is met with a blank and exasperated stare as if to say that the word "rule" explains it all! But rules in the US occasionally exist to be broken but in Canada he wouldn’t dream of it. In fact, in Wawa, Ontario, when he saw a local police car he politely stopped to ask the officer if there someplace open at which he could still purchase beer. Unfortunately, the officer was standing next to those pylons in the middle of the road after dark conducting a sobriety and seatbelt check, so instead of answering Tim’s question the officer asked his own question of "And how many beers have YOU had tonight sir?" The answer was only one and the officer’s answer about buying beer was "no." Even though Tim only had one beer on board he still got us lost in the dark trying to find an alternative route back to the hotel that didn’t require going through the check point again.
Ah Canada. I kept trying to sing the Canadian national anthem the whole trip but since all I know is the title, O’ Canada, it got a bit tiring I suspect. Once we crossed the bridge I could breathe easier for the air was sweeter, and the water was fresher, the flowers brighter, life was just better in Canada. I have a serious thing for Canada and I will be waiting with severe anticipation while they process my request for political refugee immigrant status, but I suspect that they understand pretty well the tyranny of living with the Supreme Stupid we call W. Maybe the immigration gods of Canada will smile on me, for if they do I will be the most patriotic of all Canadians! Never will anyone have to ask if my label flag pin is in place for I will pin it to even my pajamas! Yep, I really do love Canada.
It would seem that the many of the Canadians do as well given that they want to be really certain you understand that you are NOT in the US anymore. There are both HUGE sized Canadian flags on the border as well as a huge quantity of Canadian flags everywhere you look, even as you get pretty far from the border. They are at businesses as well as homes, and even in the window boxes of apartment dwellers. Canadians have a certain spirit about being Canadian, a certain joy in it that I too enjoyed being amidst.
As we followed the lake shore road out of SSM, we had great views most all of the time because Canada doesn’t allow direct lake shore building and because honestly within a few kMs outside of SSM there just isn’t anyone to build anything. When you look at a map you realize that it is pretty far north at that point and following Trans Canada Highway 17, the Yellowhead Highway that will eventually come out and end on the northern British Columbia coast practically in Alaska, you won’t find much until you get to Thunder Bay on the western tip of the lake. So if you intend to go this way, be sure your tank is full and that you have food in the car with you, because you will not find much on your way. You will find the original home of Winnie the Pooh in White River though. That is where the orphaned bear that inspired Winnie was traded to a gent from Britain who took the bear home with him and the story goes from there. By the way, I wouldn’t suggest doing that nowadays.
The road to our stop for the night, Wawa, traverses almost entirely over the Canadian Shield. For those of you who don’t know, the Canadian Shield, which also extends to the northern US and Greenland, is a huge uplift of rock dating back to 5.4 billion years ago that has largely remained above the oceans since that time. It covers all of Quebec and most of Ontario. The thing you will most notice when traveling over it is that it really is rock, there is only a thin layer of topsoil, which limits farming but makes for good mining. Something you might not immediately realize it limits is one’s ability to put up billboards, but the Canadians have solved this problem (of course they solved it, they are Canadian!) by building billboards essentially on skids that are then weighted with rocks to hold them in place so that they don’t have to drill into the bedrock for the posts! Brilliant! The shield is heavily forested and has a profusion of wildlife although lightly populated by humans. Humans have lived here in the past as evidenced by the Native American petroglyphs one can either sail on the lake to see or climb down to see when the lake weather permits. They are on a cliff face right on the water. There were also several beautiful waterfalls here as well. You have to see the narrow chasm that the Montreal River flows down to reach the lake when it is allowed to flow out of the dam that contains it. It is very narrow and very deep. Apparently it is often dry such that warning signs and fences are in place to keep rock climbers out of what is clearly a bad spot when the water does flow. Large volumes of water in restricted passages tend to flow fast and furious.
Moose are clearly an issue on Trans Canada 17 and the Canadian transportation authorities don’t seem to think much of the human attention or memory span. You see a sign that warns of moose for the next 2 km and at the next 2 km mark there will be another sign saying the same thing, and so it goes for the entire journey. They don’t let you forget that moose could arrive and had you ever seen one you would understand why. I saw moose in Newfoundland and they are rather large creatures. They reportedly become aggressive during mating season and every year kill unwary humans who get too close. They also make a real mess of you and your car if you hit one at highway speeds, and on the highways of Newfoundland there is a sign, or there was, that lists the statistics on vehicle vs. moose. In summary, it isn’t rare and everyone involved looses.
The lake is all the more stunning in Canada than in the US largely I think because of the Shield geography that underlies the land. It is rugged, it is wild, wooded, stunningly beautiful, and empty. I loved it and I can easily imagine that is absolute perfection for outdoor enthusiasts of all types.
Unlike so much of the US it is also pristinely clean. I didn’t see a single piece of litter in Canada. This is contrasted to the folks we drove behind in Michigan who gleefully tossed their wrappers and garbage out of their car windows seemingly without a care. At regular and short intervals even in the wilds of northern Ontario are roadside bear-proof garbage cans that have to be regularly serviced for they are frightfully clean and not overflowing. Apparently Canadians use them for not even at scenic view pullouts could I find a piece of litter. Again, there is just something different about how Canadians seem to view and value their land. Yeah I realize that bad things have to happen in Canada as well, but even the official data supports my contention that it happens a whole lot less in Canada than it does in the US, including per capita so don’t tell me it is due to fewer people. And before you tell me that if I love Canada so much then I should just move there, rest assured that the moment Canada lets me in, I am going!
At one of the more stunning roadside scenic overlooks on the lake was something I would see no where else in Canada: graffiti. But instead of gang tags or obscenities this graffiti reminded us of the "graffiti" at the yacht harbor in Horta, Faial Island, the Azores. While on Faial the graffiti was often beautifully painted by yachties sailing the Atlanta, in Canada it was less grand usually consisting of a Sharpie pen, but the spirit was the same in that the markings were dates and names of people making significant journeys, such as Melissa and Jen headed to Calgary from Montreal and making the trip in 5 days flat. Or a group circling all the Great Lakes in 7 days. This little spot is a way point for Canadians trekking across their country and since they have far fewer highways to choose from (look at a highway map) they tended to concentrate through this point. It was a fascinating glimpse into the restless nature of not only Canada but the North American psyche where so much of who we are as a nation can be traced to those restless souls who pushed westward over the plains of both Canada and the US in search of land, gold, or other fortunes and built nations in the process. For the moment I will leave out the mass carnage that went along with that process since I am waxing poetic and all. But regardless, in the moment, it was fun to read the marking of traveler’s from the past who had gone farther on the same route I was sojourning on.
The terminus of this leg was the village of Wawa. I chose Wawa because I wanted to be able to visit Lake Superior Provincial Park (of the petroglyphs and waterfalls) and because it had lodging. My other choice would have been SSM because as I noted earlier, there isn’t much out here. Wawa is small and having a tough time of it since mining isn’t all it used to be. They rely on tourism and travelers now, and to lure them there is a giant Canada goose where the exit from the highway into town is. This only one of three such giant geese statues in town, although one is reported to be anatomically incorrect. I confess that my knowledge of goose anatomy isn’t top notch even though I once had a pet goose, Lucy. She wasn’t the Canadian variety however. Wawa gets its name from the Ojibwa word for goose and Wawa Lake has many of them during migration season.
Wawa also has a spot to pan for gemstones although we didn’t do that and they also have a very touching folk art exhibit on the streets of town in which local people have decorated doors in honor and memory of their grandmothers. It is called the Grandmother Doors of Wawa and while it sounds silly at first, in fact it is an amazing tribute to the women who have touched so many lives.
We stayed at the Parkway Motel which has all of 15 rooms in a long strip just like old motels always did I suppose. It isn’t much from the outside, admittedly, but coming from the Econolodge in Escanaba it was heavenly. It was completely renovated, the rooms were sparking clean and roomy, there were those cute rags for cleaning your snowmobile, and the owners were incredibly nice. The woman identified as having moved from Connecticut but the accent implied that Eastern Europe was recent in her background, presumably before Connecticut while her husband sounded very French Canadian to me. They are doing a great job and I was happy to note that the place was full up that night. If you ever find yourself headed through Wawa, and realistically why would you, stay at the Parkway.
Naturally when in Wawa, Ontario, the northwoods of Ontario, the village that registered the lowest temperature in North America the night after we stayed there, naturally you go out to eat Trinidadian food, as in food from the Caribbean island of Trinidad (I am guessing my sister might read this and trust me, she won’t know where or what Trinidad is…sorry Kelly, you know it’s true). The Kenniwabe Pines motel and restaurant is owned and operated by a Trinidadian immigrant who cooks up Chinese, Indian, Trinidadian, as well as more traditional Canadian/American/European food. It made sense to me and over dinner I explained the history and current affairs of the island of Trinidad and the nation of Trinidad and Tobago. From indentured Indian servants to oil boom of today, the cuisine, and Delta’s flights to both islands of the nation, do make sense. Dinner was excellent and the Carib beer from Trinidad was even better. This would later be the beer that Tim would report having consumed to Officer Dudley on the main road in Wawa. Of course the officer wasn’t concerned with that one beer and we were both wearing seat belts, so once we were clear that there was no beer to be had in Wawa at 9:00 PM we went on our way.
The next day required us to get back to Traverse City, Michigan, which was a fairly long trek, but we still managed to do many stops in the provincial park to see waterfalls and overlooks on the lake. There were endless wildflowers to admire and lots of the pink granite bedrock of which so much of the Canadian Shield is composed.
Before leaving Canada Tim wanted to get rid of his "play" money, otherwise known on international currency markets as Canadian dollars. They are very colorful and are far superior in my mind to the boring greenbacks of the US. Only one bill, the $20 in Canada is green, with blue, purple, red and brown making appearances for the $5, $10, $50 and $100 respectively. Canada sensibly uses coins for the one (loonie) and two (twonie) denominations. Admittedly you do have to look at Queen Liz on the $20 and the older she gets the harder that gets to do.
At any rate, what to do with that cash? Buy beer of course! Canada has this amazing thing called "The Beer Store." That’s what they sell and that’s all they sell. So imagine this store the size of roughly your average 7-11 with essentially nothing in it that you can see except for a counter with two nice handsome and engaging Canadian men waiting behind it for you and an entire wall practically from floor to ceiling with beer bottles and cans on it. Different size cans, different brands including "imported" Coors and "domestic" Labatt, Moosehead, Molson, etc, plus microbrews, they have it all. Everything has a price with cans being slightly more than bottles. Canada does have heavy "sin taxes" so beer is much more expensive than in the states and smuggling is big business because of it. So, we choose what we wanted and told the handsome bloke at the counter who punched it into his register. Then, like magic, shooting down this gravity conveyor (go to http://conveyors.apluswhs.com/gravity-conveyors/ to see what I am talking about) came our beer order in the cases and it was COLD and ready to drink. Heaven. Of course we waited until we were stopped for the night to drink it, but still, you have to love cold beer hurtling down the gravity conveyor at you. The only thing I remember gravity conveyors being used for was to unload trucks behind the Johnsondale store when I was little kid and later using one turned upside down to move hay into the barn to be stacked for feeding my sister’s horses. What luck she had to indulge herself in an expensive and labor intensive hobby with no responsibility for the heavy lifting! US customs wasn’t interested in our 30 or so bottles of beer and away into Michigan we go.
Having all that beer meant we had to try to drink it since we couldn’t really take it back on the plane with us. We tried, believe me we tried valiantly to consume four cases or so of beer in 2 days, but try as we might we did leave something less than a quarter of the total behind in the hotel in Chicago. Damn.
The L.P. of Michigan was different from the U.P. in being less forested and the lake shore being more sandy than in the U.P. Our hotel for the night in Traverse City was nice and comfy. We headed out to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park the next day. I don’t know what it is about sand dunes since if you live in the west you can see them pretty easily to my mind, but in the east, especially in the middle of the country, they are a pretty big thrill. We discovered that with the wind blowing a good clip we got sand into EVERYTHING including our ears and eyes. That put a quick kibosh on too much dune adventuring.
Back on the road south ultimately back to O’Hare, we were in cherry country during cherry season. If you like cherries, and despite getting violently sick eating them pits and all as a child, I do love cherries, the northern part of the L.P. of Michigan is the place to be in July. The orchards are everywhere and you can see the red ripe fruit hanging heavy on the branches. It is hanging heavy because the orchards can’t find farm labor since we insist on further destroying our economy by keeping out those who want to work while allowing useless lazy idiots to sit on their enormous asses pulling in a welfare check for breathing and breeding, with about equal frequency, instead of forcing the concept of payment for contribution! But anyway the cherries are delicious. In fact we still have some and I think I shall eat more right now… They are from Friske Orchards of Charlevoix, Michigan. Call them at (231) 599-2604 or at http://www.friske.com They are hiring seasonal labor!
In cherry country you drive across the 45th line of latitude, or the 45th parallel, which for those of you in the geographic know will immediately recognize as the exact mid-point between the equator and the pole. In this case the north pole.
Further south we arrived in Ludington. We went to Ludington because Tim remembers camping at the state park there in summer, Michigan being cooler than Kentucky in July/August. He wasn’t sure what he would remember but as soon as we entered the park he remembered canoes on the river and climbing the sand dunes on the lake. Lake Michigan is still bitterly cold so swimming was in Lake Hamlin which is a bit inland but still in the park. He also remembered bowling at the lanes right outside the park entrance and getting ice cream at the small establishment attached to a hotel (the hotel office is inside the ice cream stand) across from the bowling alley. He seemed to enjoy the trip down memory lane and that is why I included it in the itinerary. Now, never let it be said that I am completely heartless!
South from Ludington we arrived in the part of Michigan that Tim was most looking forward to: blueberry country! I don’t really get blueberries, by which I mean they are OK and all, but Tim loves them. So we carried home a full 10 pound family pack that is now in the fridge. Based on his behavior with fresh cranberries purchased in bulk at Thanksgiving time, he will freeze them and then dole them out over time into his cereal to help keep the milk cold, or directly into his mouth, making them last as long as possible. But this isn’t surprising coming from the guy who made his Halloween candy last until Christmas as long as his siblings couldn’t find it. And since I don’t care for blueberries, he should be able to make it stretch pretty far.
The rest of the journey was pretty uneventful and I can’t muster much nice to say about Gary, Indiana. The traffic in Chicago at 5:00 PM on a Sunday was unreal so our GPS navigation system routed us around it. Unfortunately while the GPS (we call him Daniel) knew the streets in Chicago, he didn’t seem to factor in that they are tunnels and there is no satellite reception in tunnels, meaning once he routed us in there he couldn’t help get us out! But we managed nonetheless. We checked in to our hotel then returned the car to Hertz. Tim had forgotten to change his booking fare to unlimited miles, instead accepting a contract for 150 free miles per day, giving us 450 free miles, the balance of the 1500+ miles we actually drove was being charged at $0.32 per mile…hmmm, that was the cost of both of our tickets to Chicago and then some since it was a two for one deal etc…and this is just the sort of situation in which Tim not only shines, he freakin’ glows! He was annoyed, no doubt about it, but through a combination of perseverance and incredible niceness, along with some creative fiction which is more polite than calling them lies, he managed to convince the frazzled counter woman at Hertz to take over $300 of excess mileage charges off the bill. Take a lesson from this amazing man: polite perseverance really is priceless!
I on the other hand was very tempted to provide basic parenting lessons to the mother of two girls on the hotel shuttle bus. The one child refused to hand over the mother’s cell phone while meanwhile the other child was struggling to break free from Mom so that she could roam the bus and place herself at risk of a cracked head (I would have let her go…a cracked head would have improved the child). When struggling, screaming, and crying failed, the child actually physically chomped down and bit the woman’s arm. I thought surely at this point some discipline would rain down on that insufferable brat, but no, nothing other than Mom screaming ouch! I was aghast! I seriously wanted to tell that mother to give that child to me for 5 minutes in a locked room and it would never bite anyone again! I just can’t comprehend what has happened to parenting standards today that allow a child to actually bite a parent and live to tell about it. I suppose someday the child will go to school and maybe learn that we don’t resolve our issues with biting, but had it been up to me that child would have learned a quick and hard, very hard, backhanded lesson right on the spot. I continue to be a FIRM believer in firm discipline of children especially in public, including to WalMart’s dismay, physical discipline. Instead we are faced with a nation of spoiled screamers and biters who will one day be responsible for the care of us all, and I hate to think what a future full of indulged spoiled little shits who can bite their parents will look like. But again I digress…
We had a great last night with the most comfy beds yet (isn’t that just the way?) while valiantly trying to finish off that Canadian beer. We were not sure what we would return home to since the day before we left a lightening strike melted our phone lines, fried the motherboard of my computer, and knocked out all cable and internet services, effectively rendering the business out of commission. Our flight home was delayed by almost two hours because thunderstorms in Atlanta the night before had caused the equipment and crew to arrive late, and FAA rules required them to get some minimum number of hours of rest before flying again. Honestly, I was better with a rested crew and leaving late than a tired crew leaving on time! Besides, Delta calls and tells you there is a delay so no big deal. By the time we arrived home all services were restored and today I replaced my computer (again…if you don’t have a back up system you are courting total data loss!!).
All seems right with the world and the Chicago flights pushed me into Gold Medallion status with Delta. That shouldn’t matter, but somehow, well, it does.
What I know for certain is that the people of Wisconsin are delightful, the U.P. of Michigan is beautiful, Lake Superior is stunning in a primeval sort of way, Canada still rocks my world and I WANT to emigrate, I love to travel the world and experience new things, yes even cheese curds, and I encourage everyone to get out there and explore!
Next adventure: Kansas City roundtrip through Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri. Don’t expect too much…unless I visit my Aunt June in Missouri…she is a hoot!
P.S. The only US states I have not been to: Minnesota, North Dakota, and Alaska. The only Canadian provinces I have not been to: Manitoba and Saskatchewan. All but Alaska will be corrected by the end of September!