Day 2 – Thunder Bay to Sault Ste. Marie
Today’s drive highlight is to visit Richards Landing on St. Joseph’s Island and Sudbury, the city of two of my childhood homes. But 1st we need to checkout of the hotel.
Checkout is not a problem it’s the packout that is more of an issue. It seems we don’t travel light on these road trips.
Thankfully, most hotels have these carts that can hold a crazy amount of stuff and usually one trip plus a few hand carried extras get us in and out.
Before we leave town we drop over to the Sault Ste. Marie Canal National Historic Site for a look around. Of course at this time of year the canal is still ice bound and not operational and there are no buildings open or tours available.
We drive around a bit and take a few photos of the very impressive looking brick buildings, the bridge over the canal and one of the ships at the marina.
Our next stop is approximately 90km away on St. Joseph’s Island so were off to Richards Landing.
Richards Landing is pretty small and we drive through to the end of town and stop for a look around and a few more photos. This is my 1st of several lighthouse photos on the trip. Our friends have a son, daughter-in-law and grandkids on the island and now we know what the area looks like!
My co-photographer at work. Still lots of snow in the area and the lake is frozen solid. For some reason I thought things would be opening up by now, but not yet.
Bigger boats like this tug boat are frozen in place. The marina docks are empty as all the pleasure boats have been removed to their winter storage locations.
The island is renowned for it’s maple syrup production but as luck would have it we missed the tapping of the trees and gathering of the sap by a couple of weeks. However, there is a demonstration area showing how the maple syrup is made and an attached restaurant and gift shop at he Gilbertson’s Maple Products. So, we set the trusty GPS and drive on. Sadly, they are closed one day a week on Sunday, and to day is Sunday. We’re a little disappointed but poke around and look in the windows. Perhaps another time.
There is another big attraction on the island and that is the Fort St. Joseph National Historic Site. We knew the site was closed for the season but thought what the heck, lets drive over for a look at the buildings. It turns out the island is way bigger that it looks on a map and after quite a bit of driving around we arrive at the above sign. The fort is 3km down that road. It is a nice day but time really doesn’t allow for a 6km hike for a quick look around. Foiled again!
Next stop is Sudbury, home of the “Big Nickel” and two of my childhood homes.
This is 1214 Gemmel, Sudbury Ontario the 1st of two houses I lived in. Memories include looking out the upstairs windows at night and watching molten slag being poured down a hill in the distance like molten lava. Other memories are special Christmas gifts ( a metal car transport truck, tabletop hockey game and a Daisy Air rifle), and being “shocked” across the living room floor
This is the second house in an area we called “new” Sudbury back in the day, 67 Roxburrow. Again special Christmas memories, my 1st model railroad set that started a long history of model railroad building over the years. Also, there was nothing across the road but an empty field and a “mountain” in the distance which provided for may hours of adventure with my friends.
Things across the road have changed a bit…
This is “across the road” which is now totally build up with many roads and houses right up to the “mountain” which while largely untouched now has a road up to the top and a large condo complex.
We’re done looking around in Sudbury so it back out on the highway to finish up today’s drive to Parry Sound in just under 2 hours.
Once were loaded into the local Comfort Inn we look around downtown Parry Sound while waiting for our take-out pizza to be ready. Back to the hotel for dinner & some TV and that’s the end of Day 3
All the Day 3 photos on Flickr are below.
