Got back in the province on August 17. Stayed in Dryden for a few nights and then spent 5 nights at Sleeping Giant Provincial park just south of Thunder Bay. If you’ve never heard of this park before and wondered what the name is all about, it’s a big rock formation that when viewed from a distance, literally looks like a very large person, lying on his back on the water. Proof is in the pic....you’ll see it in the album.
Our first time to this park and it was a very pleasant surprise despite the tiny little “pull thru” site we were barely able to squeeze into. But, considering we booked last minute, we were lucky to get any site that fit our trailer. We were expecting to be on the shores of Lake Superior but the campground was on Marie Louise lake which is a decent sized body of water on the interior of the penninsula that becomes the Sleeping Giant. It’s a great location because this lake is much warmer than Superior so we could comfortably swim and paddle board.
Had great weather, perfect for hiking and biking so we managed to do about 24K return up to the top of the giant and back. Great views of Lake Superior from up there.
Check out the Sleeping Giant Album
North Western Ontario is vast! On our way back south we stayed in Marathon for a couple of nights and then in Sault Ste. Marie for 3 nights. The trip between Marathon and the Sault was and adventure due to truck problems. We knew that there was an electrical issue because a few days earlier, the windows wouldn’t roll down and all the dashboard gauges would periodically go flat, and then work again but we figured we get it looked at in the Sault. Unfortunately, the truck didn’t let us get that far. We stopped for lunch at Old Woman Bay on Lake Superior and it wouldn’t start when we went to leave. Luckily, it’s a popular spot, very picturesque so we were able to get a jump from someone fairly quickly. Good thing because in that part of Ontario, cell phone coverage is basically non-existent.
But that luck didn’t last long, only about 10 minutes later, the truck really started acting up. All the dashboard gauges went flat and didn’t come back. The air conditioning stopped working and it was hot and remember, we couldn’t roll the windows down. Not good, thought we were going to be baked alive! Thankfully, I guess, we didn’t have to drive much longer in those conditions, the truck totally died. Dave barely had time to pull it off the road and we were in the middle of nowhere, about 30 minutes south of Wawa and almost 2 hours north of the Sault. Now what? Sure we have CAA but we can’t call them, no cell phone coverage here. We had to resort to flagging down traffic and as luck would have it, a very nice old couple stopped for us and they had Onstar in their car. Talk about lucky!
We were curious about how the CAA was going to deal with having to tow both a truck and our trailer and they came up with a good solution. The tow truck arrived (3 hrs. after our initial call) with another pickup with a 5th wheel on it’s flatbed. Once the driver got it off, he and Dave pulled our truck out from under the trailer and it was put on the tow truck. Dave hooked up the other truck onto our 5th wheel and he drove it to the Sault.
We followed the CAA driver all the way to the Sault and as luck would have it, the entire distance of our tow was 197 K, our CAA membership covers us for 200 K....just made it. The tow truck driver told me that they charge $780 for a tow from Wawa to the Sault and he was going to be charging CAA 4 times that much. Thank God for the membership...that was paid for that many, many, many times over!
Turns out the alternator and some module in the truck were toasted! Once they were replaced, the truck got us safely back to Newmarket where we finally parked the trailer. Returned just in time for Dave’s family reunion....great to see everyone again after 7 months on the road!
A few pics on our drive and breakdown from Wawa to the Soo.