Hi there! Remember us? We’ve been out of touch via phone and ‘net since our last post. Hope we didn’t worry you! I will send along the two posts I put together, even though I couldn’t send on time.
The weather here is still gray and crappy. Rain is doing it’s best to dampen our spirits, but we will prevail! Looks like we’ll only have a couple more posts before hitting home ground. Until then, L.
It’s Friday, July 18, and we have just finished our second “wet road day” of this trip. This time, however, the moisture wasn’t caused by rain (although it did sprinkle for a few minutes.) Today was Foggy (did you catch that capital “F”?) Not quite pea soup foggy, but at least onion consommé. We left Thunder Bay in sunshine, but hadn’t traveled an hour before the fog settled in. The windshield stayed translucent all day because of the mist and made driving less than fun.
However, it wasn’t a long day on the road – about 7 ½ hours including a couple of meal stops – and we are all settled in to a little campground in Wawa, Ontario (TELL me that that name doesn’t make you want to whine!) Jack is taking a well-deserved snooze as I write this and, in a while, I’ll wake him up to see if he wants to escort me and the laptop up to the office to try to connect with the ‘net. As usual, it isn’t as easy as just turning on and connecting. Between the fog and the trees and the lack of a “booster”, we don’t have reception on our particular site, so we have to stroll down and hang out in the little room near the pool (which will probably be empty considering the weather.) But, it’s a small sacrifice, all things considered.
Plans so far are to stay in or near Sudbury tomorrow and, if we can get a site, stay in a little place that’s supposed to be very nice outside of Toronto for a few days to decompress before coming home. A great deal depends on the weather forecast. We’ll keep you up to date as we make plans.
Love to all,
L
Continued… July 19 and 20. We are now outside of Toronto and have discovered, as Jack says, that this country should actually be called Cana-DUH. At breakfast this morning (another story all on it’s own…) we asked a middle-aged guy and two teenagers if they knew where there was a wireless Internet connection. They all looked at us rather blankly until the guy actually said, “Oh! That chat room thing, eh?” Seriously. There was a rumor that we might be able to hook up at the local library, but, wait! It’s Sunday. Cana-duh closes on Sunday. So, no luck. I am astonished that things are so incredibly backward just a half hour outside of Toronto!
The “resort” that we’re at borders on comical. The reception and “guest services” area is in one section of the building and the food counter (euphemistically called a restaurant) is located no more than fifty yards from there in another. One has no idea how the other operates. The food counter doesn’t take a credit card and the reception area is the only place to convert credit to cash. They don’t accept travelers’ checks and aren’t sure what the exchange rate is. The person at the desk, although she SEEMS to be speaking English, can’t communicate well enough to explain how to get around the grounds and has no idea where anything outside of the grounds is located. We actually asked her three different times where the bathrooms were located in the campground and never did get a straight answer. I’m tellin’ ya, I expect to run into Rod Serling in one of the hallways here. Biz-ARRE. They are less than welcoming – the first time we’ve experienced this in Canada. Too bad.
The other thing that we noticed as we drove closer and closer to what we recognize as “civilization” is the graffiti! Holy COW! There are few flat, vertical surfaces on any of the beautiful stones along Route 17 that aren’t covered with spray paint. It looks as though Ontario took a shot at covering some of it up with gray paint (on salmon colored stone), but gave up because of the sheer magnitude of the problem. Once we turned off of 17 it got better, but this province really ought to get with the program. The rest of the country seems to recognize the value of natural beauty and does it’s best to eliminate the paint and garbage when it accumulates.
We are not reluctant to be thinking about heading home, but, at the same time. hate to let go of this vacation. We’ll continue to try to think of a way to combine the two.
Love,
L
The weather here is still gray and crappy. Rain is doing it’s best to dampen our spirits, but we will prevail! Looks like we’ll only have a couple more posts before hitting home ground. Until then, L.
It’s Friday, July 18, and we have just finished our second “wet road day” of this trip. This time, however, the moisture wasn’t caused by rain (although it did sprinkle for a few minutes.) Today was Foggy (did you catch that capital “F”?) Not quite pea soup foggy, but at least onion consommé. We left Thunder Bay in sunshine, but hadn’t traveled an hour before the fog settled in. The windshield stayed translucent all day because of the mist and made driving less than fun.
However, it wasn’t a long day on the road – about 7 ½ hours including a couple of meal stops – and we are all settled in to a little campground in Wawa, Ontario (TELL me that that name doesn’t make you want to whine!) Jack is taking a well-deserved snooze as I write this and, in a while, I’ll wake him up to see if he wants to escort me and the laptop up to the office to try to connect with the ‘net. As usual, it isn’t as easy as just turning on and connecting. Between the fog and the trees and the lack of a “booster”, we don’t have reception on our particular site, so we have to stroll down and hang out in the little room near the pool (which will probably be empty considering the weather.) But, it’s a small sacrifice, all things considered.
Plans so far are to stay in or near Sudbury tomorrow and, if we can get a site, stay in a little place that’s supposed to be very nice outside of Toronto for a few days to decompress before coming home. A great deal depends on the weather forecast. We’ll keep you up to date as we make plans.
Love to all,
L
Continued… July 19 and 20. We are now outside of Toronto and have discovered, as Jack says, that this country should actually be called Cana-DUH. At breakfast this morning (another story all on it’s own…) we asked a middle-aged guy and two teenagers if they knew where there was a wireless Internet connection. They all looked at us rather blankly until the guy actually said, “Oh! That chat room thing, eh?” Seriously. There was a rumor that we might be able to hook up at the local library, but, wait! It’s Sunday. Cana-duh closes on Sunday. So, no luck. I am astonished that things are so incredibly backward just a half hour outside of Toronto!
The “resort” that we’re at borders on comical. The reception and “guest services” area is in one section of the building and the food counter (euphemistically called a restaurant) is located no more than fifty yards from there in another. One has no idea how the other operates. The food counter doesn’t take a credit card and the reception area is the only place to convert credit to cash. They don’t accept travelers’ checks and aren’t sure what the exchange rate is. The person at the desk, although she SEEMS to be speaking English, can’t communicate well enough to explain how to get around the grounds and has no idea where anything outside of the grounds is located. We actually asked her three different times where the bathrooms were located in the campground and never did get a straight answer. I’m tellin’ ya, I expect to run into Rod Serling in one of the hallways here. Biz-ARRE. They are less than welcoming – the first time we’ve experienced this in Canada. Too bad.
The other thing that we noticed as we drove closer and closer to what we recognize as “civilization” is the graffiti! Holy COW! There are few flat, vertical surfaces on any of the beautiful stones along Route 17 that aren’t covered with spray paint. It looks as though Ontario took a shot at covering some of it up with gray paint (on salmon colored stone), but gave up because of the sheer magnitude of the problem. Once we turned off of 17 it got better, but this province really ought to get with the program. The rest of the country seems to recognize the value of natural beauty and does it’s best to eliminate the paint and garbage when it accumulates.
We are not reluctant to be thinking about heading home, but, at the same time. hate to let go of this vacation. We’ll continue to try to think of a way to combine the two.
Love,
L
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