Traveling Highway 17 North of Lake Superior

Sault Ste Marie in Ontario is twinned with the US Sault Ste. Marie just across the bridge. This area holds the final set of locks that connect the inland waterways of the Great Lakes. The waterfront was pretty. The Civic Building, for example, is made up mostly of glass, gold in colour. It is surrounded by a public boardwalk and must look impressive from across the water on the US side.

The Bush Plane museum was very interesting. A highlight was a simulation of a few different famous flight paths including the use of CF215 water bombers to fight forest fires. These things are amazingly productive. They suck in the water to fill their massive tanks in less than 10 seconds skimming along the surface of a lake and then dump the water all at once on the fire. In one day one of these planes can pick up and dump hundreds of loads.

Ellie had a great day. Apart from the museum, we were able to include her on almost everything else.

• We walked around Sault Ste. Marie. Ellie walked right by a live Canada Goose who was digging for worms on the lawn. Then a few minutes later, she decided she was going to save us all from the Moose (statue). We were too busy laughing to set her straight on this.


• We visited a beach picnic park called Harmony Beach where Ellie could run off-leash.

• We hiked onto and around Chippiwa Falls. Ellie wanted to keep going up the side as far as possible.


• We drove through Lake Superior Provincial Park and stopped at the Old Woman Bay Park. Apparently the view of the mountain on the point is supposed to look like an old woman. Can you see it?

• And we stopped at Magpie High Falls where we could imagine what they must be like earlier in the spring judging by the amount of tree-sized driftwood deposited there on the rocks.

And now here we are in Wawa, home of the giant Canada Goose statue.