Lake Superior to Kenora, Ontario

Wednesday we drove across most of the rest of Ontario to Sleeping Giant National Park.  Eric took Kai out for an early morning walk along Mary Louise Lake.  They came across a small herd of deer and then flushed a bald eagle out of a tree near the shore.  Later, when I went for a run, I flushed the same eagle off its perch on a tree next to the beach, and it flew off in disgust.    

On our way out of the Park we drove out to Thunder Bay Lookout.  Some park administrator dude approved the construction of a lookout point ten feet out from the edge of the cliff overhanging Thunder Bay.  Hapless tourists like ourselves walk out to the end and find themselves standing on spaced slats of thin steel an eternity above the water.  Here are Liam and Kai, clinging to the railing and each other and baring their teeth, driven to the very edge by their parents' desire for a photo as their parents wave and smile from the safety of solid ground.   

      

Notice that the dog is absent from the photo - he took one look down and beat a hasty retreat.  

These give a sense of the view. Poor doomed tree.

The moose is very important to Canada’s tourist industry and the Canadians are very protective of the moose here.  Along most of the roadways outside of the cities are signs asking drivers to watch for the moose.  There are pictures of the moose in various poses – standing, smirking, charging.  You’d think these signs were geared toward safety, toward warning people that they might crash into a moose inconveniently located in their lane.  But we’ve been in Canada long enough now to discern the real reason for these signs.  Aside from the Moose in the back of our car, we have seen neither hide nor hair of the Canadian moose.  I’m beginning to suspect they’ve lost it, and they’ve put up these signs in the hope that someone will find it.  That’s what we would do if we lost ours. 

Speaking of road signs, there are lots, providing tons of useful information.  Some provide information you might not have been aware of, like the name of each one of the thousands of lakes we’ve driven by (they’re starting to repeat themselves – Dogtooth Lake #3, Link Lake #2, Blue Lake #4514.  The GPS, in a fit of electronic pique, has taken to identifying them as “Lake”).  Some signs provide information you might already have.  My favorite of those: “Large Vehicles Need More Room.”  Ah.  So they do.  Thanks very much.   

Thursday …. camping in Lake Blue Provincial Park, near Kenora, Ontario.

Lake Huron to Lake Superior

I thought Lake Huron was a great lake.  And it is.  But Lake Superior was even greater.  We camped in Lake Superior Provincial Park in a site within a stone’s throw of the Lake (a stone thrown by a professional baseball pitcher, but still…this was our view:

After Eric and the kids went to sleep I worked on the chapter I’m writing by firelight with the stars shining through a skylight of fir tops. 

In the morning the kids built tiny kingdoms with the multicolored pebbles on the lakeshore.

 I went for a swim.  Was that ever great.  The water is so clear and the waves so regular and gentle that you can see straight through to the bottom even quite far out (which is lovely and terrifying at the same time – would you rather see Jaws coming from a mile away or swim in blissful murk until that last toothy moment?).  I swam along the shoreline so I could watch the kids.  When I turned back I found a highway of bubbles from my first pass.  I swam back and forth for a while weaving a trellis of bubbles on the lake’s surface.  Going down under for a closer look at the undulations of sand I found my shadow miming my strokes on the bottom of the lake.  I could hear the bubbles effervescing from my hair.  I’ve never felt more like a mermaid.  Or a can of Coke.

Kai and I lay down on the warm pebbles to dry off and warm up and watch Liam at work on the castles.  When we left, I turned to look back at the lake and the bubbles were there still, shining in the sunlight beyond the stone kingdom.

-Juliet

Guelph to Manitoulin Island

From our campground at the Guelph Conservation Area (in case anyone is trying to correct their spouse’s pronunciation of Guelph, it’s “Gwelf.”  Since Canada is bilingual, I feel compelled to add that in French it would be pronounced “Ghwhelf.”  That’s why the French don’t name their towns “Guelph.”  I also feel compelled to add that there would be more marital harmony in the world if everyone else would kindly refrain from naming things “Guelph”) we drove to the Bruce Peninsula National Park campground. 

I offered to take the kids to the beach at the campground lake while Eric got to go food shopping.  Liam and Kai found very tiny fish, snails making snail trails on the bottom of the lake, and a blue heron ankle-deep in the water that edged away from us down the shore.    

The next morning we hiked down to the beach at the Grotto on Lake Huron.  Holding a towel so that Liam could change into his bathing suit, I took a close look at the rocks that girdled our changing place, poked out like old bones, whitish-grey and knobby, eaten through at the knuckles.  The water at the Grotto reminded me of that moment in the Wizard of Oz when they turn on the Technicolor and you realize you’ve been swimming in black and white all your life.  It’s also like swimming in a mild electric current – when you get out you realize how cold the water is because your skin is humming.  Here’s what it looks like:

We climbed around the top of a rocky path and bouldered down to the grotto itself.  It’s the open mouth of a cave, filled with water and green light from an underwater passageway to Lake Huron.  People jump into it from a ledge at the back and you can see their bodies in silhouette greenly backlit from the underwater window.  Some people try to swim through the passageway to the open water beyond.  Well-mannered people don’t do that when their mothers are nearby, so that their mothers don’t have to kill them first to save their mothers the agony of watching them try.

We booked it* to Tobermory to catch the Chicheemaun ferry for a two hour trip from the tip of the Bruce Peninsula across a chunk of Lake Huron to Manitoulin Island.  The ferry is amazing.  When it approaches the dock all you can see from the parking lot is the top of the massive ship looming over a nearby hill.  The nose (people who know boats would call it the prow) opens like the beak of a huge turtle.  Tourists line up with cameras on either side of the dock to stare and photograph your last moments as you drive in.  You drive up the tongue, enter the beak poised yawning above you, and pass through the ferry’s throat into its maw.  Then they tell you to leave your car, climb to an upper deck and stay there so that it can digest your car.  I guess that’s how they get up enough energy to make the crossing.      

We spent Monday night on Manitoulin Island in a campground that advertised itself as having a great swimming area.  Which we didn’t use.  Because of the playground, laundry, apple tree, and wifi. 

On to Lake Superior.

-Juliet

Canastota, NY to Guelph, Ontario

We visited Niagara Falls on Saturday.  Saturdays in August are (apparently) when everyone who isn't already married heads for Niagara Falls to tie the knot and link their eternal commitment to a stunning, flowing, misty waterscape, much like those special someones in times past who tied their destinies to a wooden barrel to ride the plunging tons of icy water over a cliff to the unforgiving rocky pools below.  Ok, maybe not so much like that.  Anyway, it was very evocative.  If it weren't too late, I would have proposed to Eric. 

Liam and Kai watched the water for a long time.  The Falls are stunning, but visiting them stirred a vague dissatisfaction that they finally clarified for me.  We first saw the Falls from Prospect Point, where they asked whether we could go up and look from the Observation tower above us.  At Horseshoe Falls, Kai looked down and saw the boardwalk for the Cave of the Clouds below, and asked if we could go down there.  Standing at the bottom looking up, I’m sure, they would ask if there was any way to climb up.  The waterfall is so elemental, with unimaginable volumes of water hurling over and through an unreal height and shattering itself into mist and roar, that there really is no way to hold the fullness of its sound and fury all at once in your mind.  All the kids – and I - can do is try to knit together the snippets we collect of rush and drop and sound and vapor.  I feel like I am peeking through the keyhole of a vast room, with no way to reach up and open the door.  

Kai was a bit overwhelmed by it all.

We crossed the border into Ontario and had dinner in Guelph at the fittingly-named Happy Traveler Café and Bistro where, to my happiness, the band played Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here.

-Juliet

Chelmsford, Massachusetts to Canastota, NY

Today we left Chelmsford, Massachusetts for Portland, Oregon.  This time we are ensuring that we will bypass Texas by routing our trip through Canada.  

As a Massachusetts native, I know the roads in that state like the back of my hand.  I convinced Eric that we should take Route 2 instead of the Massachusetts Turnpike in order to save the $2 toll and see more of the Berkshires.  I assured him it was a two-lane highway and would add only about 10 or 15 minutes to the trip.    It is a two-lane highway for about 10 or 15 minutes and you do see more of the Berkshires.  Round about North Adams, after we'd had close and personal views of every collapsing roof of every rustic barn along the 25 mph one-lane construction-peppered Sunday-driver-laden switch-backed mountain road, Eric gently observed that Route 2 was less like a highway than he'd expected.  I know now why James Taylor goes "from Stockbridge to Boston."  "The Berkshires seem dreamlike," so he takes the Mass Pike.

We ate at Flo's Diner in Canastota, NY.  You don't starve at Flo's.  I had the roast pork.  I think they gave me the whole pig.  Liam and Kai each received a serving bowl of macaroni that was bigger than their heads.  If we can find enough ice, we can eat leftover mac and cheese all the way to Montana.

We've been working on table manners at restaurants lately.  I knew when I had kids that someday I would be lecturing on using your fork instead of your fingers, saying 'please' and 'thank you' to the server, and the virtues of starting with "Please pass...."  We've also covered the advantages of using your napkin instead of your shirt, taking bites small enough to fit in your mouth (and emergency measures if it doesn't), sitting at the table instead of under it, sitting at your own table instead of the table of someone who looks more interesting than your parents, and making the stuff that your straw is in go into your mouth instead of the other way.

Tonight I was at a complete loss.  Between the dinner and dessert courses at Flo's, Kai yanked his top front tooth out.  What's the general etiquette?  A strict "Keep your teeth in your mouth until after dinner" rule? is it more like a burp, calling for an "excuse me"?  or like an olive pit, requiring a swift palming of the detached incisor, an unobtrusive staunching of the surprised gum?

Kai cut short my dilemma by informing the server of his dental development.  She seemed very happy for him and brought him a plastic baggie to keep it safe.  Liam advised Kai that the Tooth Fairy might not be able to find the tooth if it remained in the baggie (why not?  does she detect them by smell?).  Kai went to sleep trusting without question that the T.F. would be able to find him and his unbagged under-pillowed tooth in a Canastota, New York motel.

-Juliet

Weekend

Becky and John went to the Eastern Townships for a few days, leaving Eric and I and the kids alone in Montreal to get our bearings.  Parents used to do this to their children to teach them to swim.  Fortunately, Eric has both a sense of direction and a lot of French.  I accommodate my lack of both by having no shame about practicing my Franglish in public and by leaving a trail of breadcrumbs when I leave the house.

Becky and John returned just before Uncle Ben (aka "the Pied Piper") and Vanessa came to visit.  There was Great Rejoicing from the kids.  Every once in a while we dig Ben and Vanessa out from under the flurry of arms and legs and offer them pancakes and coffee.

Becky and I took the kids sledding so Ben and Vanessa could have a moment to themselves for a walk in the neighborhood.  Sledding was great.  The hill was full of people and kids screaming and laughing when we arrived, but emptied out as evening fell.  My best run was with Kai on my back and me on my stomach on the minimalist sled, which is just a piece of plastic with two holes cut out for handholds.  You feel every bump, but the thing really flies down the hill.  Steering is mostly unavailable.

-Juliet

Montreal, Day One

We arrived in Montreal last night, just after crossing Portland's latitude.  It gave me that sense of satisfaction I always feel (don't you?) when completing the letter "U."  Canada is so accommodating of its in-migrants that they were willing to issue me a temporary work permit at 8:30 pm at the I-89 border-crossing.

Becky and John greeted us at the door to the townhouse we are to live in together, and we celebrated with  hot cider and tea and cookies.  And Annika was still up! having gotten special dispensation from her parents to stay up late to see her cousins.  The three kids were still bouncing off the ceiling when we put them to bed.

It's cold here.  When we arrived it was 5 degrees.  For those of you who live in the double- and triple-digit habitats, that's very cold (you can count it on one hand).  I have been staring around me in wonder all day at the beings that pass me on the street, striding confidently along in their down jackets and acting as if their very lives did not hang on the integrity of paper-thin layers of polyester stuffed with teensy baby bird feathers.  That's courage.

We took a walk to open a bank account and to buy warm socks for the kids and me.  Kai, bundled in his fleece and down sweater and snowsuit and hat and hood and mittens and snowboots, sat down on the floor when we arrived at the bank and and fell asleep leaning against Eric's calf.  We carried his boneless body to the sock store and laid him down in the display window next to the slide and the Leggo's.  He woke up thinking he'd gone to heaven.

We walked home together in the twilight, four socks richer, with a soft snow falling from the streetlights.  The alley beside the house is a sheet of ice, so before we went inside we slid up and down it for a while holding hands for safety, until Kai had fallen on his head, and I had fallen on my back and then on my hand, and then on his leg, and Liam on his stomach, and then they fell over a few more times as practice and for good measure.

No photos, as it took so long to dress the kids and myself in our own survival gear that finding a snowsuit for the camera was beyond me.

-Juliet