The Best Laid Plans

One of the add on casitas at Lake Huron campground

Sites at Lake Huron Campground

Chippewa Falls including red rock

I've had such a rash of odd personal experiences that I haven't spent any time talking about the extraordinary beauty I'm being gifted with. 

I'm about thirty miles from Sault Ste Marie and having my main meal at the Chippewa River Restaurant and Store. I've become quite fond of these places. This one is really cozy.  Three different soft shades of peony imaged oil cloth on the tables. Flowers on the window sills. A Jackie type mix of chairs and tables. Really inviting.

There's more than one kind of way out there beauty on this leg of the trip. Lakes and rivers abound. Each day since I was near Thunder Bay I have been intrigued with the rock in the highway road cuts. At first I thought it couldn't be real hard granite because it was so segmented. But I now am thinking that it is. The amazing thing about this rock is its color. First some salmon color, then some orange and grey and brown. To begin with I didn't see any glitter so I thought no silica content. But then I started seeing big pieces used in parks along the way and some were full of glitter. The highlight of that was at a yacht harbor park I took Bobby to in Thunder Bay. They did everything with that rock and it is obvious that the prize it as well. They created a kind of low level Stone Henge at one location. For many miles I've been thinking  about asking  Kathy and Danny if they know anything about it.  Between Wawa and Sault Ste Marie there is a lake called Red Rock Lake so I'll try Googling it tonight. (No way as it turned out). I will briefly look around SSM and then drive to Sudbury which I've been told I can do before dark. Trees are showing some yellow and just today some bronze and rust colors are showing up close to the ground and even in some of the branches. There's a lot of optical mixing because these are some of the most dense woods I've ever been through. They are a wild mix of deciduous and conifers, particularly on the east side of the highway. On the south side you can see  vistas of the north eastern shore of Lake Superior. On the other side it's just one new lake or river after another. What a visual playground. I'm riding on endorphins.

Yesterday's trip from Thunder Bay to Wawa was hazardous because of rain and fog and endless road construction. Sometimes I couldn't see more than 75 feet before me. So glad to finally end up at a very nice campground but that was after being refused at two motels because of Bobby. The manager at the camp turned out to be a great gal.

It is a "one foot in front of the other" operation like almost every challenge I try to meet in my life. I guess that's the way my life is supposed to be.

This was written at a roadside restaurant on Tuesday afternoon. It is now Wednesday noon and the little Verizon  gizmo put me in a wifi mode. Amazing. Nothing worked out as planned because when I left the restaurant across the highway from the impressive Chippewa River Falls, I soon realized that I was driving right into the eye of a storm. No look around Sault Ste Marie because it was coming down so hard I could barely stay in my lane or see highway signs. As I drove out of town it became just about the most formidable downpour I have ever witnessed. No place to pull over and when a semi (of which there were a gazillion) passed me and then came back to my lane I was nearly blinded by the backwash mixing with the downpour. I am not exaggerating. I was praying, holding my breath and using every bit of energy I had to center myself. As I crossed bridges I sometimes took a second to look at the water below and it seemed as if rivers were rising by the minute. It took me until about half an hour outside of Sault Ste Marie before I suddenly drove out of the brutal storm and into a beautiful, lighter, five o'clock sky with gorgeous clouds mixed with a completely different look on the ground. It was open with only small clusters of trees and huge vibrantly green fields that looked like a cross between  Arcata bottom lands and Fortuna or Petaluma dairy country. About twenty minutes later I arrived at the camp I'm now parked at. It is on the edge of Lake Huron with all the famous islands to be seen offshore. It looks like I'll have to stay here until Friday morning because the highway has been closed due to a huge sink hole that developed during yesterday's violent storm and they say that there is no rational alternative route. I can think of worse places to be stuck in but it sure blows my great plan to be in Cape Breton by Friday night or Saturday to hear Celtic music. Hope they play during the week. I'll have to cut off some time on the Route 66 trip back home. I'm not missing Nova Scotia for anything.