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Wawa, (read “wah, wah!” Ontario 9/21/07 |
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Written by Jane
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Sunday, 23 September 2007 |
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Well, so much for Banff or Bust. I’m here writing from my favorite respite – the laundry room. 
We ended up leaving Montreal two days later than expected due to the late arrival of a long-awaited package. We spent two days in constant talks with Montreal Bureau de Poste folks (en francais of course) trying to track down the package that didn’t seem to want to find its way into our hands. Actually, there was one very helpful guy in the post office who was ultimately able to find it for us and make sure we got it. So, we left Wed. afternoon and drove 400 miles to Val d’Or, where we spent our first Walmart night since leaving on the trip.
For those of you unfamiliar with Walmart camping, Walmart, once again demonstrating its mass-marketing brilliance, has a general policy of allowing RV-ers to stay in their parking lots overnight. Conveniently, they have an RV section in the store that you can visit with your morning coffee to stock up on various missing items and doo-dads like septic tank hoses, treatments, one ply bathroom tissue, things to hold things, etc… Of course, we weren’t planning on falling for this shameless marketing ploy until we woke up in the am needing a new camp lighter, milk and batteries. So, off Miles and Kell went, only to be found an hour later roaming mesmerized through the cluttered aisles of chips, toys and hair care products. Well, not exactly (they were looking for a new maze book for Kell) but they were in there for almost an hour. I wonder if anyone escapes the appeal of a cheap store where you can get such a variety of things (Miles’ Mom Susan being the bright and shining exception).
Anyway, we started off on our second day bright and early after departing the Walmart, planning on driving about 500 miles to Marathon, where would stay at a provincial park on the shores of Lake Superior. We saw some beautiful pristine Boreal Lakes on the way from Val D’Or.     
Just as dusk set in and about 30 miles from our destination, we had our second Check Engine light event. But this time, the truck immediately lost almost all its power, slowing to about 20 mph as pulled up a grade. Onstar again ran its nifty diagnostic probe from afar and told us it was an exhaust problem and we could go on but had to get service ASAP. Both despite and because of the fact that we were on a narrow two lane road with few if any turnoffs, we decided to turn around and go the 16 miles back to the nearest campsite in Wawa. We pulled in there at around 8:30, and were happy to find someone there to help us get into a site for the night. We also learned that despite OnStar’s advice that we would have to go to Sault Ste. Marie for service (and would surely need to be towed there), that there was a Chevy dealer right in town.
We were there bright and early this am but only to learn that the code our truck was throwing was essentially a false code. There isn’t actually anything wrong with it except a weird computer glitch that makes the truck go into limp mode when it detects the slightest differential in the intake and exhaust systems (Miles could probably do a much better job of describing this, but you get the idea). Anyway, GM’s techs in their brilliance haven’t figured out how to permanently fix it yet so they cleared the code and their advice was to just disconnect the battery and reconnect if it happens again, or worst case, pull the fuse for that detector. Gotta love that good old American ingenuity! I voiced my utter disappointment with the fact that this could happen to a pretty new vehicle and Miles’ response was: “It’s not a Honda”. Anyway, it’s running fine now and we’re hopefully back on the road tomorrow.
We’ll head to Thunder Bay, where we might spend a day and take advantage of the Finnish Saunas and see Ouimet Canyon before taking off towards Winnipeg. Actually, I’m not even sure it’s Winnipeg but some other Canadian metropolis west of here. And then onto Jasper, where I learned last night it’s going to snow on Sunday! We had hoped to get there before snow but in a way it’ll be nice to be in the mountains at that very precious time of first snows.
Before leaving here today, we had a chance to walk a bit on the shores of Lake Superior and visit the downtown sites of Wawa (there’s only one – the large metal goose perched on a hillside overlooking Mehipociten Reservoir – it’s the Town’s symbol, Wawa meaning ‘snow goose’ in the native language once used here.   The Lake was beautiful – but we only got a small glimpse of its true size due to our vantage point – which was the beach at Old Woman Bay (so called because you can supposedly see the face of an old woman in the cliffs overlooking the Lake). We watched, mesmerized as the waters from the Dead River (strangely called as it is beautifully crystal clear and flowing from pristine Alpine rocky hills) flowed into the Lake one a flowing striated plane. Tried to capture the nature of this river’s movement but as with so many beautiful moments, it was really beyond that.
       
Kell was happy just to throw rocks in the river after most of the day stuck in the trailer with rain pouring down outside. But we kept him cautiously away from the edges of the river after my leg slipped almost past my knee on the banks of the river, into some type of soupy sand that had looked solid but was obviously super-saturated.
The biggest news in trailerdom is that Kell has his first loose tooth – here he is demonstrating. Now you see it… 
Hopefully more inspiring news from the next waypoint. Eh? |
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 23 September 2007 )
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