Oh Canada!

We are now in Thunder Bay, Ontario. But before talking about today, here are a couple of pictures from yesterday. These are in Grand Marais, Mn.

 

 

 

 

And this was taken on the Gunflint Trail outside of Grand Marais.

 

 Ok, today... 

We stopped at a scenic overlook in Minnesota only to find out the overlook was closing in a few minutes! Work will begin soon and the whole thing will be redone. The workman told me that the hysterical (yes, that is what he said!) society paid for some renovations but this one was being done by the state.

We crossed the border this morning with no problem. Of course we lost an hour as the time changed to Eastern. At the visitor center, we collected lots of information. As we left there, we still didn't have cell phone reception so we couldn't call any motels. Little did we know that when we got cell phone reception, we still wouldn't be able to use our phones. I guess Thunder Bay basically has the market on towers here and that's just the way it is!

We were driving along and saw lots of signs. One that we saw often said something like Night Danger and showed a moose charging. Another sign showed something that looked like a small kid's drawing of hills and soon after a sign showing a part of the highway followed by wavy lines. Then we came to a missing part of the highway replaced by gravel (bumps?). Of course, the distances and speed limits are all in kilometers. We had a converter from the visitor station and I kept converting the speed limit for Ray until I remembered just before he did that km are on the speedometer!

Then the conversation went something like this: BEAR! Where! THERE! Yup, there was a good-sized black bear crossing the road right in front of us! And darn, I didn't get a picture but I did get to see it!

It's been cool, in the 50s, and overcast all day with some sprinkles. I really did a double take when the TV, at the motel, said a high of 11! Just one more conversion! (11 degrees Celsius is 52 degrees Fahrenheit.)

After lunch, we decided that we would go downtown and do a little shopping. We checked out the one quilting shop here - The Quilter's Stash. Expensive! The same fabric that I bought yesterday for US$9.50 a yard was CAN$17.95 a yard! Our dollar is worth about 95 Canadian cents so that's not the problem. The ladies at the quilt shop in Grand Marais said lots of Canadian quilter's come to their store  because it is so much cheaper! The cost of gas looks funny too - $1.02! Of course that is per liter (about a quart).

We also checked out a couple of stained glass studios. Ray is looking for ideas. We had an interesting time at The Glass Lady. She is unique and rather entertaining. She finally sold Ray an old book that she used 30 years ago!

We are staying at the Thunder Bay Inn. It is a relatively new, small, nice inn. The owners are French and quite friendly. Our host recommended Cousins Family Restaurant so we ate there tonight. It is a truck stop and just a mile away. Good food! Ray had the all-you-can-eat spaghetti special. I had Mojakka, brown bread, and salad.

We took a walk but are in now. We've been advised to not linger in the parking lot after dark because of bears. Haven't seen any here yet but Ray did get pictures of the doe and fawns out there earlier.