Our morning was just beautiful as we woke up at Rainbow Falls Rossport Campground. This was our view out the front of the rig as we greeted the day...
I whipped us up a quick breakfast in these little microwave crocks. They had been advertised on TV a couple years ago, called Stone Wave. My friend Linda found them at a chain of Dollar Tree stores for a dollar each. So we grabbed some for the house and some for the motorhome.
Since we had electric hookups overnight, I decided to whip up a breakfast using them. Cracking a couple eggs, add few little pieces of chopped ham, and microwave for two minutes. Then I flipped them over with a little rice paddle and added some shredded cheese, salt and pepper and dried parsley to the top, Now put them back in for one more minute. It takes almost longer to make the toast than it does to make breakfast in these little crocks!
Since the weather was so nice we decided to hop in the tracker and go up to the other portion of the Rainbow Falls Provincial Park. We drove to the parking lot area by the wooden staircase. What amazing sounds we could hear as we descended the staircase down down down alongside of the waterfalls.
Each little area that we could walk away from the staircase presented another wonderful view. There wasn't anyone else around and we had the entire place to ourselves.
The views were spectacular and we made ourselves all the way down to the bottom and the crossing bridge that you could hike up the other side.
We opted to turn around and just climb all of the stairs back up to the top the way we came.
Yep, 181 stairs to get back up to the parking area. If you figure an average of 13 stairs per story that makes it 14 stories to walk up to get back to the top of the waterfalls!!!
We headed back over to the campground in the lower portion of the Rossport park. We chatted with some folks nearby who lo and behold were also a weaver and a spinner from Iowa. She looked up my blog and said she's going to become a regular reader.
Now I hopped in the Tracker with my laptop and headed back into Rossport to find that wifi signal. It's in a parking lot near a bed and breakfast, next to a sail boat that is dry docked. I was posting the blog from day 8. A gentleman came out of a nearby driveway and asked what I was doing, and I said using the signal to post my blog. He said that was fine and have a nice day!
By the time I got back to the park, Steve was able to drive our rig over to the potable water station and top off our tank. It was a slow fill, but we only needed about 25 gallons added to the 75 we had in the tank. Now we are back up to 100 gallons, never know where we will be next and it is nice to take on fresh water when we can find it.
We drove further east and meandered through some really pretty countryside. Very hilly in this portion of our route. We saw a fox dash across in front of us, but still no moose yet. (at least live ones)
We drove as far as the town of Marathon. This is a larger town with a couple grocery stores, gas stations and even an A&W. We stopped at a Canadian Tire store to unhook the Tracker and run around to get our bearings, leaving the motorhome behind.
Someone suggested on Facebook that we boondock overnight at Pebble Beach, which is on the residential end of town. We drove down there, but the location didn't feel quite right. There was a motorcycle parked there, but the place seemed kinda remote and uncomfortable.
We had seen a sign as we came into town for a campground run by the city called Penn Lake. What the heck, we could go and check that out too. Wow... what a nice place!!!!
The park offers 16 campsites with 30/15 am service and 2 RV sites with 50/30/15 amp service. An additional 9 unserviced sites are suitable for tent camping. All serviced sites have sewer and potable water. Internet access is available by wireless hook-up.
Sites 10 and 11 are the BEST in the park! The only two RV sites with water views. In our opinion, site number 11 is great for fifth wheels with big open back windows.... and site 10 is great for motorhomes as the view is out alongside of the windows on the passenger side. We talked to the nice fulltiming folks on site 10 who put their truck into site 11 for us to hold it until we got back. We rushed back in the Tracker to drop Steve off to drive the rig over. I registered for the site and paid $45 CN for a site with electric, water, sewer, cable and wifi! (after exchange it is about $36)
We got settled in and brought out our lawn chairs for a relaxing evening. We chatted with the neighbors and a few others that came. The park was just about full by suppertime.
We popped some chicken breasts on the grill, whipped up some salads and baked some more white potatoes. It tasted as good as it looks, that is for sure.
The setting sun caught against the other shore was BRILLIANT! These are not touched up or enhanced in any way, just straight out of my cell phone camera. They are in order as getting more and more brilliant reflecting the setting sun....
The reflection on the smooth water surface was like a mirror!
We will see what tomorrow will bring, supposed to be rain again in the forecast. Sigh.
As much as we didn't want to leave our little boondocking site on Lake Helen, it was time to move on.
The mist was rising up off of the lake and was absolutely amazing. Here are a couple photos
And here is a youtube clip I shot as we were driving down highway 11 heading towards Queens highway 17.
Oh my! We saw our first moose!
Well he wasn't alive anymore but we did see him...
We drove back down towards Nipigon we're there was some road construction taking place. The so far is the only road construction we have really run into. We did remark yesterday how amazingly smooth and wonderful all the roads of been up here compared to what we have back in Wisconsin. Its been very easy gliding down these roads, settled back in our comfortable chairs, with the big huge windshield showing the world moving by. Its almost like sitting in a movie theater! Seriously, the traveling has been very pleasant and smooth.
We turned left once we reached back to the Queens Highway 11, and headed east. We meandered through some beautiful countryside and the day was absolutely gorgeous.
We made our way to Rainbow Falls Provincial Park. There wasn't anybody at the gate house but there were self registration posts and envelopes. We unhooked the tracker and drove around through the campground noting any sites that we really liked. We noticed only one other camper in the entire campground. We did drive by a worker who was cleaning out fire pits. As we made our way back to the gate house and started filling out the envelope, the worker drove up to us in a pickup truck. He stated that he thinks the park is closing today, but he want sure. He will go call his boss to check, so we better not register yet. I was just minutes away from sliding the envelope with our cash into the paypost at the registration station. $41.25 to be exact!
The worker came back a few minutes later in said yes indeed the park was closing at 2 p.m. that day. But he did say the other section of the park which is a few miles back up the road and close to the water is open yet. Its called Rainbow Falls Rossport Campground. So we only had to backtrack a couple miles and found some other beautiful campsites.
Within minutes after our registering for our new site, the people that were in that other campsite at the closing campground also pulled in. They said they had paid for the night and the worker told them to come here and their envelope would still be good, even though was in the post at the other campground.
We chose a very nice site, but again the electrical posts are up by the road. Kevin had asked me on a previous blog why don't people just pull in nose first so their electrical cord can reach the post from the back of their rig? Well... most of all your picnic table and fire ring would be on the wrong side of the camper. And pulling straight in doesn't always work for people, especially in travel trailers and 5th wheels. Because then their truck is blocked in for the duration of their stay. I suppose they could try to unhook and drive across the grass to get out in a circumstance where there's open area. But most of the campsite sweet see her heavily wooded and there will be no way to get back out if you on hooked from your trailer.
We in our motorhome are backed in, but we are using our extension cord, and it has to cross underneath our rig and next to our camp fire pit over to the post. Actually, the people right next to us have to use two more extension cords (one which is a smaller gauge) to reach the post. This can cause a pretty dramatic voltage drop over the length needed.
Oh well, we will make due and not complain because it's nice having electric on these very cold nights. We have been running a little electric heater when we are in a campground, saving on our own propane. It's also very nice to have our electric mattress pad heaters on to warm up the bed.
We walked around the campground, which is pretty small with only about 30 camp sites. Maybe 15 of them have electric. It is pleasantly situated right on the water of Schreiber Channel that leads out into Lake Superior. Some of the campsites right along the water are so picturesque.... but taken. We walked down among the tenting non electric sites and the very last one is absolutely perfect with a remote beach area in a very private setting.
We made a nice lunch and relaxed in our lounge chairs out in the sunshine. It was so nice to have a normal day without rain. Trailers started pulling in, selecting sites, and setting up in the afternoon. We met a couple from Manitoba, another couple from Duluth, and a couple from Rhinelander Wisconsin.
It was so comfortable and peacefully quiet, that we decided to lay down for awhile and take a little afternoon Siesta. There was a slight breeze and warming sunshine and everything was very relaxing. We are really getting into this "vacation mode thing".
After our nap, we decided we would drive into this little tiny burg of Rossport and see if we could find some free Wi-Fi. I had not yet enacted my Verizon travel pass option, and was hoping to find some free Wi-Fi because I had three blogs written up, saved, and ready to post along with uploading the photos.
We loaded the laptop and my cell phone into the Tracker and off we went. This little town is so tiny there are no stores or gas stations or hotels. Just one bed and breakfast and one little restaurant and a tiny Museum that is in a railroad caboose (which sadly was closed).
We drove slowly up in down the two streets in that make up the entire little town. Yes, at the top of a hill next to a boat, in a gravel parking lot I found a open Wi-Fi signal! I was able to load up all three of my blogs and arrange the photos on each one. It was a very slow signal and tedious going... but at least it was working. By the time I reached the third blog I ran out of time to arrange the photos because my laptop battery was dying. Please excuse me if the blog before this just has a pile of pictures in one spot. That is how they get loaded up before I move them around within the text.
Steve patiently waited for me in the driver seat while I frantically worked in the passenger seat. The black flies kept coming in our open windows and biting us. They were very pesty. Back at the campground we noticed them too, but we said up our Thermocell mosquito repellent unit. It also chases away the black flies, especially those little gnats too.
We headed back to the campground to get some supper going. Since we have electricity tonight I decided to make some barbecue ribs in my GoWise electric pressure cooker. We popped some baked white potatoes in the oven and had a dish of tiny grape tomatoes and mini cucumbers as our vegetable. My oh my we sure eat good when we camp.
This campground also has a shower building that is still open for the season. The showers are each in individual rooms with a locking door. No accidental intrusion of people pulling back your stall curtain to see if the shower is occupied... like in some of the large shower buildings.
Additionally, there is a room with a washer and dryer that are coin operated. A dollar fifty to wash in a dollar fifty to dry. Since we've been on the road for 8 days some of our favorite clothes are already dirty, as well as some towels and we may run short on underwear! So while I was cooking supper, I went over with my basket full of laundry and started a load in the washing machine. I set my timer on my phone so I knew when it was done and could go back to retrieve the wet clothes. Nobody likes to walk up to a single wash machine laundry facility and find someone else's clothes just laying in there at the end of a cycle.
Yes, we do have a washer/dryer unit on board of our own rig but we have not used it at all the summer... so it still has winterizing fluid in the lines and the pump. I really did not want to undo winterizing just for one load of laundry. Washing it over in the laundry building was quick and cheap. The dryer portion on our unit functions fine, even if the water is winterized on our Splendide combo unit. I dried the load in 3 smaller batches here in the rig over the course of the evening.
We decided to have a campfire for the evening, even though the winds have picked up a bit off of the lake. We invited a few of the other people we had met to come over and enjoy the campfire. Steve started up his pellet campfire called Flame Genie. It burns compressed hardwood pellets and we avoid having to haul bug infested firewood from province to province or state to state or county to county. Steve wanted one of these for a long time and I found it for him on Amazon. It was drop shipped from the company but was cheaper to buy it on Amazon than it was on the website from the company itself. Plus, I got free shipping!
Here is a You Tube link I made for the evening:
The Flame Genie starts up fast with a dollop of tiki torch fluid and burns with a beautiful flame and gives off a lot of warmth as we huddled around the campfire. The evening grew cooler as the darkness came on and we enjoyed visiting with the people camped next to us: Kelly and Heather from Manitoba. They are heading east all of the way out to the New England States to tour around for the color over the next few weeks.
As the fire died down it was time to head into bed. The Flame Genie cools off quickly and all you have to do is knock out a little bit of ashes from the bottom and it is ready to be stored back in it's compartment underneath the motorhome.
The temperatures only got down into the low 50's overnight, not as low as we thought it was going to get.
Waking up now to beautiful sunshiny morning with blue sky, I am going to go back into town to post this quick blog and then we will go out and see what adventures we can find today. here is a hint:
Stay tuned for the next blog, wherever it maybe, and whenever I might be able to get it posted!
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