Fairbanks Provincial Park in Northern Algonquin Canada

This post is about Wednesday August 23rd.

Now it's time to arch up and over around Algonquin Provincial Park and head our way back towards Sault Ste Marie. We plan to cross into Michigan's Upper Peninsula sometime before the weekend. 

The horrible hot humid weather moving across the Midwest is now headed in this direction. We don't know if we're going to be up on the top of it and it's going to spread south of us, or if we're going to get hit smack dab right in the face!!??!!

As we headed further west, we had no choice but to travel the Trans Canada highway route 17. There really isn't any other way to get across this portion of Canada. It's not really like our Interstates, because it narrows down to two lanes in most places like a regular highway. It has stop signs and cross traffic and goes right through the middle of little towns.

Speaking of little towns, I spotted a sign on the highway for the next upcoming town of Sturgeon Falls. The sign was for a quilt store! I looked it up on the GPS and it was only a block off the main drag. Score!

I made my way into the store, and met the most delightful clerk. As I gandered a look around ... a look here and a look there, I spied some now-discontinued fabric from Stonehenge! This was a real treat because I want to recreate a wall hanging I did a few years ago. Our oldest daughter Erin stole it for their cabin. And I want to recreate it again and maybe make it into a quilt for the motorhome. 

So bear with me, this is for my quilt and fiber readers, here are some pics of the cute little quilt store as well as my bag full of wonderful fabric purchased at the Canadian exchange rate discount prices for me... Lol!

Not only did they have quilting stuff, they had a section of weaving. That is so unusual to find weaving supplies in retail stores nowadays. I hope to imagine that there are a lot of Weavers that live in there area. 

The store had a large supply of yarns and threads and other wonderful fabric pieces and kits.

Down the center aisle were a bunch of bins of sale priced yarn! I really really didn't need any yarn, but I was so tempted???  The prices were great and everything was beautiful.

I snapped a few pictures around here and there of this well appointed store. There was quite an array of different knitting needles and sewing supplies as well as books and patterns and rulers.

If I lived here, I would be a "regular"...

As it was, I filled a bag with nice large pieces of fabric to work on my next quilt. It's kind of funny, my patterns were in yardage and she had a little conversion table to convert each of my needed lengths into metric. Because of course, quilting fabric there is sold by the meter!

This is the same quilt

 I'm going to make

 from the new fabric:

Oh, as I was leaving the store, I spied this adorable little Singer treadle sewing machine in the front window. No, I didn't buy it. I really don't need another. But it sure was cute to be sitting there, as "Eye Candy" to draw in shoppers. 

Okay, fiber stuff over. Now back to the trip!!

As we cruised along, we saw a lot of signs warning about moose crossing. We looked and looked but did not see any mooses... 

But 25 years ago, when we were up this way, we did see one! It's usually best to find them early in the morning or late in the evening. We had left our campground that time and before we even got to the edge of the park we saw a moose! We really didn't want to drive out late or in the dark, that is very unwise when there are moose about. It's kind of like hitting a cow on stilts! I kid you not. Semi drivers have large steel cages welded to the front of their trucks if they have to drive at night in Canada. Most prefer not to.

We kept looking in many wonderful little spots where a moose might be standing and drinking some water. But nope, didn't see any. 

Isn't this a perfect spot for a moose?

There was even a sign nearby... 

As we drove further west, the rock formations grew taller and taller. This is starting to look more familiar to our eyes. Many areas in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan look the same way. A lot of this glacial rock formation is part of the Niagara Escarpment that makes a big arc from Niagara Falls up and around through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and down into Wisconsin. It actually ends just south of High Cliff State Park where Steve used to work. 

Finally we found our turn off to head up to a little Provincial Park tucked away in the woods. The road got narrower and narrower. Pretty soon it absolutely looked like a patchwork quilt!

We had to drive REALLY SLOW! We were thinking of the poor Provincial Park workers that had to drive this way every day to get to work. And then back home again!

It was quite a ways up in the woods, as you can see. We were the blue dot. And the yellow road way to the South part of this map was the main route. 

We found our way to the Provincial Park office. Right outside of the office was, believe it or not, a telephone booth!

Cell service can be quite spotty, so they did offer the services of a telephone booth in case of necessary contacts or emergencies. It is a somewhat newer telephone, with a slot for a credit card. I can't imagine plugging in coins to make a long distance call anymore. 

We went into the office and the very accommodating clerk said there were three sites left in the entire campground! He circled them for us, and let us drive through the park until we found the one that would work best for us

Although the red numbered site was an electrical site, we opted instead to go down near the water at site number 20. It was much more roomy, with a lot more shrubbery and trees around. We liked it and drove back up to the building and registered. It was $42 Canadian for a non-electric site. We also opted to purchase a bundle of firewood for $8.85. We were in the mood for s'mores!

They reminded us about keeping our food indoors and locked up. And all around the park there were these signs giving us another gentle reminder that we were in Bear Country. 

It was a nice little path in the back of our campsite that led right down to the shore of the lake. We weren't right on the shoreline, but we could hear the loons calling through the trees. 

This is the peaceful lake right before sundown, we didn't hear any boats or motors. Just loons. 

Our campsite was pretty large, and we backed up right to the trees and spread out our little tarp and our chairs. 

It's so easy to set up and tear down with the smaller motorhome. I remember back to the days when we hauled a 33 ft travel trailer behind a pickup truck. Lots of setup and tear down and muscle needed for traveling with that. We are really appreciating this small motorhome now as we age.

I gathered some birch bark and little branches in the woods and Steve tossed down our mesh bag of firewood. Yep, that's what we got for $8.85 Canadian. 

Before we started on supper, we decided to sit and have a beverage. Steve was trying to use up the last of his Johnny Walker Red Label whiskey and mixed it with limeade juice! I had my Two Buck Chuck wine from Trader Joe's. 

We have thawed some pork tenderloin tips in the refrigerator while we traveled. Once we were all set up, Steve got out his flat top griddle and proceeded to make up supper. 

Binney kept a close eye just in case a piece or two might fall off and land on the ground... 

While he was doing that, I made up some salads and also some mashed potatoes with these marvelous White Potatoes from Canada. We can't get these anymore in the United States. We've tried. I remember them back when I was a child. They have a distinctive flavor that is different from any russet or Idaho or anything else that I've ever had. I know you can't tell by the picture, but boy oh boy supper was good!

We are trying to use up all of our fresh vegetables as well as any citrus and fresh meat before we cross the border back into the United States. 

Well that's about it for Fairbanks Provincial Park. I will continue on the next blog where we went from there. 

202 miles traveled today

2,332 so far