Crazy Beginnings To Our Trip Out West

First camping trip of the year for me this year and it's the start of a 2 week trip out to beautiful British Columbia and back with the family.  I have never been out west before, unless you count the time when I was 5 months old...which I don't. The cross provincial trip is going to be a blur of driving, setting up tents, taking down tents, rinse and repeat.

The trip begins the moment my daughter, Riley, and I get off work and hustle it home to the pre-loaded car that my mother has packed up and waiting. My brother and his girlfriend have already gone on ahead in the RV to set up the tents because by the time we catch up with them it will be very late at night. Destination - Pancake Bay Provincial Park.

We left at about 6 pm, excited to get on the road. Since we had such a late start it wasn't long before the  sun started to set and my mom and I pulled out these glasses that she bought us from the "As Seen On TV" store. They have a yellow tint to them and make night driving easier since you don't get as much glare from the on coming cars. They work fairly well. Not as well as the box might lead you to believe but were still worth using. They aren't very flattering glasses. Mine made me look like a movie star hiding from the fans and since my mom's were designed to go over her glasses, they made her look like she had bug eyes. Since I wasn't driving at the time I eventually took mine off and started to do some star gazing as the night grew darker. That's when I saw what I think was a meteor hurtling down. It was really close compared to the others you see way up in the sky and it was a turquoise green/blue colour and fairly bright. If that wasn't interesting enough to see, all of a sudden it changed directions and started going back up into the sky in a J-shaped trajectory. Then it just disappeared. Probably burned up in the earth's atmosphere by that point. (photo below is my photo shopped rendition of what we saw). Coincidentally enough the next day as we were travelling away from this park I happened to notice a "Flying J" restaurant along side of the highway. Advertisement for the restaurant maybe? Who knows.  :)


















Some people can be in such a rush sometimes. We knew we weren't getting to the park until late at night so we weren't pushing the speed limit at all. We weren't going too slow either, but the guy that came up behind us seemed to think so. He had his high beams on and was tail gating us in an effort to get us to go faster or perhaps in an effort to show us his frustration. At any rate, I wasn't buying it and kept going the speed I was going at. So he decided to make the dangerous move of passing us at the last second in a no passing zone just as another car was coming towards us in the opposite lane. Not sure why he waited to pass at this time because there were passing lanes he could have used moments before and I am sure there were some that were coming up ahead if he would just wait. No waiting for this guy. Away he went. He barely makes it around us without causing an accident, and I was glad to have him out from behind me. But it wasn't this guys night. Instant Karma! That car that was coming towards us in the opposite lane just so happened to be a cop car. Immediately the cherry lights were flashing, the cop did a U-turn and zoomed past us as he hunted down the tail-gater. Is it wrong to smile in these situations? I admit I had a little bit of a chuckle over that one. 

So we were going along fine after that until we reached Sault Ste. Marie. That was when we took a wrong turn. (Maybe this is a slap on the wrist for chuckling about the tail gate incident? ah well...it was worth it) All of a sudden we found ourselves lost. Not to panic though, we had a map handy. Well, I am convinced now that we had to have been in an episode of "The Twilight Zone".  It's all well to try to follow a map but when every road you pass or come to is called "Old Garden River Road" (and I mean literally every single road was labelled that, no word of a lie!  Must have been at least 10 roads we crossed paths with, all of them named Old Garden River Road and, no, we weren't driving around in circles. ) 

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Time to pull out the GPS on the maps app on my cell phone. Yay for modern technology! In a couple of minutes we were back on track and heading out of Sault Ste. Marie. As we are passing the last gas station in Sault Ste. Marie I look down at the digital fuel gauge on my brothers car and it says we have about a quarter tank left. I say to my mom "should we stop for gas"?  We consider it for a moment and then we decide "Nah" we should have at least an hours worth on that. So we head out of town and into no mans land with bush on either side of us. After only about 15 minutes, we notice the gas gauge has gone down to the last bar. You see the trouble with a digital gas gauge is that you don't know when that bar is going to deplete if you haven't been watching it every second. So now we were too far to turn around to go back to the city to gas up but we didn't know how far the car would take us on the last 8th of a tank. It was a slight concern, but we weren't too worried. We figured there would be other gas stations along the way. About 10 more minutes later and now the last bar on the gauge is flashing. Oh oh! Now we are getting worried! We start looking for one of those side of the road, independent gas stations. There were a few of them but since it was after midnight by this time, they were all closed.  Are we going to make it? Are we going to make it? is what was going through our minds. Oh no! Now the flashing bar has turned into a RED flashing bar! Time to say a prayer! The thoughts in my mind have now changed to "well, we can't change anything, it is what it is. It's in God's hands now".  My mother says "Carsten (my brother) is going to kill us!" Even if we do make it to the park, will he have enough gas to make it to a gas station the next day?  I figured that our only option was to drive until we couldn't drive any more. Either we would make it, or we wouldn't. And if we didn't then we could call CAA (which my mother had bought a membership for before we left) or we sleep in the car, or we call my brother or father and wake them up and have them come rescue us. 
     It was with great joy that we finally saw the sign for Pancake Bay provincial park. We were running on fumes, but even still, we had a hard time finding campsite # 142 in the dark with no site map available. To top things off, Carsten's car had a muffler problem and was quite noisy. At about 1 a.m. I am sure the other campers were hating us, but it couldn't be helped.

After some noisy unloading of a few things from the car, we headed to the already set up tent and went to sleep, grateful that we had finally arrived. 

The next morning we woke up and the sun was shining and the cares of yesterday had melted away. Turns out that there is a little gas station not two minutes down the road and Carsten was sure that we would make it there with no problems. 

I didn't have much time to explore this park since we had to head off fairly early in order to make it to the next campsite we were heading to before dark. What I did see of this park was very nice though. The roads were paved (which is great when you have a car with a bit of a muffler problem).  The sites were a nice size and were clean and relatively private. 

Our site was situated not too far away from the comfort station. It was pretty good as far as comfort stations go, but the faucets are a bit counter intuitive. They look as though you are supposed to turn them but instead they are actually a push button system.

Outside the comfort station is a playground for the kids while they are waiting for their parents. 

As well, there are a couple of pay phones along with some emergency numbers posted on the wall. 

I only got a quick look at the beach. Apparently it is 3.5 km long with the clear waters of Lake Superior lapping up against it. It is not too bad once you get to the sand but you have to cross quite a bit of tough weedy marsh grass to get to the sandy part. 

The highlight of this park for me was going to the little First Nations gift shop a minute down the road called the Agawa gift shop. This is a busy place (where you can get gas) with super friendly people and beautiful gifts and souvenirs to buy. Outside the shop stands some hand carved wooden statues. 

Inside are all sorts of hand crafted items as well as some stuffed animals (both the plushie kind and the real deal).

It was my mom's birthday coming up in a few days so I bought her a mug with some native art on it of some chickadees. Inside the mug is a teeny tiny, cute little inset of the chickadees near the rim. 

As well, I picked up a painted rock with some lady bugs on it by the artist Karen Singleton....just because. I liked that she had written "Lake Superior Stone" on the bottom of it. It's not just any old stone found on the side of the road...it's one from Lake Superior. It's a good reminder of where you were, which is what souvenirs are supposed to do. 

As you go to the cash register to make your purchase you will see along the side of the counter a notice letting you know about a set of Agawa Pictographs featuring one of  Michipeshu. 

I would have liked to have gone there to see them, but we had to press on. So I will have to make another trip back one day to see them as well as other historical attractions such as the Agawa Canyon Tour Train, the Canadian Bush Plane Heritage Centre and the Art Gallery of Algoma. Also, having a camping permit for Pancake Bay gives you free day use privileges at Lake Superior Provincial Park which has an Aboriginal pictograph site as well as numerous hiking trails and it's own visitor center. For now though, it's into the car and settling in for a long day of driving to our next campground destination....the Sleeping Giant.