O' Canada

July 3, 2015 

Mackinac to Chutes Provincial Park

Straits State Park gave me and the kids the best night of sleep yet. Jen said she slept OK but kept waking up for some reason.  Of course, it may have had something to do with the busy day we had yesterday.  We woke up and the first thing I noticed was the couple next to us.  They had a compact Honda Fit and inside were a plethora of items, including two full size hybrid bikes!  I was going to ask the guy if he owned some kind of moving service by the way they could load that car.  It was a pretty interesting sight to say the least. 

Jen and I went for a few groceries and we got on the road early at 10 AM. Although we couldn’t attend the Shipwreck Graveyard Museum, we were able to visit nearby Sault Ste Marie.  I was able to find directions from a local to the Soo Locks, which the Army Corps of Engineers allows the public to view for free from a two story observation deck. 

I was lucky enough to see how the locks worked in New York when I was eight years old and wanted my kids to experience how they get a 1000 foot freighter from one waterway that is 21 feet above the other to Lake Huron.  It was pretty amazing as you need 22 million gallons of water rushing in to raise one of these behemoths.  We checked out the visitor exhibit on the inside too.  We noticed the waterway from Duluth, Minnesota and the navigational path the seaways took through the locks to ship through all the great lakes to the St Lawrence Seaway, then to the Atlantic Ocean. We were also amazed at how close the ships were to the sides of the locks and how they could navigate through without scraping the sides.  We also read about a disaster on the locks in 1915 in which a ship tipped over and 840 people died.  Very interesting place.  Very cool architecture too. 

It would have been a nice place to visit, but we had Canada on our minds and our next stop, Chutes Provincial Park in Ontario, some 300 KM away.

The first thing I had to do was reset all the devices in the car to read kilometers. That was fun.  It was 18 degrees Celsius when we woke up this morning.  Whatever that means.  I guess it means brisk yet cool.  As we got to the border in Canada after passing over the International Bridge in Soo, I handed the border agent all of our passports.  When he asked where we were from I didn’t hear him right and said “how are you doing.” He repeated his question and I answered Florida. He then asked if we had any tobacco firearms or alcohol in the car with us, but for some reason I heard ‘colored tobacco’ and gave him a quizzical look.  I said no tobacco or firearms, answered his prompts about where we’ll be staying and for how long (took a sec to figure the park names) and he sent us on our way, more than likely thinking “this dipshit isn’t going to cause any harm to Canada.” Needless to say I was ridiculed a little while by my loving wife and kids but it was kind of funny.  Colored tobacco? WTF. 

We were in Canada.  My first time back since before we needed passports.  The last time here was with Jen in 1992, when she was 19 and we viewed Niagara Falls from the Canadian side.  Nineteen is the drinking age in Canada.  We had our fill of Labatts Blue that day and I don’t think I’ve had another one since.

The Canadian side of Sault Ste Marie looked run down.  When we finally made it out of the town we hit the Canada 17 Hwy and I instantly got a text from ATT that we could purchase an Intl Plan FOR EACH PHONE, 150MB for $30, OR pay $15.50 for each MB of data.  WHAT?  Luckily we bought an atlas ‘for the kids’ but glad we did because we shut off our phones and all data roaming over the course of the next three days. If I don’t get back to you in a decent amount of time, please E-mail me, Jen or the kiddos.  No texting for the Lutz fam while in Canada.  We will however, check our E-mail using Wi-FI connections and attempt to connect with anyone while we get the chance to be online.

We arrived at Chutes Provincial Park around 3:30 PM.  Learned that mosquitoes here are plentiful, and larger than Michigan mosquitoes.  This was a fun time.  We set up camp very quickly and ventured off on our bikes to check out the park.  The mosquitoes were EVERYWHERE.  I was warned about these guys here by my chiropractor but it’s crazy true how many there are.  We figured movement and activity would be our best bet to keep them away.

Loaded with Deet we got on our bikes to check out the ‘swimming area.’

Jen compared the water to Coldwater creek, which was a good comparison but about 30 degrees colder to me.  Actually it wasn’t that bad.  While checking out the swimming area I went to the area of Chutes Falls on the Aux Sables River. Very powerful water running over a HUGE rock with a channel cut in it from the force.  Very cool sight to behold.  We viewed it from the bottom, then decided to go back to the car, grab the camera and check out the town of Massey, where the park is located.  I wasn’t overly impressed by Massey.  We checked out the main drag buildings, found the public library which opened at 7PM to 9PM and didn’t see much else. We got looks, all right and I was a slight bit concerned.  No tourists here, riding around on bikes with a DSLR hanging from his neck.  We ended up eating at a great Italian restaurant and rode back off to the campsite to hike the Two Bridges trail at the camp.

Taught Avery and GT a little bit about street smarts, especially after Avery asked if the town looked a ‘little sketchy’ to me in a rather loud voice, in a public gas station parking lot.  Whoa. If there would have been a few sketchy people around I could have seen where that statement may have caused an unwanted adventure. 

The Chutes Falls trail was amazing, although the mosquitoes made for some obstacles.  We got some pictures and headed back to camp taking what we thought was a short cut, ended up being the long cut.  I figured we probably walked/hiked about 2.5 miles because I gauge mileage when my son starts to bitch.  It usually starts around two miles.  It is dark in the woods here even with a pretty lit sky at 10PM.

We got back to camp, started a smoke fire (no one wins the fire competition tonight as it never really got started) basically because it’s illegal to pick up fallen wood in Canada to use for fire which is interesting, at least the smoke from the fire helped out with the mosquitoes if only a tad bit.  We chatted a little bit,  listened to the nearby train that sounded like it was going right through our site, then went to sleep.  Canada wins on best night of sleep for me. Don’t think I woke up once.