Our final day in Kenora started out very cold, so We spent the morning doing laundry. After lunch we went for a hike. Saw some bald eagles and the most beautiful red winged blackbird. However our attempt at getting photos of either was unsuccessful.
Wednesday May 25 we carried on. Stopped at Dryden to get Diesel, and then had lunch beside a pretty lake in a picnic area (one of the thousands along the highway). There were loads of deer on the roadside. Fortunately they stayed in the ditch. Maybe the deer warning whistles we put on the truck really work. We took the bypass route at Thunder Bay, as we have been there before, visiting the Terry Fox Memorial and other sites on a previous trip. About 5:00 we arrived at Birchwood campground, just out of Nipigon. It seemed like a reasonable place to stay for one night. Further they gave us a coupon for 25% off our stay on our return trip. They also had some ground bison in their store. Our campground host warned us that the weather forecast was for freezing temperatures tonight (has anyone seen our lost summer?) We probably won't stay here on the way back, since the power couldn't handle our micro-wave, or so we thought when the circuit breaker on the power post flipped off. However, we found it went off again sometime between 3 and 5 in the morning, again.
After a few stops - Diesel for our very thirsty truck, breakfast for us as well as propane to prevent us from freezing to death overnight we arrived at Sunset Shores RV Park. On the East shore of Lake Superior, just south of Lake Superior Provincial park. The trip was interesting, the drive by the lake is beautiful, and we saw deer and moose. We finally had a beautiful warmish sunny evening, and walked along the shore of Lake Superior for a little while. We are hoping that Wednesday night was the last frost we will see before fall. We had Bison for dinner. It was very good and rivaled any that I was used to getting in Alberta.
Friday morning we awoke to the smell of fresh baked bread. What a great way to start the day. Bringing a breadmaker with us was one of the smarter things we did. I (Joan) have it on good authority (Elizabeth from Canmore) that it snowed there today. As much as I hate the thought, I may have to quit complaining about the weather, At least it isn't snowing here. Further, we heard on the news that the campground we stayed at in High River has been evacuated, due to flooding.
Our GPS has been serving us well. Some days we argue with the GPS lady, but today she navigated us perfectly to the campground. It has helped that over time we are getting better at using it.
On Saturday, driving from Sturgeon Falls to the Ottawa area, when we stopped at a rest area for a bite of lunch, we noticed that a line across one axle was at the wrong angle. We duct-taped it to the axle (what would we do without duct tape?) We weren't sure what the problem was, but the truck had stopped us okay at the rest area, so we carried on. We drove through the outskirts of Ottawa, again having the GPS guide us to a campground in Greely, a suburb just south of Ottawa. On Saturday we drove back to
to an RV service centre which we had passed, to check out what time on Monday they opened. The first one was closed, but the second one was able to give us an appointment to check out the problem on Monday morning.
Since we have been to Ottawa before and done the tourist activities we decided to pass on that.The good news is we were able to get our satelitte TV working, so we could watch the Indy 500 on Sunday, and then the Nascar race in the evening. That was a bit bitter-sweet, as Dale Jr., our favourite driver came within 500 yards of the end of the race, then ran out of gas.
We duly appeared at the RV dealers Monday A.M. The brake issue was just the tip of the iceberg. We need new axles. A recall was issued for the axles on our trailer last fall. We think this should have been taken care of before we bought the trailer. We will be paying for repairs and then when we get home we will be visiting out RV dealer, bills in hand and see what they have to say.
We needed to order the axles directly from the manufacturer (or pay a premium to the RV dealer for doing it). Since it was Memorial Day weekend in the states, where the manufacturer is, we had to wait until Tuesday morning to phone them. Our phone was telling us that we could only make emergency phone calls in this area, so the campground folks were kind enough to let us use their phone to order the axles. It takes 7 to 10 days business days for the axles to arrive from the states, so we decided to stay here until the axles arrive. We don't want to take the trailer on the highway without brakes! We were glad we had bought the 1 ton truck with the trailer package, as it handled the braking reasonably well, but we don't want to stress it out too much.
After arranging for the axles to be rushed (we hope), we went to the nearest Best Buy to find out why we weren't getting phone service in Ottawa. The lady there figured we just needed to 'reboot' our phone, so took the battery out, and then found an option to reset the emergency service only issue. She then showed us how to do this ourselves, should it happen again.
We at least get a deal on camping for a week at a time. Nothing like a deal to make us feel better. It looks like we should be able to keep busy in the area for a couple of weeks and it looks like summer has arrived now, as it hit 30 C this afternoon.
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