6-29-2024 Thunder Bay, Ontario

 What an exciting 10 days it has been!  We arrived at George and Ray’s house on the 19^th, parked and hooked up Noobee and got down to the business of having fun.  Not included in that category, we immediately did several loads of laundry.  On Friday, my brothers George and Bill drove the 55 Chev down to the Fairgrounds for the Back to the 50s event.  Also, my nephew DJ brought brother Pat’s 56 Chev.  The weather was threatening but we danced between the clouds and rain and had a great time.  As a special treat, our kids Rick and Trina joined us from Snohomish, WA!  They finally met their shirt-tail relatives:  “Uncles,” “aunts” and, “cousins!”  George and Ray were the gracious hosts who poured the drinks.  It was so much fun sitting around in the garage shooting the breeze and laughing.  What a great family.  Everybody’s welcome!

Garage party

George's 55 Chevy

Brother Pat's 56 Chevy

Rob's fave:  61 Chevy Impala
bubbletop (and me)

Me, George, Ray, Rob, Trina, Rick

Brother Bill

(This is what we do in MN when the
ice is too thin to go fishing -
indoor hockey, what else?!)

It’s a few days later, now.  We have packed up our bags.  We have sealed up Noobee for a long absence and George and Ray will keep an eye on her.  In Duluth, we drove around for an hour trying to find our boat, the Pearl Mist, which is supposed to sail us through the 5 Great Lakes to Toronto.  It was not there, it just was not anywhere.  We thought we would see it, I mean, how can you miss a boat the size of Montana?  They had given us an address, 350 Harbor Drive.  Fine.  Three-fifty Harbor Drive is about two blocks square, but we did not see a boat.  We gave up and I walked into a building at random and asked a stranger if he knew where our boat was.  Miraculously, this good guy made a call or two and found it.  It was anchored way out in the bay and we were supposed to tender out to it.  At last, we actually got on board.  (Btw, just in case you don’t know, ships touch salt water, boats do not. We’re not sure what the Pearl Mist is, a ship or a boat.)

MV Pearl Mist

 

The Pearl Mist is modern, elegant and beautiful and they are spoiling us rotten.  First of all, the bar is open all day long, complimentary.  And, contrary to the advertisements and pictures, we don’t have to dress up.  I was prepared before hand, I even had a skirt, if you can imagine that.  But it’s starting to look pretty encouraging for a desert rat like me. 

Celeste

Ronald mixes them:  shaken,
not stirred

 

Today, guides took us to Fort William.  Thunder Bay did not exist as a city until the 1970s, actually.  You see, way back in the 1800s, nearby Fort William was a fur trading post and Port Arthur, a shipping post.  Fort William was named for a guy named William MacGillivray, who came over here to make money on furs. 

Wigwam made of birch bark
(replica)

Fort William General Store
where bartering took place

One of the entryways to Fort William

Port Arthur was named for some guy in England named Prince Arthur.  The two communities hated each other’s guts.  However, the government (the English king) ordered them to bury the hatchet and create one town.  The people voted on the name, “Thunder Bay,” because a nearby mountain had been named by the Indians:  Thunder Mountain. 

Thunder Mountain

People in England were hot on beaver fur hats, the style then, and so the fur trade was the rage.  The merchants came from the east (Europe to Montreal) and traveled to Thunder Bay bringing blankets, beads and firearms.  From the west, the fur traders brought their furs.  They met in Thunder Bay and bartered their goods.  Over time, the original Fort William decomposed.  The replica of Fort William that we visited is not on the original sight but it is the exact floor plan of the original fort which was located 9 miles away.

 

Our next stop was Kakabeka Falls, the second highest fall in Canada, 30 feet higher than Niagara, but certainly not as vast.  The water is a little brown and that is because of the spruce bogs in the water.  We were breath-taken by this falls.  Trillions of gallons of water is thundering over the rocks, minute after minute, hour after hour, year after year, millennium after millennium, no matter what the politicians have to say about it.

 

Kakabeka Falls on the
Kaministiquia River

The tour ended and we returned just in time for cocktails and dinner.  Now, at 10 PM, the sun is just setting.