The required postcard shot
This is where my pictures start getting scarce, since my camera went for a "walk" in Toronto. Lisa and I "flew" into Ontario, the border being almost absurdly evident by the sudden change from wide, open fields to hills, cliffs and lots of red rock outcrops (which we, as true geologists, had to stop to check out, of course). Little inukshuks were scattered everywhere over the rocks. Not too far into Ontario it began to rain. We tried to camp the first night, but road construction had removed the signs and the rain had turned the roads into mud. We pushed on and made it all the way to Thunder Bay (check this drive out on a map sometime, and note that we went the long way around, trying to camp around the Lake of the Seven Woods - this was one heck of a drive). We rolled into Thunder Bay sometime afer midnight, only to find that not only was it the Lakehead graduation that night, but also that there was a swim meet in town; every hotel within a reasonable drive of the city was booked full. Finally after driving around for an hour, the friendly clerk in the local PetroCan offered us the parking lot outside to park the jeep in. We slept in the jeep that night, with towels draped over the rollbars as curtains.
In Ontario it was raining. Rain rain rain. The great lakes were pretty, what we could see of them, but we never stopped for long. The provincial parks tried to charge us for eating lunch in a park, and it was too wet to camp. The next night we stayed the in the world's sleaziest motel. Finally, (after viewing the World's largets mallard duck), we zoomed into Toronto at 140 kph on the 401. Ah, a big city at last!!!
In Toronto we stayed right downtown with Lisa's friend Nancy. We spent a day touring Toronto, and a day at Niagra Falls, which hypnotized Lisa into a daze for almost two hours. Or maybe that was the lack of sleep from our journey through Ontario. As I mentioned above, on the way to Niagra Falls my camera went for a "walk", so the only pictures here are from Lisa's camera.
As for my camera... it was in my bag, my bag was put in the jeep, and then it wasn't in my bag. For the life of me I can't figure out what happened to that camera.
For anyone who hasn't been to Niagra Falls, it's actually pretty incredible. We did both the American side (a beautiful state park with walks through the woods and a view straight down the American side of the falls) and the Canadian side (a gaudy tourist trap with haunted houses and cotton candy being sold on the sidewalks, but with an infinitely better view of the falls).
We checked out the gift shop of the Shoe Museum in Toronto briefly, and then high-tailed it for Kingston where a lifelong friend of mine lives. My friend, Maayke, was finishing up a last exam that evening, and graduating from Queens the next morning, so things were hectic, but we managed a brief visit and powow on the river before we were off on our last small stretch, the last few hours to our final destination, Montreal.