Ivanhoe Lake PP to Rainbow Falls PP, day 3

Getting used to setting up and pulling the trailer now. We seem to have taken on the various tasks that need to be done when setting up and tearing down. So breaking camp now was a routine affair and we became so efficient we managed to set off at 8am. Continuing to head west on highway 101 before joining the Trans Canada (hwy 17) again and following the shore of Lake Superior.

The first section of road proved to be quite hilly with lots of twists. It's a nice road but not one to take if you're in a hurry. I ha chosen this route instead of the more northerly route (via Cochrane) simply because there were no available campsites on the Cochrane route. I could instead have chosen the southern route through Sudbury but the plan is to take that route on the homeward leg.

Since we were travelling a less popular route traffic was even lighter than usual and rounding one curve I don't know who was more surprised - us or the black bear towards the side of the road! The bear ran on to a slope on the right hand side of the road where it stopped and gazed at us over it's right shoulder. Not for the first time we couldn't hit the brakes for a picture (well I could have done but considered it too risky with a trailer and limited visibility as to what might be behind us). 

                                I guess this will have to do 😀

Happy to see the bear, we were on high alert to make sure we got a real picture next time but on this trip there was to be no next time. We pulled into the town of Wawa where we gassed up the car and pulled into a 'no parking' zone at the side of the highway outside of another Tim Horton's for coffee and donuts. The Tim's parking lot was just to small to pull into there and we needed a coffee. We pulled up behind another trailer much to the annoyance of someone in Tim's who didn't like us parking there. A couple of minutes later though we pulled out and stopped at the visitor centre which is just a couple of kilometres along the road to enjoy the coffee and donuts. 

Wawa is of course home to the Wawa goose, which proudly stands on a rock at the tourist information office. Wawa means 'land of the big goose' in the indigenous Ojibwe language. The goose monument was the idea of local entrepreneur Al Turcott. Although not originally from Wawa, Al first came to the town in 1939 for work and became so fascinated by the area that he sent for his wife and children to join him. By the 1940s, Al began operating Turcott's Dry Goods and Clothing store and became very involved in the community. So much so, that Al played an essential role in securing the Lake Superior route of the then proposed route of the Trans Canada Highway through Wawa. Concerned because the final plans had the highway bypassing Wawa, Al and other local businessmen created the idea of the Goose Monument to stop tourists on their TransCanada trips. The original goose was made of plaster and, upon pushing a button, it could talk to you. However the plaster could not stand up to the harsh winters and was replaced in 2017 by a new goose made from steel. The current goose is 28 feet tall, 22 feet long and has a wingspan of 20 feet.

Once the coffee and donuts were disposed off we piled back in the car and set off for the town of White River. It didn't take use long to reach there and although we didn't stop on this hop we did get a few photographs of Lake Superior from the highway.

 Having stopped at White River for lunch we discovered that the town is the original home of Winnie the Pooh (named after Winnipeg, Manitoba) with the requisite larger than life model.  Hopped back into the car again at 1.55pm.

After another refueling stop at Terrace Bay we arrived at the White Lake campground area of Rainbow Falls provincial park at 4.25pm. Our site was identified as W48 on our reservation but the campground office was closed. We could find no specific site that was identified as W48 but after calls to the Ontario Parks reservation service and then to Gill who was able to get online and look at a map of the campground we decided the site was just plain old 48. Having set up the trailer we went for a walk to the lookout and captured this video and the campground beach.