Blue Lake to Sleeping Giant

Blue Lake to Sleeping Giant

August 28, 2006

The granite hills and blue lakes continue. Fairies build fairy houses on rocks next to the road. The land is smooth and rounded like grandma Hestand and easy to relax into. The only sharp edges are next to the roads where the machines cut pink rock. Ancient ice ground, polished and gouged the granite, scribbling its violent history on the surface of the rocks. A few pines, eastern white pines, raised their wind sculpted heads above the spruce, birch and aspen.

We left 17 and drove through Thunder Bay; first place since Fort Dawson we had been before. Our Thunder Bay visit was with 15 kids from Denton after a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters; over 20 years ago. Thunder Bay in 2006 was not impressive. They forgot to tell us they had moved the information center and most of former residents of downtown to the cross town expressway. And the gift shop at Old Fort William no longer carries throwing hatchets. Oh well, the memories are great.

Sleeping Giant Provincial Park occupies an Italy shaped peninsula thrust into Lake Superior. Marie Louise Campground was located on the lake of the same name. The lake was in the center of the peninsula and the mountains which give the park its name were across the lake from the campground, and behind those mountains the sun set. A doe and two fawns, still with spots, lingered in the spruce thicket next to our camp and stared at Elmo and me. We stared back.

Our drive along Lake Superior seems to be a tour of sunsets.