September 01

 Sunday September 1st

Are we ready for September?? Not, but here it is anyway….

The weather matches the month today, chilly (14 C), so I guess not swimming weather, lol!

Since the Valhalla did not have a free breakfast this morning, and we checked the in-house restaurant yesterday to discover that that breakfast is $20/person plus drinks, tax, and tip.  That was a definite “no.” 

Happily we had our emergency breakfast kit (toaster and egg cooker), and Karl managed to convince the restaurant to at least give us some hot water.  So add to that the mysterious campfire sausage that we think is smoked (doesn’t say so on the package) and we had a really good breakfast in our room.  We still have fruit and banana bread from Diana so we are not starving. 

We looked around the room before we left.  The Valhalla is a 3.5 star hotel with a conference centre. The front lobby and restaurant look like something out of Norway.  But our room had pen/pencil scribbling on a door and baseboards, was missing the privacy latch on the door, the curtains in the room were falling off the rod at the centre, the room was missing furniture  and there were Cheerios scattered on the floor under the bed. Otherwise the room and bed were clean. 

We mentioned the issues to the front desk (along with pictures) when we left but were told he could do nothing.  We need to complain to the company we booked with (Hotwire) and they would make a complaint to the hotel????  Karl plans to post a review. It is after all an expensive hotel!

Back on the road.  What I thought would be a 4 hour trip (that turned out to be 'as a bird flies') was 9 hours (including several pit stops, we are seniors after all :) )

The scenery was absolutely breath-taking.  The road followed the coastline of Lake Superior most of the day. The rocky hills around the lake almost resemble foothills to the Rockies or the huge rocks you find everywhere in Newfoundland. Unfortunately between the “huge rocks”, winding coastline and trees, the road never stopped winding, cresting gradual steep hills and hurtling down 6 or 7 degree slopes (very steep).  Some of the trucks, that were heavily loaded, dropped speed to 40 km/hr by the time they reached the tops of the hills.  Sadly, passing is nearly impossible until you reach the extra passing lane that happens about every 15 or 20 miles, so we were stuck behind trucks more than a few times.

We stopped at the first look-out spot and met a couple driving a car from BC to Newfoundland for a rally, and then back.  Their car was a ’60 something Chevelle that was painted in rally stripes.  They asked people they met to autograph the car - we did too! They said that the cars in the rally are meeting somewhere in Newfoundland for a party before they set off again. They will be on the road for 5 weeks.

At every turn in the road the views seemed to get better! Because of the high winds (in my opinion) the waves were huge and crashing against the rocky shore of Superior.  It would’ve made a gorgeous picture if i weren’t driving. Karl and I take turns every 2 hours and he mostly sleeps when he’s not driving. 

Again, there were long stretches of highway between towns.  Here and there you’d see gas stations and restaurants that were abandoned and a few that had been burnt out and just left.  Sad.  When we did stop, a lot of the places were run by indigenous people and all were really helpful.  

We are truly becoming road-weary. When we left a week ago, it was all so exciting but today, although we were stunned by the beauty around us, we are ready to be home again. It was even mentioned that perhaps next time we should consider flying…

We arrived at our Quality Inn in Sault St. Marie at about 6 pm., ready for a rest. A beautiful room with latch intact and no scribbling on the walls, we are good to go, lol!!

The person on the desk suggested that there was a Montana's Restaurant a 10-minute walk from the motel, so we set off.  After 20 minute walking in a cold wind, said restaurant was “finally” located.  It was on the waterfront with a beautiful view of the lake and the town marina.  

Feeling much better after a hot cup of tea and a scrumptious supper, we braved the wind once more to get back, and we’re done for the night…