Yesterday rocked

The road between Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie was astonishingly beautiful to drive.

The road between Saulte Ste. Marie and Toronto, however, wasn’t anything special. And that’s what I did today (I just arrived in Toronto in the last hour or so) so let’s talk about yesterday.

I idled in the luxury of waking up in a hotel room where access to the bathroom and a shower wasn’t a key factor in my schedule, and hit the road later than I probably should have (the drive will only take 7-8 hours, they said. Nope. Not true. Not even a little. I guess it’s cause I’ve been driving the speed limit?)

I stopped several times to take in many of the lovely panoramic views of Lake Superior. The parts I did manage to see made me want to stop and camp for weeks, providing I could get the biting flies to lay off.

I managed to make it through Manitoba without a single mosquito bite. The biting flies of Ontario, however, have had much better luck.

My new favourite road trip stop ever was the Amethyst Mine Panorama. It’s apparently the largest deposit of amethyst in Canada, and was discovered quite by accident in the middle of the 20^th century.

I love rocks. I have a rock collection from my youth. When I’m on beaches, I look for rocks. When I was on my honeymoon? I combed the oceanside, looking for rocks.

So this was terrific. There’s a brief self-guided tour after an introduction from one of the family members who run the mine and the shop. Then, you get to go tackle the essentially “u-pick” pile, where chunks of raw amethyst are literally all over the place, mixed in with other rocks (there was a good chunk of clear quartz and I even saw pirite too). Then you could rinse them off, decide what you wanted to keep, and only had to pay $3 a pound.

I restrained myself to 1.5 pounds, knowing that I still have thousands of miles left on this trip and car space is at a premium.

It was very cool. I would have lost my mind if I’d been at this when I was a kid. My parents would have had to drag me away. As it was, I had to drag myself away. Alright, the biting flies sternly reminded me I had places to be.

Other than that, I got to see some spectacular scenery. Like mists/clouds in Old Woman Bay.

Or the sunset from various locations along Lake Superior. Just wonderfully beautiful and peaceful.

Today’s drive was less pretty, not helped by the fact that I didn’t sleep very well.

But now, I’m in the same place for four whole nights, and I’ll have been in the province for more than a week by the time I head into Quebec next week.

Tomorrow, I start in on my first ever visit to Toronto outside of its airport.