The "Soo" to Cookstown

It's Sunday morning so that means there is some purpose for being up early, I get to pass along the important drivel from the past week. This morning we are parked in Lane’s yard in Cookstown, just far enough north of Toronto that we can’t smell the garbage piling up, which is a good thing. We arrived here last Wednesday about two days before we planned to as the park we were going to stay in by Parry Sound was full, first time that’s happened on the whole trip east.

Prior to that we finished off our stay in Sault Ste. Marie with a wonderful anniversary dinner on the riverside on the Sunday night, the actual date was on the Monday but we weren’t sure what we were going to find for restaurants in the next stop, Sudbury so Sunday it was.

Sudbury it seems is not an RV hot spot, the combined city has a population of just over 100,000 but there is only one (1) RV Park and it’s certainly not on the top ten list. It has great potential, located fairly close to town but on the main highway leading south to Toronto so lots of truck traffic and at the bottom of a hill so lots of noise from the jake brakes. It’s on the shore of a decent sized lake but poor access to the water and no attempt to utilize the feature. The whole thing was poorly laid out and maintained so just wasn’t inviting at all.

We did however, go to see the “big nickel” one of the main tourist attractions of the huge mine, and lifeblood of the town while we were there. This is located right next to a mining area and you can go on an underground tour in some of the old shafts, only takes you 70 feet underground but still gives a good representation of what it’s like. They have the tour set out in three different era’s from conditions 100 years ago, dangerous! to the modern times with much better equipment and working conditions. Today’s lesson: did you know there are over 3000 miles of mining tunnels under Sudbury? That’s enough to travel from Sudbury to Vancouver if you laid them all end to end. (and you wouldn’t have to bother going up and down those pesky mountains!)

Because we couldn’t get into a park close to Parry Sound and we have an extensive “to do & see” list for the Toronto area we decided to just keep heading south from Sudbury to Lane’s place outside of Cookstown. Thank you Google earth for giving the coordinates on the bottom of the screen, I could just zoom in on his driveway, copy the coordinates and load them into the GPS which brought us right here. It’s easier in the urban areas where it recognizes street addresses but sometimes just doesn’t understand rural addresses.

Since we’ve been here it’s been cool and raining (a lot) so not a lot of outside activities. Karen and Claire did get out for a short geocaching trip, and yes she has another convert in the cult. I had found what I thought might be a better GPS for Karen’s geocaching but after a short trial period found it wasn’t really user friendly so it’s gone back to Costco. Like most things in life if it doesn’t have the WAF it doesn’t survive, that would be “wife approval factor”, married men will understand what I’m talking about.

Yesterday we went to a berry farm outside Barrie for blueberry pancake breakfast and loaded up on all kinds of fresh fruit, then made the mistake of trying to come south out of Barrie on the 400 freeway. There had been a fatal accident during the night and the highway was closed for all southbound lanes which we didn’t find out until past the available turnoff. For the next 90 minutes we slowly inched out way forward to an exit (2 kilometers ahead) and were then able to make some time on the back roads. As Lane says not uncommon down here but man, you sure want to travel on the top half of the gas tank!

Today we’re off to Burlington so it’s a good chance to see relatives again, wonder how baby, Hannah’s going to like a full house.

The rest of the week, when it’s dry, we’ll be heading off to see the Falls again and then take some time touring the wineries around Niagara on the Lake, perhaps even find a B&B over there so we don’t have to drive all the way back here at the end of the day. I want to visit the aviation museum in Hamilton while Karen’s list has the CN Tower and a ball game at the stadium. Somewhere in there will undoubtedly be some shopping and more geocaching so I expect next week’s report will come from the same location.

Jul 26, 2009

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