Circle Tour Day 4 - Grand Marais to Thunder Bay, Ontario

I'll do my best to post a blog every day but once we pass into Canada towns are few along the Lake Superior  coast. I may miss a day or two but will try to make up for it with longer posts.

Rain, rain and more rain overnight into the morning. I dashed over to the Cascade Falls State Park shower building to change and apply makeup. Instead of packing up right away, Gary drove me the ten miles into Grand Marais and delivered me to the North Shore hospital nursing home. Enthusiastic about my performance, the activity director bussed in the senior citizens from downtown and some students as well.

I was helped by Issac and Laura, two middle school students. Issac is Korean, adopted by an American family, but I told him he looked like he was Native American and that makes sense because North America was colonized by oriental people around 10,000 years ago. He said his father had just explained that to him. Laura's mother is from the Dominican Republic. An interesting pair, those two. They were volunteering at the nursing home.

It was a good audience, receptive, applauding after every story. They want me to come again, but Grand Marais is quite a way to go.

Gary and I walked around the harbor, had breakfast, and got a Grand Marais sticker for my autoharp case.

Back at the campground, we packed our gear wet. We hate that, but tomorrow I perform at Thunder Bay, Ontario and we had to move on.

We stopped once more in Grand Marais to get ice at Gene's Market.  I took a walk around because I always like to see what is interesting in the way of local food and came upon Gene's bacon cheeseburger bratwurst.  That is wrong on so many levels I still can't get over it.  Gary says he feels a coronary coming on every time he thinks about it.

We crossed the border into Ontario and right away the weather turned cooler.   We planned on camping tonight but more rain was forecast and we really were not crazy about the provincial park we looked at.  The  sites were overgrown.  We decided that for once we would stay at a motel and here we are.  I am about ready to hit the hot tub.  

Then I am going to put on something warm and have a cup of hot chocolate because I got a chill from this cool Canadian weather.