Ontario

Hi,

We traveled into Ontario yesterday and are happily back to English being the primary language spoken.  Many of the signs are in both English and French now.

Yesterday we drove to Algonquin Provincial park, a beautiful and huge park.  We camped one night there at a great, spacious campground.  Due to weather, we decided to just spend one night there and head to our next destination today, Sault St. Marie.  Tomorrow we will take the ferry to Mackinac Island.  Because we are staying in Canada and Mackinac Island is in Michigan, we will have to do our second border crossing into Canada after our trip to the island.  We have to apply for permission with each crossing.

The drives yesterday and today were very beautiful.  At times we were driving through miles and miles of corn fields.  Other times it seemed like Ontario could rival Minnesota for its claim of 1,000 lakes.  We saw many fields with dozens of wild turkeys.   We finally got some sun for a little while yesterday while going through Ottawa and today lots of sun in the afternoon.

Tim Hortons is Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds all rolled up into one.  We were seeing them every few miles and decided to check one out.  They serve coffee as good as Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts, donuts and fast food.  We will likely be good customers during the rest of our time in Canada.  

This was taken as we drove through Ottawa.  As you can see from the cranes, it is a rapidly growing city.  We felt right at home stopping at a Costco to do a little shopping.

This was taken from Lake of Two Rivers campground in Algonquin park where we spent Wednesday night.  It was beautiful even in cloudy weather.  Most of the lakes we drove by the past two days had houses all along the shorelines.

The freeways were carved right through these massive rocks.  

We thought these trees were very cool.  The trunks are completely bare until the top of the tree.