We needed to time our exit from Manitoulin Island to avoid the 15 minute hourly closure for boat traffic at the swing bridge, the only bridge off the island. We slept in a bit… finally… and didn’t want to rush as we don’t have far to go today. We went for a walk after breakfast and then chatted with our neighbors for a bit before leaving.
We timed the bridge crossing perfectly. Traffic was just opening up again as we arrived in Little Current.
Just after leaving Manitoulin Island we crossed over Birch Island. Birch island and MacGregor Bay was a camping spot for President Theodore Roosevelt when he needed a vacation. According to a local museum write-up of the event, it was a major undertaking of packing, travel (by train and boat) and making sure the entire entourage had canoes, fishing gear, tackle and bait so Roosevelt could ‘relax’. Sound familiar?
As you can see, the highway crosses over the falls. We did a slight detour to view them. Whitefish Falls is a very small community of about 150 people. It was made famous in the early 70s during the filming of the Canadian TV series, Adventures in Rainbow Country about a young widow raising her son in Northern Ontario. It ran for 2 seasons. This tourist region is still marketed as Rainbow Country.
We stopped for gas in Espanola (a former paper mill company town) at the junction of hwy 6 and 17 on the Spanish River. I discovered a quilt shop in town. Need I say more? Its the first one we’ve found on this trip that was accessible.
Once back on Hwy 17, our route took us along the same highway around Sudbury that we took on our return from our trip west in 2023. I covered the history of nickel mining in the Sudbury area then and won’t repeat it here. Just beyond Sudbury, our route took us down HWY 69 and back down to Georgian Bayon the eastern side this time.
We will spend 2 nights at Grundy Lake Provincial Park just south of French River. Are we seeing a pattern in naming rivers around here? We camped here so long ago that we can’t remember how many kids we had with us, or if we even had any! At any rate, we would have been in a tent and car-topping a canoe. We’ve come a long way since then.
Its a restful, beautiful park with lakes and very old, very straight white pines. There were a few mosquitoes when we arrived so we put up our little bug tent where I spent the rest of the afternoon sewing, both us listening to books.
The pace of this trip is much slower than our usual get up and at ’em trips. We only have a couple of hours at most each day. Relaxation comes to a halt on Sunday once we arrive back in southern Ontario and family to visit. I have tickets for Shakespeare in Stratford on Sunday afternoon (more about that later), and dinners and lunches planned with various daughters and adult grandchildren.
Hint: Americans always want to know what Canadians call Canadian bacon. The term ‘brown bread’ not only refers to its color, but also the particular flour it’s made with.
Dinner was chicken, roast potatoes and snow peas with Ontario peaches, blueberries and butter tart for dessert (another Ontario thing, and no it doesn’t resemble pecan or chess pie).
The bugs aren’t too bad as it turns out and we had a lovely campfire to finish a lovely day.
Louise and Brian McLeod Travel Blog 
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