Tree Time

 Ok friends, it seems my scribe is a little tired today, so you might have to settle for a condensed version of the day, with a bunch of photos thrown in for good measure!  Witty commentary and formatting might take a hit.

I got my own bed this time!

We were on the road shortly after 8 am, and checking out the Winnie the Pooh statue an hour later (this is where the original bear that inspired the stories came from).  There was also a giant thermometer that used to show the coldest day on record (-72) , so naturally they had to act cold and/or frozen to death! 

Today they are Tigger, Eeyore & Piglet

Brrrr!!!

Then it was a long 4 hours to Sleeping Giant Provincial Park.  Movies were watched (not by the driver, just to be clear), puzzles were solved, roads were driven, and many many beautiful views were seen.  Weather jumped between rainy, cloudy and some sun making for some moody skies against the lake.  Stunning.

Sleeping Giant is another park that takes an hour to drive through.  We headed to the Visitors Centre to get maps and shop, of course, then took a short drive to the south end, through Silver Islet and on to the Cemetery Trail, a relatively short hike (1 km each way) to an old cemetery from the mid-late 1800s.  It was very interesting, and as much as I wanted to get pictures of me on the graves, they were all too respectful of where we were to do so.  I can’t complain about that.  This is also the hike where I learned about “Tree Time” a chance for the slower folks in the group to catch up, while the quicker ones stand still in the pose of their chosen tree.  As the slower ones arrive, the trees inform us what tree they are being.  My personal favourites were “an almost dead tree” and “the tree you draw when you’re five”.

We then headed back up towards the entrance to the park to drive out to the Thunder Bay look-out.  It was a bit of a windy-twisty road, but the view when we got there was spectacular (can see the Giant’s head off to the left and barely make out the tops of the buildings of T-Bay just right of it).

This is also where the Rangers began to hijack my blog, deciding what would be written and how fun they would make it (notice they are not here now to help write it!).  Apparently I must include “Arrrr… yee haw!”  You can ask THEM if you want to know the crazy conversation about pirate cowboys.

All of this took longer than expected, and we did not pull into our hotel in Thunder Bay until 8:30.  Check-in was slow, and most take-out food was closed by this point (it is Sunday after all). Pizza was ordered and we called it a night.

Whatever