Thunder Bay to Grand Marais

Onward.

We left the funkiness of Thunder Bay this morning heading South-West into Minnesota along Superior's shoreline. Once we got away from Thunder Bay the Ontario countryside became rolling and rural. Driving with the windows down amongst long fields of wheat and big red barns and silos dwarfed by giant cumulonimbus clouds it was the most beautiful stretch of country roads we've driven this far. Along the way we stopped at all sorts of places for local farm food. I snapped this shot at the Thunder Bay Cheese Farm down a side road we turned. The best local gouda you could want and baby goats to boot!

It was so nice we were reluctant to leave behind Canada, but it was just as gorgeous crossing into Minnesota. We lingered by a viewpoint of Superior along the roadside to snack on ripe raspberries in the bushes, stopped at a farm for homemade honey, and even saw a black bear lope across the road in front of us on the way to Grand Marais. The track hugs the shoreline of Superior tight across the entirety of Minnesota's lake border and there were giant views to the horizon dappled by the shadows of birch and aspen trees the whole stretch.

We were in no hurry for reaching any destination and so just pulled over beside a beach to read and write postcards before setting up the tent off a gravel roadside in the National Forest. The good news is the weather is near perfect. The bad news is we've entered some major mosquito county. Becca and I are starting to make dashes in and out of the tent into a serious art form....