Maritimes - Day 4

It started raining overnight, and there was a fairly steady amount falling as we loaded the van.  Despite the heat, I'm glad we had the sun yesterday, as exploring the fort in the rain would not have been very fun.  Our first stop outside of Thunder Bay was the Terry Fox Memorial, where we joined everyone travelling from western Canada in viewing the memorial.  (Seriously, it was only Alberta and BC plates in the parking lot, plus one truck all the way from the NWT.)

Then it was back on the road, since we are going to have a few big travel days in order to get farther into Ontario.  Canada is pretty big.  We eventually outraced the storm and travelled on in relative comfort.  The road on this side of Thunder Bay has far more hills and twisty corners, but nothing too horrible.

The only other big thing for the day was our arrival at White River, where there is a Winnie the Pooh statue.  It turns out White River is where the soldier/veterinarian from Winnipeg purchased a black bear cub whom he named Winnie.  He took the cub with him to London (as it was 1914 and he was on his way to the war), where it stayed in the London zoo.  It was there that A.A. Milne and his son Christopher visited and saw Winnie the black bear, thus leading to the stories of Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh.

We arrived in Sault Ste. Marie just after 5:00pm, found our hotel and got some food.  Tomorrow we are off to Midland - it seems like an odd spot, but we want to get down to London and avoid the big highways, so we figured it was a good jumping off spot.