9 August 2016, Tuesday
Today is a driving day. We strike the tent and take the road towards Wawa, the town, not the store. The people here campaigned hard back in the 1950’s to have the TransCanadian highway pass through their town. Pre-highway, the only way to get to Sault Ste. Marie from here was by steamboat. As the highway was being cut through the granite hills “adventurous souls” could drive the not yet completed road, crossing the Old Woman River on a homemade log bridge as the highway bridge was not yet constructed. The trip of 80 km took 8 hours! By 1960 the highway officially opened. We are greeted as we enter town by a giant goose. It was proposed as a tourist attraction to help draw people and Route 17 to the town of Wawa. The goose motif persists on Main Street where many motels and businesses also sport giant goose statues. Even the streetlights are made of goose-shaped neon tubes.
Breakfast is filling and good at the Embassy Restaurant. We are soon back on the road heading north and then west. We pass through many construction zones where the granite ridges are again being blasted as part of the “twinning” program to widen the highway to four lanes from two. Seeing the machinery and piles of granite rubble we understand how difficult it must have been to blast the original path for this stretch of highway back in the 1950’s.
On we go, stopping for a brief break from driving at a picturesque little cafe called Serendipity, located in the town of Rossport. From here it is another 150 km to Sleeping Giant. We sign in at the visitor center and discover that our campsite is about 8 km from the visitor center and the main campground. We drive along a gravel road following the shore of Marie Louise Lake. We find there is no potable water here, so once our camp is set up we return to the visitor center to refill all of our water bottles. A once a day fill will be all we need for cooking and dishwashing, a small price to pay for a quiet and spacious site away from the congestion of the main campground. And now to bed. We have a long hike planned to the top of the Giant tomorrow.