Heading out of Pancake Bay on Wednesday morning we headed north along the Trans-Canada Highway 700km stretch along Lake Superior. Wow!

The route from Sault Ste Marie up to Thunder Bay is favoured by bikers and John looked longingly at any we passed. The road snakes through forest and rock never far from the sparkling blue lake.

We passed the landmark Wawa Goose; the 8.5m metre steel bird was built to encourage traffic from the highway to stop in the town of Wawa back in the early 1960’s and now is one of Canada’s most photographed landmarks. It certainly worked as even on a very grey morning we followed a group of bikers to the spot for our photo.  While we were there we met a lovely English couple who used to teach in Farnham! Small world.

Further on the road while John was calling us to look at yet another stunning vista of the Lake on our left a Black Bear lolloped across the road in front of us causing us to slam on our brakes. He then wandered slowly into the rocky verge and stood looking at us while we squealed and grabbed cameras and phones. He hung around for about 3 minutes before wandering off again. Amazing!!

 We stopped a bit further on for lunch at Rainbow Falls where the water was so clear and still it felt like a Greek Island. We nearly ended up stopping there for the night it was so lovely. This is the problem there are just so many stunning places it’s hard to leave them behind without fully exploring them.   We met a couple there who were cycling across Canada. They had left Vancouver on 1^st June and hoped to be in Halifax by the end of July – they are making better progress than us!!

We spent 2 nights in Thunder Bay, got sunburnt, swam, fished in the worst stocked Catch and Release Trout Pond on earth, got our tyre valve fixed and did some washing!!  (Please note how helpful the children are being and how happy they look as they help!!).