French River

Today I backtracked to where I'll be staying for the next week. Because of the accident I didn't get far enough to take the ferry across Lake Huron, but even from the major roads the leaves are awesome. It was overcast and did a fair bit of raining, so the leaves weren't translucent in the sunshine as they had been. I stopped at French River. Like most parks here, it was closed (the camping grounds, the visitors centre and the toilets) but you could still walk to the falls. However, it started to rain again so I didn't get far.

All the Canadians and Americans tell me that they won't come to Australia because of the snakes, and  here they are - in 100% of the Ontario parks I've been to - telling you to watch out for VENOMOUS snakes.

A Quite Superior Lake

Lake Superior was named by the French because it was the furthest away. It is also the highest of the Great Lakes. From my inspection it appears to have the greatest scenic beauty as well. The land around it is quite hilly, and the trees are stunning. I went as far as Montreal river before I turned back, and Lake Montreal was just stunning, but impossible to photograph.

I saw my first Canadian Waterfall at the halfway point along the TransCanadian Highway.

According to the sign (but not Wikipedia), the first uranium in North America was found along the shore of Lake Superior by someone whose boat sank where I took the first picture. It wasn't the only boat whose watery grave lies in these pictures. Evidently the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank here too.

Further to the great pasties of Lake Michigan, many places around Lake Superior sell apple fritters. Australian apple fritters pale in comparison, being basically a slice of apple in thin batter. The ones here are cut up apple in (probably) a donut batter, so they are very big. I had a most superior dinner (the best meal of the trip so far) - just fish and vegetables, but really nice. It made up for the three hours I was stopped by an accident.

Hiawatha's Home

Today I visited Lake Michigan, which meant two border crossings via the Independence Bridge. This is undergoing dramatic maintenance on the Canadian side, which effectively means that one lane of the two lane bridge is closed. They were not the only roadworks, as parts of US highway 2 in Michigan were completely closed.

The area I visited included Hiawatha National Forest. Much was similar to the forests in Canada that I went through yesterday, but a lot was quite different where there wasn't a National Forest. There, the deciduous trees didn't exist, and conifers were the only trees, or there were what I think were cypresses as well. In places the conifers had very short branches, like the trees in Alaska, and in others the area had been cleared some time ago, and the trees were all small. However, the detour for the closed part of highway 2 was through very narrow roads, where the forest was close to the road on both sides, and the deciduous trees were back in all their glory.

The peninsula is known for its pasties, and they are very good - properly made with a lot of potato and other vegetables.

I visited the end of the Michigan peninsula where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet and a bridge crosses the lakes. You can see why the two lakes are sometimes called Lake Michigan-Huron. At the International Bridge Lake Superior starts to go into St. Mary's River that connects it to Georgian Bay in Lake Huron.

West until sunset

The car I have for Canada is quite superior. Some things are gimmicks, others are really nice to have. The most outstanding feature is the reversing camera. It is very clear and I may really miss it when I don't have the car any more. I had been contemplating upgrading my car with one but I  can only get a generic one, so I'm not sure how good that would be. 

On the other hand, there is no rear windscreen wiper. This morning the car was covered in dew, and I noticed the lack immediately. Other things that I don't like include the handbrake. I had to get out the manual this morning to work out how to disengage it! It is one of my least favourite colours for a car - black - I prefer to be visible, particularly at night, and most of the currently available car colours are variations on asphalt, which camouflages them instead. And it parps its horn every time you lock it (something I have always hated). It also hasn't got anywhere that I can easily put the GPS.

The cruise control is easy to use, although if you do the wrong thing you parp the horn. It is very economical with petrol, quiet, comfortable and is nice to drive. The camper in Iceland wasn't bad, but this is definitely superior. It has no key, really nice seats.

Today I drove northwest through a Canada I had always imagined seeing if I did the cross-Canada train trip. The Canada made up of immense forest bathed in autumn colours with dark pines interspersed with reds, pinks, golds, yellows and light green-yellows. A lot of the birches have already lost their leaves, so white sometimes replaced the dark of the pines, and sometimes combined with the rest. The sun was shining, and small lakes or wide rivers, or large lakes or even Lake Huron appeared every few minutes. It was all just beautiful, but I didn't stop to take photos - partly because I was on major roads with lots of roadworks, and partly because most of the time I was driving through areas that I'll be in for a week, so I was trying to get further away so I can see something different in the first few days. The beauty was partly the immensity of the landscape, and the rounded rocks that poke out into the trees occasionally. I had two hypothetical aims for these days. The first is just too far away. It was always going to be a stretch, and I was too tired when I landed to start out that day. The other is quite achievable - to see all the Great Lakes. To do that, I'll need to cross into America tomorrow and look at the top of Lake Michigan.

I might see if I can get a couple of tshirts while I'm there, as the weather is definitely warm! After Greenland, I'm definitely in tshirt weather.

This place has terrible wifi, so it is good that I'm not including pictures!

Canada

Yesterday, I left the hotel in Iceland at 6am an arrived where I was staying for Thanksgiving Dinner, Canadian style at 5pm their time. I had crossed 4 time zones. There may be some photos on the phone, but it was raining everywhere. We were twenty minutes late in to Toronto, so I only had a very    short visit.

Reykjavik Last Day

I wandered around Reykjavik, so the pictures are a somewhat inconsistent set. The settlement centre is where the first ever longhouse was built in Iceland. They have two accounts of the first settlers, who built the house in 870. The longhouse was found during a development, and has been carbon dated to 871 +-2 years, and an eruption that deposited a layer of ash happened in 872. The house was built under the ash layer, so they are pretty certain it was the first house. It is in perpetual gloom, so the model of it was more photogenic! They have a number of finds exhibited, and many lights that you can shine on particular places in the ruin. It was really worth visiting.

On the way there, I passed a pond with waterbirds (in the background is a side view of their cathedral) and many old buildings. I visited the old harbour, which is celebrating 100. To make the harbour, they used two locomotives to build to walls and a ward. These are the only locomotives ever to be used in Iceland. I took a picture of the main shopping street - I was walking faster then the traffic - and a sign I saw there.

I'm not sure what I will be doing in the first few days in Canada, so wifi may be a problem.

Goodbye Greenland

The last photo is on arrival in Iceland.

At this point I summarise my thoughts about the country I've seen been visiting.

I'm really glad I visited Greenland - especially when I did. Seeing the autumn colours, the swift changes as winter arrives is really special. Being a lone tourist also has a lot of advantages - I was able to talk to locals, I got individual treatment, and I could change my plans easily. Of course, being here in the off season has meant that there is less choice, and that things were more likely to go wrong so plans needed to be changed. I was also the only tourist on several tours, which meant that one was cancelled while others weren't available. The ones that went ahead were very special. Everything I did was fantastic.

Greenland is a very special place. It has more potential to be overwhelmed with tourism than just about anywhere else - it has 58000 people, and last year Ilulissat (4000 people) had 60000 tourists, mainly in the three months of summer. Too many people come for the facilities - Ilulissat has no campgrounds, and no public toilets, yet people are staying in tents when they can't find accommodation! And the environment is very fragile - for instance, they built a board walk in 2004 to reduce wear, and the original path is still bare.

The Greenlanders have to work extremely hard. In Ilulissat they were desperately trying to install a new set of water pipes throughout the town before winter made it impossible. They were working day and night. There were enormous holes and ditches everywhere. They were also building several new big buildings (probably hotels). There is even supposed to be a new visitor centre (the only evidence was a concrete slab). This is as well as preparing their own lives for winter (including hunting). While museums may only open at noon at this time of the year, the supermarkets are open from 7am until 10pm in Ilulissat, and those that are still open elsewhere also have ridiculous hours.

Danes own everything and are in every management position that I saw. About one third of Greenlanders live in Denmark - many need to go there to complete their own education and then stay, but there are also a lot of unemployed Greenlanders in Denmark. The tour guides were mainly young Danes who told me that they had difficulty finding work in Denmark. There are critical shortages of skilled people - for instance, one Danish nurse had decided to take time from her job in Denmark, and had just finished a five week contract in Nuuk. She was going on holidays in Nepal, but was willing to come back and work for three weeks before she had to return to her job in Denmark.

Yes, it was cold in Greenland, but not as cold as I expected, and I didn't need everything I brought  - but I could have, and for the boat trip in the icebergs I really needed another jumper and a second pair of mittens (maybe three), but I thought that what I brought was overkill, and everyone else had less. Most of the time, I was dressed in the sorts of clothes I wear in Winter.

The tour was well put together, and I saw a great crosssection of Greenland. When problems occurred, they were fixed quickly and effectively. I was amazed at how good Greenland Tours was. Greenland is quite cheap. I tried to have an expensive dinner on my last night, but the most expensive meal I had was about $25.