What a great day!

We got off to an early start this morning, we ate out at a local cafe. Good food and lots of coffee. The country sure starts to flatten out when you get south of Manitoba.


Found a fellow doing some chain saw carvings and just had to stop and look at them.
Grand Rapids is the town that Judy Garland was from and they had a Mural of the Wizard of Oz on a building across from "The Coffee Shop" that we stopped at (really neat 60's decor) .

Our first stop in Grand Forks was Cabelas Outfitters.

You just can't pass them up even though we like Bass Pro better but there are none around here. We had quiet a time finding this campground "The Grand Forks Campground". It was not where the GPS thought it was! After finding the tourist info center the lady there showed us a map where it is located. We were in camp by 3:30 pm so that was good.

A good day for a ride

Now that the SUN is out, we can honestly say "we sure miss the bike". We've been traveling along highway 28 just on the south shore's of lake Superior, is it ever nice.

We stopped for coffee at a small cafe called the Dogpatch was it ever unique.


We had our picnic lunch today but never found picnic tables so we had a tail gate lunch in a Wal Mart parking lot. The food was just as good. We planned on camping at Ironwood MI, however the campground there didn't look so good so we continued on to Ashland. A little farther than we had planned on going.

With all the bad weather we have had when we saw this sign we thought that perhaps we had missed summer and went right to December. The campground here doesn't allow tents. They do allow tent trailers which is what we are however we wouldn't be able to put up our add a room as they consider it a tent. Yep your as confused as we were. Being it was already 6:00 pm and we hadn't eaten yet we decided to take a Motel. Not much you can do when there are no other campgrounds around for at least another hours drive or more.

One day of SUN One day of R***!

Thanks Buzz & Marilyn for the great time in Montreal and also the meatball sandwiches that you packed for us Marilyn, they were great! We drove in a mostly sunny day all the way to North Bay. No rain over night so that was good. We got all packed up and had barely left the campground when the skies opened up and did it ever rain. Our plans were to have a picnic at a roadside rest area however our plans had to change due to the downpour.


We stopped in Massey at the Crocks Cafe for some good home cooking and they did live up to there claim as the food was great. When we reached Sault Ste Marie the sun poked out for a short while. They had the highway to the bridge all blocked off due to construction and you had to detour around and it got a little confusing but in the end the GPS got us back on path and over the International bridge.

The guy at customs must have talked to us asking questions for about 10 minutes.

We found a KOA to camp at in Newberry Mich. They are not my most favorite campgrounds but not much more around here. No rail tracks nearby, we can't believe it. One might show yet though. Here it is July 7th and here we are with a heater on in the add-a-room trying to stay warm and dry. According to the radio the temperature will be +8 tonight.

Montreal Jazz Festival

What a beautiful day! Did we mention the sunshine!
The Montreal Jazz Festival is on so we took the Metro Subway down to the Place des Arts and then walked around for the day to see the sights and listen to the music.




There were thousands of people down there and lots of talented entertainers. I (Irene)won a jazz festival thermos while we were there. And then Marilyn and I won a $10 certificate to the souvenir shop so we talked Rick into getting himself a jazz festival hat. Caught the train back and then decided to go the St. Anne de Bellvue and walk along the waters edge.

Rick and I treated Marilyn & Buzz to dinner at "Cheaters Restaurant" and Nico the boss got us a good table after Rick talked to Rebecca the waitress outside who


convinced him that we should eat there and the ambience was great, so a good time was had by all. Yes we had LOBSTER!

Then we walked back up to Brad, Jennifer and Paynes to say hello. Brad is Marilyn's son.

What's all the BUZZ about?

We arrived at Buzz & Marilyn's around noon and expected to find no body home so we were going to disconnect and then go downtown, we were surprised to see Marlyn greeting us. What a pleasant surprise. Buzz got home early around 2:00 pm and then we went down to St Ann de Belview.


to the old department store that they have there.
Most of the fire hydrants in Baie d'Urfe have been painted by local artists. This one across the road from their home was painted by Francois Bougie who is an illustrator and has done a lot of work for "The Smile High Club".

After our return home we all sat around and had a great gab session along with some wine and appies until dinner.

In the evening we watched a movie and then all retired for the night.

This morning after breakfast they took us to a local sports shop that we were interested in and also a veggy market where we met

Laurent Cordere who painted and studied with the "Group of Seven".



We had a great day looking at a lot of the local attractions including some wierd bugs called a "shad fly".

Time to cook spare ribs and did they ever turn out good! Time to relax.