So the ride started out rainy, but that ended quickly and I decided upon a detour up through Bayfield, which is the Door County-esque lake town that serves as the launching pad for the Apostle Islands.  The ride was smooth, and I quickly made my way through my detour and on to Duluth, which is  one of my favorite motorcycle stopping towns.  It’s always bursting with people wandering the front streets, and it’s always a good stop.  This year included a stop at Aerostich and their good, down home motorcycle gear manufacturing facility.

The ride progressed until I got to Grand Marais, a beautiful boating city right on Superior where I have stayed on past trips.  I seriously considered staying there, but it was only about 5 pm, and I wanted to get more miles in.  Shoulda stayed.  Ha.  Once gone from Marais, I was committed all the way to Thunder Bay, just over the Canadian border.  I mean, so what if I was crossing late – how hard can it be?  It’s Canada.  I figured, if someone can get into the US, should Canada really care if they were coming back?

The approach to Canada was almost magical.  As I pulled into the queue, I saw a couple of young foxes (the red, furry kind, not the strawberry blond at the end of the bar kind), so I pulled over.  They were frolicking literally 20 feet away from me, so I stopped and pulled out my camera, but a car pulled by, and I was unlucky.  Great way to approach Canada though.

Then I pull in and hand them my driver’s license.  I have my passport in my bag, but I forgot to pull it out.  Huge mistake!  She let’s me through but makes me come inside where I find at least five Canadians working but no one willing to check me in.  This was like being at the DMV except that they moved slower and talked funnier.  This whole process ends up wasting about an hour, which is precious time as the sun is quickly setting, and the signs are starting to bother me.  They don’t just say “Moose X-ing” like our sings.  They read “NIGHT DANGER / DANGER DE NUIT” with a big running moose pictured.  Great.  Canadians and their non-hurried lifestyle.  They finally let me through with more questions like, if you own restaurants, who’s running them now?  Seriously?  If you live in a house, who’s living in it now?  Unreal.

Then I pull into Thunder Bay, and it all comes back.  Thunder Bay.  It all comes back to me.  There’s a reason Laurencia Bembeneck hid out here after her little run in.  It’s a shithole.  Yes, no  one wanted to look here, and she knew it.  I  begin to remember all the brokendownedness of the north  shore of Lake Superior.  The barkeepers were brokendown.  The customers were brokendown…  I’ll come back to that later with my observations of Canada.  They are many.  This is a strange place.

I overpay at the Super 8, and walk two doors down to Shooters.  “They have GREAT bar food,” Lindsay from the Super 8 let me know.  Really great place.  Yikes.  The two fairly large twenty-two year-old gals sitting next to me at the bar (one of which is the head housekeeper at the Super 8) are as annoyed by the lack of excitement at Shooters and offer me to join them to the strip club where there they could “at least get some action.”  I’m really not sure what they meant, but I just didn’t want to find out.   And I’ve been to Art’s Performing Center.  I was pretty sure I knew what was ahead of me, speaking of brokendown.  Some chicken wings, a couple photos marking my first Canadian beers, and I headed home.

More props to the Maple Leaf. It's everywhere up here. And I thought the US was flag-happy.

That’s it for Thunder Bay.  Pretty ok with leaving.  It was good to get the miles in, but I’m looking for better stops ahead…