Ontario Lake Superior Circle North Shore

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Sault Ste Marie

   Sault Ste. Marie sits on the St. Marys River, the short, fast channel that links Lake Superior to Lake Huron, and the city exists because the water here drops about seven metres over a set of rapids. The Ojibwe called the place Bawating, the place of the rapids, and it was a fishing and gathering ground long before French fur traders arrived in the seventeenth century. The name Sault, pronounced Soo, is the old French word for rapids. A twin city of the same name faces it across the river in Michigan, joined by the International Bridge, and the two are bound together by locks, trade and history.

   Read the complete Sault Ste Marie write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Sault Ste Marie is where the day begins. Next is Wawa.

2. 2. Wawa

   Wawa is famous for a goose. A huge steel statue of a Canada goose stands at the junction on the highway, put up in the 1960s, and the name itself comes from the Ojibwe word for the wild goose, which migrates over the lake in flocks each spring and autumn. The town, home to around twenty-six hundred people, grew up as a gold rush camp in the nineteenth century and later lived off the iron ore mines to the north, which have since closed.

   Read the complete Wawa write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Wawa comes up about 228 km into the recorded legs. Next is Neys Provincial Park.

3. 3. Neys Provincial Park

   Ney's Provincial Park holds one of the quieter chapters of Canadian history. During the Second World War, a camp here held German prisoners of war, and visitors can still learn something about it at the site. Today the park is a pleasant place, with a long sand beach on Lake Superior, dunes, a rock headland with a lookout, and a campground in the trees, all within a few kilometres of the town of Marathon.

   Read the complete Neys Provincial Park write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 433 km into the recorded legs you reach Neys Provincial Park. Next is Thunder Bay.

4. 4. Thunder Bay

   Thunder Bay is the end of the line for the Ontario shore of Lake Superior, a port city of just under a hundred thousand people tucked against a huge bay with the long, flat shape of Sleeping Giant rising across the water. That peninsula, a cluster of cliffs and ridges, gives the city's skyline a nearly mythic profile, and the Ojibwe story says it is Nanabijou, the spirit of the deep sea, turned to stone. The name of the city comes from the bay, and the weather justifies it: storms off the lake can be sudden and loud.

   Read the complete Thunder Bay write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Thunder Bay closes the day.