As I indicated in a previous post living in Michigan got camping into my blood. The more we were out camping the more I wanted to explore new and different places. Living in Michigan puts you close to the great white north. From Lansing to the nearest point in Canada is 83 miles.
We often camped near Grayling, Michigan. However, from Grayling to the Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario was just two hours farther and one border crossing away. Why? Reasons. For example, northern Ontario has green forests that stretch for miles. There are trails that take you past seven waterfalls in half a day’s walk. Also, there are “M-m-moose,” as one of my cousins exclaimed upon seeing a huge specimen of this ruminant standing in the middle of the Trans Canadian Highway Route 17 one summer.
Over the years a core group of us traveled north to the Sault many times. Normally it occurred during the July holidays. Because of the holidays involved Canada (formerly Dominion) Day and the Fourth of July we decided to try and wrap five or so days into the jaunt.
The place I picked out to go the first time, and to which we kept returning, was Agawa Bay Campground in Lake Superior Provincial Park. The park itself was magnificent. It had cliffs, beaches, river valleys, waterfalls, and inland lakes. It was far enough north that sunlight still glimmered at 10:30 pm. The Agawa Bay campground had a pebble beach and a sunset view to die for. Also, the northern lights occasionally kick up and put on a show.
So many memories of this place. The m-m-moose incident, the dead moose in the waterfall, and the bears sniffing about the tents in the middle of the night (more than once). Then there were the blackfly bites, drinking cold Canadian beer, together with road trips to Wawa and the giant goose.
Back then there was no cell phone service at Agawa Bay. No phone service was actually a selling point, because the office could not reach us. But there were also no smart phone apps that gave you a 10-day weather forecast and showed you radar of when the rain might move in.
The weather was wildly unpredictable up there. One year it would be in the 60s and 70s. Another year on the 4th of July it would be 37 degrees when you woke up. I mean you could see your freakin’ breath. When you traveled north you always packed t-shirts, long sleeve shirts, shorts, jeans, leather jackets, and rain ponchos. You also always added a 3-mil drop cloth. More on that below. One needed to be prepared for anything.
At the best of times the breeze blew in from the west on these five-day excursions. The sun burned the morning fog away by 10 am. During the prime years the spring leading up to this five-day retreat was warm and dry.
Rain on any camping trip is a bummer. Rain on a cold five-day stretch in Canada’s near north can be miserable. Even if you did everything right from spraying waterproofing on your Eureka dome tent, putting that three mil drop cloth under the floor of your tent and digging a little trench around your tent which had been placed on the slightest of grades to divert the water away you still would get clammy.
And yeah, you may have covered the firewood the night before but it gets wet and instead of a warming blaze you end up with a smoldering mess. After a couple of days in the grey isolation of that dome you just have to get away. You pull the tent down, and stuff it willy nilly in the back of the car (because you will have to set up the tent up back home to let it dry) and head down the road…to a hotel.
If the spring was cool and wet there is something else you have to contend with, the dreaded blackflies. If the spring was dry and warm the blackflies were usually mostly gone by the 4th of July. However, it has been cool and wet... Well did you ever see the movie “The In-Laws” where Peter Falk talks about the tsetse flies? He gets to a point in the story where he describes the tsetse flies carrying off small children. Blackflies in northern Ontario are like that.
Oh, you can try and drive the blackflies away. 100% DEET slathered all over your body is about the best you can do. Invariably you will leave an exposed spot and they will zero in on it. Blackflies bite, draw blood and fly away. After a bite you will have an egg size lump at the site of the wound; depending on your body’s defense mechanisms it might resemble half a quail egg or half an ostrich egg.
Mix these two together and you get that phrase, “That’s it I am done and out of here”.
Back in the day, we are talking very late 1980s to early 1990s there wasn’t much in the way of refuge when you drove back down to the Sault. There was a strip of motels of the run-down mom & pop variety, think musty smell and magic fingers. There was a Ramada with an indoor water slide for the kids. Think running feet and noise at all hours of the night. There was one fancy and expensive place near where the Algoma Railroad trips began. And finally, out on the northwest edge of town was the Water Tower Inn.
The Water Tower Inn was the luxe choice in the Sault. It had an outdoor hot tub. There was an indoor pool with a faux rocky waterfall. The restaurant had a cappuccino machine. This was back before Starbucks and all the other coffee chains permeated North American culture with Americanos and Mochas.
Additionally, the hotel was also walking distance to Giovanni’s, home to some of the most delicious Italian food you can find in Ontario. So, smelling of woodsmoke, lumpy with blackfly bites and with wrinkled waterlogged fingers from the cold rain we would check in and pay whatever the Water Tower deemed fit. (I think I got on their special discount list for a time and we didn’t pay rack rate or anything close to it).
Checked in we would walk over to Giovanni’s and settle down. We would have antipasto and tortellini with portabella and cheese. We would stuff ourselves with bread, salad, pasta and wine. From there we would waddle back to the hotel, throw on our suits and relax outside in the drizzle. The drizzle was made far less bothersome by the hot tub's warming waters. One hour in a hot tub can erase the memories of three days sitting around in Gore-Tex waiting for the clouds to disappear. Sitting around the hot tub the smell of the Northwoods no longer adhered to every fiber of clothing and cell of your epidermis.
Okay so now you have the background of why the Water Tower was about as close to the garden of earthly delights for some soggy wounded campers. So, remember this was a vacation, and at this point in our business careers you didn’t get much of that. Having been cooped up in a wet tent for days, the food, the hot tub and the fall waterfall were not enough. In the early 1990s a cappuccino machine was still exotic in downstate Michigan. However, for there to be one in the Sault made it a true rare bird.
One night at the Water Tower on a trip with just two couples this writer was beaten and tired. The combination of a Labatt Blue and a heavy Italian meal mixed with a few minutes in the hot tub and all I wanted to do was sleep. Now two couples shared a room. Three of the four people desired dessert at 9:30 pm. Me, I just wanted to sleep but hey I am always craving ice cream. So I threw in with the explore downstairs. Down we went.
We were quickly seated in the restaurant. Back then cheesecake covered in fruit was the apex of guilty pleasure desserts. I am pretty sure we had two slices and each slice was shared by the respective couples. The ice cream would wait for another day.
And then came that innocuous question from our server, “Would you like some espresso or cappuccino?” A wave of immediate responses, “Yes, Yes, Yes…” I was the sole holdout, the only nay in the group. The steaming beverages were quickly delivered and consumed. And then our waitress had the audacity to come over look at the empty cups and ask, “Would you like another?" A small conversation ensued, with things said implying they were really delicious and then again, “Yes, Yes, Yes.”
The dessert was gone, the cups emptied and the tab was settled so we headed back to the room. Barely dragging myself to the elevator and then to the room my only desire, one deeply seated in my heart of hearts, was to lie on a bed and not sleep in a humid L.L.Bean sleeping bag atop a Thermarest pad in a rain chilled tent. Entering the room, I could just feel the deep dark regions of the night world waving to me and whispering, “Come on, come on. Come slide into a deep and dreamless darkness with us.” This was what I wanted as I settled down in bed and felt the world start to slip away. Until…
“John…John can you sleep?”
“No Colleen, I am wide awake.”
“Francie, Francie can you sleep?”
“Nope, I am wide awake.”
“Jay…”
“Leave me the fuck alone. I was almost asleep."
“Anyone want to play euchre? I have a deck in my purse."
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Leave me the fuck alone, I want to sleep.”
“Oh, come on! Where is your fun spirit?"
And with that the lights came on and the deck was prepared and shuffled. Euchre is a game played between two teams. Every participant needs to calculate the points in their hand and how many points they think they can make by taking tricks. They then bid to see who calls trump. People who are hyped up and who turn the amp to 11 by drinking shots of espresso in the middle of the freakin’ night love this stuff. One whose only goal is deep dark dreamless slumber not so much.
We played. I guess. My memory is fuzzy. My hands were actually filled with cards as I fell asleep. I was throwing off suit. I probably never bid. The game dragged on but it finally ended. Bed, yes, sleep now, I thought. And then they wanted to play the best out of three. As God is my witness, they tried to kill me. I suggested they play three handed but that was poo-pooed. So, on it went.
Eventually we all crawled back into bed. They kept talking. They talked about their jobs, about the drive back, about … well I don’t know it all just turned into word soup for me and I floated away to a dark and dreamless and long desired sleep.
But on a subsequent trip I would get my revenge. Sort of.
In the early days of our marriage Francie and I lived in Wilmington, Delaware. She worked for Blue Cross and I worked for AIG. We were corporate drones. We had no children. We planned on having no children. Our plan would be to spend our money on experiences, travel, film, concerts and food. Not all of our experiences would have to be high-end. Some would be totally mundane.
In Wilmington there was a small chain of restaurants called the Charcoal Pit. Their specialty was grilled steaks and ice cream desserts. Today they serve crab cakes sandwiches and cheesesteaks. They also have a Delmonico. Back then they had a cheap strip steaks. After shopping up on Concord Pike we would stop at the Pit for a couple of these cheap steaks.
My seemingly primal scream began one night after my wife and I ventured out to eat. Of course, where we ended up was the Charcoal Pit, the original location. We shared a couple of those famous/infamous Charcoal Pit sizzler steaks. Later that night, as I slept, I had a nightmare. I dreamt someone reached under a door had grabbed my ankles and tried to pull me under.
As my wife described it, my screams curdled blood. I would not stop screaming until she shook me awake. The horrible dream ended, my eyes closed and I fell back to sleep immediately, and she stayed awake for several hours. We joked about it blaming the night of terror on gristly meat from the Pit. She and I called it the gristle snake attack.
Over the years the pattern has repeated almost like clockwork. Once every three months I have a horrible dream about a creature trying to grab, abduct or otherwise steal me away for torment. My long-suffering wife wakes me up from these dreams. She tells me she will lay there awake for hours, her heart racing, and I immediately fall back asleep.
Clockwork I tell you, like clockwork.
So, there we were camping in the Northwoods. Another holiday weekend on the northeast shore of Lake Superior. The weather had been fine for the first couple of days but it was going to turn. We had an excellent spot right on the water’s edge. We hiked, drank Velvet Cream Porter, watched the flames of the evening's fires grow large and then dwindle to nothing. But foul weather was clearly coming in from the west.
We packed up quickly. The tents were dry so we stowed them away. The sleeping bags were rolled tight and stuffed in their carrying bags. The Coleman stove was emptied of fuel and placed back in its box. Cooking implements were washed and packed. Coleman lanterns were stowed away. We dropped our paper tag for our site into the steel tube showing we were done with the site. We headed down to the Water Tower.
Things proceeded as they usually do. We grabbed a room. We shower. We headed to Giovanni’s. This time everyone agreed there would be no espresso, no rocket fuel to keep people awake. The comfort for our tired bones awaited on queen mattresses. Within minutes, I was swept into the realms of night. With nary a flip or a pillow scrunch or shoulder shift the world of the day faded.
As the minutes of the night ticked away those hands reached out for me from under a garage door in the old and dirty alleyway. With incredible strength they held my ankles and pulled me down. The hands clearly planned to drag me under that door and do something horrible, something painful to me. There was nobody in the alley. If I wanted to be saved, I would have to call for help. I mustered up all the air and energy I could gather and wailed my scream out.
And then I was awake and staring at the wall of the hotel room in Sault Ste. Marie. No one shook me awake. I couldn’t hear anybody moving. Relief was the feeling I got when I assured myself that this was one of those times when I dreamed of the scream but woke up before I actually physically verbalized it.
I shifted and looked toward the window. Three people were sitting upright on the beds staring at me with faces that conveyed fear, shock and concern. Uh, I hadn’t just dreamed of the scream. Apparently, I had just let one monster howl waking everyone up. I will never forget the look in my wife's, John's, and Colleen's eyes. They won’t remember the look but they will remember the scream.
I sat up and took a few moments. With Francie adding color commentary on all she had endured over the years, I explained the scream. Fielding one or two questions I quickly put my head back on the pillow. And just like that night disappeared for me and became morning.
Don’t know if Francie, John or Colleen had trouble getting back to sleep. But hey, Karma baby. I’ll see your espressos and raise you one hellatious nighttime howl.
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