Lake Superiors Coast, From Pebbles To Boulders

Camping at Pancake Bay Provincial Park Day Two

Rod and I left our campsite at Pancake Bay Provincial Park at just after nine AM. It was a nice sunny morning, but a little cooler.

Our first stop was the Batchewana Bay Info Centre; we viewed many Indian artifacts from the area and learned some local history from the centres curator Wayne. Then we headed to the Agawa Crafts store, where they had a camper’s store, liquor and beer store, Indian Handicrafts, wood carvings, crafts, gifts and memorabilia, a must stop place if you’re in the area.

Batchewana Bay Visitors Centre

Agawa Crafts and General Store

Next stop was the Voyageurs’ Lodge and Cookhouse where we decided to have lunch. The fries and gravy were delicious, Rod and I really liked the atmosphere of this restaurant and the service was great.

After lunch we headed over to do more hiking along the Gitche Gumee shoreline (Gitche Gumee is the name the Ojibwa named Lake Superior which means “BIG LAKE”). As Rod and I hiked along the shore, we were amazed that you could still see the evidence of the past in the rocks, lava rock interspersed between the granite. We also came across a large rock with small stones stuck within it. We researched this after getting home and it is a conglomerate, a jumbled mix of rocks in basalt lava. Up until this morning we didn’t know that there had been a volcano that had gone off in Thunderbay over 1.1 billion years ago.

Gitche Gumee Lake Superior

Conglomerate Boulder

We spent the rest of the day exploring the coast, admiring the rocks and stones, and taking pictures. The most striking feature of Superiors coast is the diversity of the shoreline. From fine sand beaches to pebble and cobblestone beaches, then around the corner a shoreline of boulders and sheer rock outcrops. I don’t think I could ever get tired of viewing Lake Superior’s coast.

Lake Superiors Rugged Coastline

Lake Superiors Diverse Coast

At about four thirty our video camera died, so we headed back to camp at Pancake Bay Provincial Park. We stopped at the park gates to see how we could go about charging our video camera, they were very helpful and told us we could charge it right there…then come back for it later. We also wanted to see if our campsite was available for one more night, and as it was… we decided to stay another night. We were supposed to go home the next day, but we had too much more exploring to do, we still wanted to view the pictographs at Agawa Rock!!

When we got back, we had a beer…then it was time to cook up our dinner. After a dinner of fried potatoes, sausage and salad, we sat by the fire, then took pictures of the sunset and the moon over the water. We fell asleep to the waves crashing into the shore again…it was just awesome.