Posts From Ontario

OK, so today we got our battery problem fixed (I think). Thanks to Roger and Matt at Global Expedition Vehicles we were put in touch with Welch's RV Service a local Sault Ste Marie RV sales and service business. There we met Jim the manager and big Dave the technician who worked on our camper. Early in the diagnosis and repair process a second Jim arrived. A previous owner of a Unimog 404 he was curious about our yellow monster. After a little conversation he offered to buy us coffee at the cafe next door. There we met our third Jim of the day (the owner of the cafe).

Sudbury Ontario has been an active and important nickel (and other minerals) mining town for well over 100 years. The extent of past and present mining is easily seen from the huge piles of spoil piled up around the town, in some cases they look like mountain ridges. In more recent times Sudbury has made an effort to diversify and increase tourism and to this end has built a mining/geological exhibition called Dynamic Earth (also known as the Big Nickel) and a general science exhibition known as ScienceNorth. The Big Nickel is a bit of a pun. There was a mine here at one time called the Big Nickel but now there is in fact a large (that is a very large) replica of a Canadian Nickel on a pedestal out front of the Dynamic Earth building. While observing this wonder we met a Danish lady named Barbara standing on her head in front of the nickel (her friend, also a Dane, named, Anne Marie was taking her photo). Seems being photographed head standing in front of sights around the world is her thing.

Today for the first time I noticed that here in Ontario (and maybe Canada) Walmart stores have a McDonalds restaurant attached. I am sure that in the US it is a Subway. In any case that proved convenient today as McDonalds has free wifi and gave us a chance to catch up on the website. Before getting underway this morning we got into conversations with quite a group of people who were curious about our vehicle, wanted to take a photo and look inside. We sometimes feel we are getting a bit tired of telling the same story but the people are friendly, the curiosity natural and we better get used to it for it will happen in other parts of the world as well.