Here is a shot of D's dad's house from the road that goes through the farm. The extreme zoom at the beginning combined with a rough-running engine in the van make it a little shaky. Sorry!
I had been to Monetville once before, but that was 10 YEARS AGO! I was so surprised when I calculated that because it really didn't seem like it had been that long since I had been there. I had seen D's parents over the years, of course, but none of his extended family. Last time I was there, I didn't get to meet everyone, but this time I met all of D's dad's 5 siblings and a few of D's MANY cousins. Of course, no visit is complete without some time spent with the grandparents, and these particular grandparents are damn adorable.
We also went into North Bay to visit D's maternal grandmother, but I neglected to take any pictures while we were there. I assure you that she is also adorable. I did take a couple of pictures down by the Lake Nipissing, which stretches all the way from Monetville to North Bay. The lake is so massive that it almost looks like the ocean.
Between North Bay and Monetville is Sturgeon Falls, which is where D went for most of his High School. Sturgeon is a small-ish francophone town famous for it's Chip Stands (french fries for you Americans) that are just off the highway. D's favorite is the RIV chip stand, so we of course had to visit it and get some good, old-fashioned Canadian poutine. (To be considered poutine, it MUST have cheese curds. Anything else is just an imitation).
These stands are basically big huts that sell mostly fries, but also burgers, corn dogs and other things you would find at county fairs, like beaver tails (in Vancouver we call them elephant ears).
We also took a trip into Sudbury, a formerly very dirty mining city. It is still a mining city, and it is still fairly dirty, but they are working hard to make it more clean. One improvement is a taller chimney for one of the main smelting operations that helps the soot blow out of Sudbury and into surrounding towns, such as Monetville.
It is actually really insane to think of all of the soot that has been spewing into the air for so many years. Much of Sudbury's rock face is just black from years of being coated with black soot. I stole a rock from beside the big nickel that shows over a half inch of black soot accumulation on top of the actual rock. (I can't find it right now to show a picture, though). Last time I was in Northern Ontario, I didn't go to Sudbury for some reason, so I had never seen the big nickel, which is apparently actually made from nickel. It is a tourist attraction intended to draw positive attention to all of the metal mined there and to distract from negative attention to all the pollution.
On our last night in Monetville we headed to a cabin on Lake Nippissing and went canoeing. It was just as the sun was thinking about setting, so it was really pretty.
It was a lovely ending to our week-long stay in Northern Ontario. And here we are setting out on the morning of our departure. Two more days of driving to go!
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