Rebecca Radnor's Personal Blog: Consider yourselves warned!
The personal authentic travels of a world-wide drifter, you'll always see pics of me at the locations being described (if the other blogs you're reading don't do that, odds are they were NEVER there, just saying…)
These are permanent things that exist both for the local population (museums, amusement parks, areas that protect and explain local history, etc), but also in a determined effort to attract in tourism to the city… and sometimes these efforts offer little to no value to the locals OTHER than to bring in tourist dollars …
Nicknamed “the Niagara of the North” Kakabeka Falls is located on the Kaministiquia River, 30 miles west of Thunder Bay Ontario, in the municipality of Oliver Paipoonge Ontario Canada. At a height of 154 feet with a drop of 130 feet, it is the largest waterfall in the Lake Superior Watershed.
The Hoito is an unimpressive looking but historically important Finnish restaurant located in Thunder Bay Ontario Canada.
It drew my attention both as being one of the highest ranked restaurants in Thunder Bay on all the customer review websites (pulling four or five stars at each), but also because FINNISH food!!! Seriously how often do see that being offered up.
My airbnb host asked where I was intending to go for my meal and when I said “that Finnish place, the Hoito”, he said, “Good choice, I love that place.”
After I arriving there I discovered the Hoito is historically important restaurant, established in 1918 (Wikipedia). Founded by loggers over 100 years ago, and running continuously since then, the restaurant is co-operative and is so deeply embedded in the labor movement that it is considered to be socialist.
Regular customers buy membership cards that allow them to vote at the Finnish Labor Temple located directly above the restaurant, and until the 1970’s customers could buy meal tickets too, if they ate here regularly, and the food was served on long communal tables. This restaurant was even written about in the New York Times.
I had suolakala (pronounced soo-la-ka-la) which is described as a salted fish sandwich — open-faced. It’s a bit like gravlox, in that it’s cured salmon… only it’s not smoked. Thing is I eat lox sandwiches almost daily so…
— I HAD wanted kalakeitto (a salmon soup) but they have run out. They also gave me a single Finnish meatball (to try) … because I refused the suggestion to order it as it definitely is NOT on my diet
The Kinniwabi Pines Restaurant is located on the Trans-Canadian Highway, Route 1, in Michipicoten, Ontario Canada, and based on the reviews is hands down the best restaurant in the area, if you don’t include chains…
I was staying up the road and according to Yelp, this was the best restaurant in the area where I had a decent chance of getting a healthy meal… and there was BISON on the menu!!!! Love me my bison.
My first impression was this restaurant couldn’t make up its mind about what it wanted to be. Take a look at the menu offerings… at best they seem to want to be all things to all people… There’s German, Polish, Italian, American, Chinese, Caribbean, and lord only knows what offered on the menu
Unfortunately, not only were they out of the Bison, according to the waitress they’d not had it in a while and she wasn’t sure why it was still on the menu… grrrrrr….
The tomato soup was offered to everybody as free with our dinner — mostly I think because it was a full hour wait between when I ordered and when they brought me my food. I talked to some locals and they said this is normal at that restaurant, so if you know this about your chef, if DON’T at least dull the customer’s hunger with some free soup, odds are you won’t have many.
So my dinner, because there was no bison, was the grilled trout– The fish was supposed to come with dill potatoes and some other stuff I couldn’t eat, but they modified it to meet my needs. That said, the food was very good… but clearly the chef has no idea how to cook quickly. So it’s a good thing he hasn’t much competition in the area.
Because the wait was SO long… I asked them if I could wander around their patio and garden while the food was being made, and could they come out and get me….
While they do have a beautiful view and garden — what they did not have was any Wi-Fi … which is particularly egregious as there isn’t any 3G or anything in this town. So all in all, its supposed to be the best place in town, but be ready for a VERY long wait
As I was driving along the Trans-Canadian Highway, Route 1, I spotted a bunch of cars pulled to the side of the road and people alongside a wall, looking out at the river, so I stopped… River Rafting…
I admit, this is one of those bucket list things I didn’t do when young, that I’m physically incapable of doing now that I’m old…
There are a whole bunch of continental divide points in north America, this is along Tran-Canadian Highway (route 1)
I was kind of amazed by the rock around here… there was black shiny rock embedded into what almost looked like maybe it was marble. I collected smaller stones to take to Chicago to put on my father’s grave.
While there’s not much to see of a man-made nature along this route on the Trans-Canadian Highway, Route 1… it is awfully pretty
Driving down the trans-Canada Highway, route 1; Nothing here but big sky and rolling green land
Why yes, its a beautiful drive… through open country
The downtown of Lytton British Columbia is a tiny town population 249, that’s about two and a half streets wide, and seven streets long… It’s also kind of cute
Driving along Canada’s Route 1 (I was heading east, but at the time the road was going due north) I passed through the tiny town of Yale in British Columbia, population 186
I have to admit, there were items for sale at this place that made me drool… IF I had more room in the car I’d have bought the cow’s skull or the carved wooden bear… but I don’t, and I have no where to store any of it anyway… my storage locker is pretty full.
I traveled through Fort Hope back on July 30, 2016 on my way east to Stratford Canada for the Theater Festival, but never got around to posting the photos… my bad… The Fort Hope National historic site was at first a trading post, but a year later because of the explosion of the population due to the Fraser River gold rush in 1858, was designated to be a town. Apparently Hope contains what is now the oldest church in Canada, but I didn’t stop to see it. That said, this town is in a BEAUTIFUL spot!!!
The wind here was VERY strong during my visit, but according to a local I spoke to it’s always like that because Hope is the meeting point between the warm winds of the mainland and the cool winds from Ocean.
Rebecca Radnor's Personal Blog: Consider yourselves warned! 