Great Falls, MT to Edmonton, AB

Driving through Southern Alberta Province I passed thousands of acres of fields of yellow—a yellow-flowering plant about the height of soybeans.  I had never seen this crop before.  It is rapeseed, which is the source of canola oil.  Common or wild rapeseed is high in erucic acid, which makes it suitable for use as a biodegradable lubricant and as a binder for oil paints.  A hybrid form of rapeseed has been developed that is low in erucic acid that makes it suitable for human consumption and for use as livestock feed.  In 1978 the term “canola” was devised to stand for “Canadian oil, low acid.”

According to Wikipedia, canola oil is low in saturated fat, high in monosaturated fat, and it has a beneficial Omega-3 profile.  Hybrid rapeseed is grown in the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.  Also, all production in the United States is in North Dakota.  It is also the third largest crop in Australia, although its uses there are limited to non-food products.  In the past ten years world production of canola has quadrupled.

The yellow fields look a lot like fields of mustard, as you might see growing wild in California.  That is not surprising since both rapeseed and field mustard belong to the genus Brassica.



Rapeseed Field in Alberta,
Used in the Production of CANOLA

Mileage: 530.  Cumulative mileage: 9,496

Miles City, MT to Great Falls, MT

Over the past two days I have traveled gradually up in elevation as I have crossed the upper Great Plains and have approached the Rocky Mountains from the East.  Most of the trek consists of rolling hills composed of deep sedimentary rocks from Cretaceous Period, 146 to 66 million years old.  This was the height of the Age of Dinosaurs, up to the point of their extinction.  The sediment itself was the result of a shallow sea that covered the middle of the North American continent during much of this period.  Thus, most of the landscape consists of relatively 'young' rocks that have been subject to some uplift, but not to tectonic and volcanic activity.  The gradual elevation change is due to the uplift of the Rockies, which came from land shifts originating on the western side of the mountains.

I found the landscape quite beautiful and varied.  It appeared green and lush, particularly for July.  Here were the great fields of grain, alone with corn and soy.  Land unsuited for crops was used for cattle range.  And there were areas with trees, particularly along the river valleys and stream beds.

As I approached the Rockies I got my first glimpses of Precambrian rocks, igneous and metamorphic, capped by the thin overlay of Cretaceous sandstone.  These pictures were taken in central Montana, just south of Great Falls:

My objectives in Great Falls were to see the Lewis & Clark Expedition Interpretive Center, Giant Spring and the Roe River, and the Charles Russell Museum.  I did them all this afternoon.

Great Falls was a major event on the Lewis & Clark Expedition because it involved a portage up over the falls that took almost two weeks to accomplish.  There are interpretive centers at several sites along the expedition trail.  This one is operated by the National Park Service and is quite extensive.  As you walk through the exhibition, one side tells the story of the expedition and the other side tells about the Indians that occupied the land along the route.  It is very nicely done.

Here are the pictures from the Charles M. Russell Museum:

Charles M. Russell



Charles M. Russell

Exhibit at Charles M. Russell Museum

Exhibit at Charles M. Russell Museum

Exhibit at Charles M. Russell Museum

Exhibit at Charles M. Russell Museum



Charles M. Russell



Charles M. Russell



Charles M. Russell

Mileage: 388.  Cumulative mileage: 8,966.

Duluth, MN to Miles City, MT

I was going to go to the Black Hills and Badlands of South Dakota, and then head home.  But I decided I really wanted to see the Canadian Rockies and US Glacier National Park.  So I headed due West.  I only made a brief stop at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, in the western part of North Dakota.  Here are some pictures:

It appears the area was set aside as a tribute to Theodore Roosevelt, who first visited the area in 1883 and established a ranch nearby.  It was declared the Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park (they only NPS park having that designation) in 1947, and was re-designated Theodore Roosevelt National Park in 1978.  The primary activities in the park are hiking, horseback riding, and wildlife viewing.

Mileage: 728.  Cumulative mileage: 8,578.

Marquette, MI to Duluth, MN

I traveled to the northern end of the Keweenaw Peninsula in Upper Michigan.  Known as Copper Country, it extends 70 miles into Lake Superior.  The population of the peninsula is currrently about 6,000, but in the heyday of copper mining a century ago, the population was ten times as much.  Hard rock mining ended in 1967.  Part of the peninsula has now been established as Keweenaw National Historical Park to preserve the history and culture of the copper industry.

Is it a peninsula or an island?  It seems to me its an island because its separated by a natural waterway, though it was small until it was dredged in the 1860s.  So sometimes the northern part of the peninsula is called "Copper Island."  But mostly the whole thing is called Keweenaw Peninsula.

While the upper Michigan peninsula has lots of iron mines, copper was found in quantity and mined only on the Keweenaw Peninsula.  How did it get there?  About 1.1 billion years ago, the Midcontinent Rift developed in the North American Plate.  The rift failed, and the plate did not split.  Keweenaw Peninsular was probably the location of a hot spot at a three-way junction in the 2000-mile-long rift.  The hot spot made a dome that covered the area that now holds Lake Superior.  Magna filled in as the rift developed.  Most of the rift's igneous rocks are deeply buried (about 6 miles down), but they are relatively near the surface at the Keweenaw Peninsula.  The copper formed was 97 percent pure native copper--the biggest formation of native copper that has been found in the world. (Most copper ore is only 1-2% copper).  Here is picture I took of a sheet of copper mined from the Keweenaw Peninsula.  It is on display in the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC:

Native Copper Sheet
Approximate Size 10 ft by 4 ft
Mined from Keweenaw Peninsula,
Upper Peninsula Michigan

Mileage: 425.  Cumulative mileage: 7,850.

Sault Sainte Marie, ON to Marquette, MI

Finally I crossed into the USA without undergoing an inspection of the Mustang.

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore is today's major event.  Its located on the Michigan Upper Peninsula on Lake Superior.  Unfortunately, the best way to see it is from the lake.  Here is a link to a  Photo gallery of Pictured Rock National Lakeshore from the perspective of the lake.  I did get in a few short hikes and took some of my own pictures.

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore
Looking Toward Au Sable Light Station

Miners Castle

Miners Castle
Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

Cove West of Miners Castle

The shoreline consists of sandstone cliffs rising about 200 feet above the lakeshore.  Most of the structure dates from the Cambrian period 500 million years ago.  The deeper-colored sandstone near the shore is from the Pre-Cambrian period.  The name pictured rocks derives from the streaks of mineral stain (from iron, manganese, copper) that decorate the face of the cliffs.

Another feature is Grand Sable Dunes, located on the eastern end of the national lakeshore.  They were formed from sand washed ashore by wave action and then uplifted by northerly winds to cover a glacial moraine.  And that's how it happened.  People like to slide down the face of the dune.  The hike back up is quite a chore.  I watched, but did not partake.

Grand Sable Dunes at
Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

Mileage: 224.  Cumulative mileage: 7,425.

Sudbury, ON to Sault Sainte Marie, ON

Buy Canadian moccasins, 2 pair

I decide to shorten trip.  The original length was to be 150 days, ending in early November.  Now I will be home by mid-August.

Mileage: 233.  Cumulative mileage: 7,201.

Tobermory, ON to Sudbury, ON

Today I visited Manitoulin Island, Ontario, which is the largest island in a freshwater lake in the world.  It is located in Lake Huron, on the western side of Georgian Bay.  It covers 1,068 square miles, and itself has 108 lakes.  Lake Mantou, at 40.5 square miles, is the largest lake in a freshwater island in the world.  Part of the island consists of First Nation reserves.  (First Nations are Canada's reference to indigenous or native tribes).
Tourism and agriculture are the primary economic activities.

To get to Manitoulin Island I took a large vehicle ferry from Tobermory on the Bruce Peninsula.  The voyage took about two hours and was quite pleasant.  Here is a picture of the ferry before the vehicles were loaded.  A sequence of pictures showing the bow dropping is on the Miscellany 2 page.

Yawning Bow of Ferry
To Manitoulin Island, Ontario

My destination of Sudbury was because of the huge nickel mine located there.  International Nickel Company has operated the mine since 1902.  The company was bought in 2008 by the Brazilian mining conglomerate Companhia Vale do Rio Doce.

The Sudbury Basin is the result of a meteor strike that occurred 1.8 billion years ago.  It is said to be the second-largest meteor impact on earth.  The meteor is estimated to have been six miles across, and formed a crater at least 150 miles across.  As a result of erosion, the remaining part of the crater consists of the basin, which is 39 miles long and 19 miles deep.  Debris from the impact traveled 500 miles, with rock fragments having been found as far away as Minnesota.  Some scientific modeling suggests that debris most likely scattered globally, with evidence of of the debris having been lost to erosion.  The large impact crater filled with magma from below the earth's crust.  As this magma cooled, it developed deposits of nickel, copper, platinum, palladium, gold and other minerals.  The mineral deposits were discovered by Albert Salter in 1856, but mining exploration was not feasible until the railroads came into the area in the 1880s.

The mining activity up to the 1970s had a devastating environmental impact on the Sudbury area.  A byproduct of the smelting process was the emission of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere.  Considerable effort has been made to remedy the devastation, particularly the processing of sulphur dioxide into sulphuric acid, which is captured and sold for other industrial uses.  They also constructed a 385-foot "Superstack" in 1973, which emits most water vapor.

385-foot Superstack
At Inco Nickel Smelting Plant

A major "scenic" feature of the Sudbury area is the tailings piles.  Since the metal ores compose only about five percent of the mined rock, the remainder winds up in these huge piles.  It appears that some have been covered with topsoil and seeded with grasses.  Overall, this has been an interesting place to visit.

30-foot Big Nickel
At Sudbury, Ontario

Mileage: 139.  Cumulative mileage: 6,968.

Canton, MI to Tobermory, ON

Most people think of Michigan in terms of cars.  If you get up to the Traverse City area, you may think of cherries and cherry pie.  I kind of think of it as sedimentary strata on top of  Precambrian rocks. (Yeah, right). There is this thing called the Michigan Basin.  It is a roughly circular formation that encompasses what is now Western Ontario, Lake Huron, the lower Michigan peninsula, Lake Michigan, and Eastern Wisconsin.  It is a basin because it subsided as shallow-sea sediments filled it.  In addition, barrier reefs formed around the edge of the basin.  As the shallow sea subsided (actually, rose and fell many, many times), the reefs caused the water in the basin to be trapped.  Over a long period of time, the water in the basin evaporated, leaving extensive salt deposits.  The largest underground salt mine in the world is currently being dug under Lake Huron from an entry point at Goderich, Ontario.  It currently extends more than five kilometers under the lake.  Unfortunately, Sifto, the operating company, doesn't appear to care for visitors and I could not find any informational exhibits about the phenomenon when I visited the town.  Sifto did donate some land overlooking the harbor for a very nice, rustic park that I very much enjoyed walking through.  Here is a picture of the Sifto facility in Goderich:

Sifto Salt Mine
Goderich, Ontario

Although the world may someday run out of oil, given the size just of the Michigan Basin, it is unlikely to ever run out of salt.

The next stop was Bruce Peninsula Canadian National Park, which juts between the main body of Lake Huron and Georgian Bay.  The primary feature of the park is that it is composed of part of the Niagara Escarpment, a geological formation from the Silurian Period (444 to 416 million years ago), which involved reef-building and the formation of a dolomite limestone capstone.  Dolomite is limestone in which magnesium has been chemically substituted  for some of the calcium.  Dolomite is usually harder than calcium-based limestone.  The most prominent feature of the Niagara Escarpment are the Niagara Falls, but a similar erosion-caused drop-off extends from Watertown, New York, westward roughly near the shore of Lake Ontario, then northerly across Ontario Province, then along the western shore of Georgian Bay up to Manitoulin Island, then westward along the Michigan upper peninsular and into Wisconsin, then following the western shore of Lake Michigan and ending northwest of Chicago.  Once the seas withdrew, the reef-building material started to erode, forming the escarpment, which appears as a ridge or drop-off.  The result in Bruce Peninsula National Park is stunning shoreline.  However, I apparently failed to take any pictures of it.

Example of Dolomite
That Composes the
Niagara Escarpment Capstone

Mileage: 324.  Cumulative mileage: 6,829.

Canton, MI

The highlight of the visit was an afternoon spent taking the kids bowling and to "Chuck e Cheese" hell.  First, an editorial comment from the grandkids:  "hell" is a bad word that you are not supposed to say...  End of editorial comment.  The Chuck folks have learned a lot from the slot machine industry.  But instead of taking coins and occasionally delivering some of them back, Chuck takes coin tokens (obtained with real paper dollars) and delivers back (frequently) paper tickets.  Huge mounds of these paper tickets are acquired in a very short time playing the games.  These huge mounds are then used to exchange for trinkets or cotton candy.  The ratio must be something on the order of $25 worth of tokens turned into $1 worth of merchandise.  But I didn't think of any of this at the time.  The grandfatherly purpose is to dish out the loot and watch the light in the grandkids' eyes.  Pleasure indeed!

Sawyer Says
"Cormick  Gr-Grab Them Tickets"

CCH Intensity
Eric and Sawyer

So let me tell you about the bowling.  It's a different game with kids, because they use gutter rails, so there are no gutters.  Anyone who has had any exposure to bowling knows that you are trying to knock down all 10 pins with one roll of the ball, and that the only consistent way to do that is to strike the balls between the one pin (the head pin) and the three pin--assuming you are right-handed.  That's called a strike.  All four grandkids got strikes.  How they got them is another matter.  Kennedy observed Sawyer getting a strike by bouncing the ball off the gutter rail and into the pins.  She decided if once bounce, or carom, is good, several are better.  Sure enough, throw--carom--carom--carom--carom, down go all ten pins.  It is possible to throw a gutter ball even with the gutter rails.  I've seen it.  You bounce the ball on the lane and it clears the gutter rail and into the gutter.  Absolutely fascinating.

Kennedy:  "Ste-rike!"

Eric:  "I wonder if I can knock down
the 7 and 10 pins and
leave the rest standing up"

Back at the house, we also had a couple of interesting Scrabble matches.  In the kids' version, you see everybody's tiles.  So I made suggestions.  This made it difficult for me to win.  That's fine since I didn't care about winning.  But this was anathema to Sawyer, the super-competitor, particularly since the beneficiary was usually Kennedy.  With Kids' Scrabble, when all else fails you throw the board in the air, scattering the tiles, and everybody goes to bed.

Miscellaneous shots:

Sawyer

Tex

Cormick

Mileage: 20.  Cumulative mileage: 6,502.

Toronto, ON to Canton, MI

Trip to Canton to visit with Jeff, Jen and the grandkids.

I got searched again at the border in Detroit, but it was only a partial search and I think the guy was more interested in checking out my Mustang.  We had a nice conversation.

Mileage: 243.  Cumulative mileage: 6,482.

Toronto, ON

I came to Toronto for the reason that I had never been here before.  Its a city of about 2.5 million residents in a metropolitan area of about double that population.  That makes it the seventh largest metro area in North America.  Accordingly, it has a major league baseball team.  And it was the only chance for me to see a major league baseball game on this trip, so there I went.

Toronto Blue Jays v. Seattle Mariners

Actually, the baseball game came at the end of a long day of touring downtown Toronto.

My prime stop was at the Royal Ontario Museum, which is a museum of natural history and cultural history.  The original museum, which opened in 1914, is an ornate brick-and-terracotta pile.  A new wing, the Michael-Lee Chin Crystal, was added in 2007.  Aside from the dramatic appearance of the crystal, an interesting fact is that it was designed by Daniel Libeskind, who is the master plan architect for the new World Trade Center complex in New York.

With any of these large museums, you have to go in with a plan.  There is no way you can see even part of the  collection in one stay.  I determined I was only good for three hours of looking, and that turned out to be about right.  I spent most of the time looking at the highlight exhibits, which were a touring show of Fryderyk Chopin and the Romantic Piano, and exhibit on Water, and a photographic exhibition on Oil by Edward Burtynksy.  I also stopped to see the dinosaurs and large ancient mammals, and the gem and mineral collection.  The highlight exhibits are often referred to as "edutainment", meaning they are designed to attract an audience--often an audience of children--by pulling together natural and cultural features in a manner designed to entertain as much as educate.  The Water exhibit involved a number of interactive devices to represent the action of water and its effects on land, people and animals.  The oil exhibit was a photo essay of about 40 large pictures reflecting the environmental impact of oil extraction, production and consumption.  The Chopin exhibit displayed and chronicled both the key moments of his life and work, and the cultural backdrop of Poland, Austria and England.

Pictures of Mastodon skeleton with only one tusk, and of an White Rhinoceros that until recently was housed (alive) at the Toronto Zoo:

Mastodon Skeleton at
Royal Ontario Museum

White Rhinoceros at
Royal Ontario Museum

Next up was the CN Tower, which before the mass building of tall things in Dubai was the place to go to see things from way up while still anchored to terra firma.  Since we've all been in airplanes we all know what cities look like from above.  The advantage, if any, of a tower is that you gaze and reflect for as long as you want.  For most of the people who were viewing along with me, this was about one to two minutes.  It probably was even that long because it took about a half-hour wait in line and on elevator to get a chance at a look.  The other exciting thing to do is to stand on a piece of plexiglass and look straight down.  Screech if you feel like it.  The basic look out level is at 1,136 feet.  There is also a fancy restaurant at this level, and the world's highest wine cellar.  The restaurant doesn't rotate.  The more adventurous can wait another half hour for another elevator to Sky Pod, which is at 1,465 feet, or the equivalent of a 143-story building.  There is also a new double-dare called the EdgeWalk, in which you are attached to an overhead line and walk hands-free along a five-foot-wide ledge above the Tower's main pod.  The promo piece says, "Trained EdgeWalk guides will encourage participants to push their personal limits, allowing them to lean back over Toronto with nothing but air and breathtaking views of Lake Ontario beneath them."  Price: $175 Canadian, and you get a 'certificate of achievement.'  Not gonna happen.

Top of Toronto Blue Jays Stadium
From Look Out Level of CN Tower

Looking Down While Standing On
Plexiglass Floor at CN Tower Look Out Level

Mileage: 20.  Cumulative mileage: 6,239

Niagara Falls, NY to Toronto, ON

The Royal Botanical Gardens, located near Hamilton, Ontario, are Canada's largest public gardens.  The total acreage is 2,700, though 2,400 of those acres are held as a conservation preserve.  The botanic gardens are well-established and tastefully done.

There is the Rock Garden, which is built in an old quarry.  A tremendous number of boulders were transported to the site to create a multi-tiered collection of flowerbeds, ponds and wooded areas.

Ontario Royal Botanical Gardens
Rock Garden

There is a spectacular collection of asiatic lilies, many of which were in bloom.  Apparently new varieties of these lilies are very easy to propagate, and there are now in excess of 6,500 varieties of the genus Lilium.  This count does not include a number of flowers that are called lilies, but are in different plant families.  For instance, daylilies are in the genus Hemerocallis and the family Xanthorrhoeaceae.  I took several pictures of the lilies in bloom, and they are on the Miscellany  page.  Here is one of them:

Asiatic Hybrid Lily
'Baywatch'

The garden that interested me the most was the Morrison Woodland Garden.  It winds down a ravine next to the formal gardens.  It is a combination of naturally-occurring plants and trees and added ones.  The designers have given attention to varying and integrating the trees based on leaf forms, shapes and colors.  The ground level is populated with hostas and ferns.  Paths wind up and down, but limited lines of sight may the walk seem intimate and solitary.

There is also a Mediterranean garden that has an extensive collection of plants from Mediterranean climates around the globe.  The unique feature of this garden is that it is contained in a conservatory.  Most conservatories I have seen in northern gardens are used to house tropical plants, including palms and bananas.  The atmosphere is usually quite humid.  This conservatory is dry and warm.

Mileage: 91.  Cumulative mileage: 6,219

Niagara Falls, NY

I have been to Niagara Falls twice before, but it is always an exhilarating experience.  There are few places that you can come so close to such sheer, raw power and such natural beauty.  Its a good thing I went to Letchworth Gorge before Niagara, else the former would be "meah."

I skipped the "Maid of the Mist" boat, but got my soak at Cave of the Winds.  On the elevator up from Cave the attendant asked if anyone had any questions.  I asked, facetiously, how do they turn off the falls?  Not a dumb question, apparently.  The diversion canal for the power plant has the capacity to handle the entire flow of the Niagara River, and from time to time they divert the whole river and the falls go dry.  He said this was last done about four years ago.  Well shut my mouth.

Once in recorded history the falls went dry naturally.  On March 29, 1848, a gale pushed ice from the Niagara River backward into Lake Erie.  The wind shifted and pushed the ice back into the river, forming an ice dam.  The water drained from the riverbed, the American Falls went dry, and only a few streams went over Horseshoe Falls.  Later that night, the pressure of the water behind the ice dam and the shifting of the ice allowed water to again flow down the Niagara River and over the falls.

Lets go to the pics:

American Falls

American Falls

Blue Ants Soaking Up
American Falls

Yellow Ants At
Cave of the Winds
At Foot of American Falls

Feel the Power

Soak Time for Yellow Ants

Rainbow Bridge
Over Niagara River

The Discovery Center at the Falls has an interesting exhibit on theories for cause of ice ages.  Apparently the cause that is gaining wide acceptance is know as Milankovitch cycles, named after a Serbian engineer and mathematician who theorized that wobbles in the orbit of the Earth around the Sun caused climate change.  He calculated a full cycle of precession (look it up) of the Earth at 26,000 years, and the Earth's elliptical orbit  of the Sun that rotates more slowly.  The combined effects result in an oscillation in the Earth's orbit that causes the planet to warm or cool.  Milankovitch developed his theory while interred during World War I.  It did not gain acceptance until 1976, when studies of deep-ocean cores provided empirical support.  If this has peaked your curiosity, here is a Wikipedia article that goes into a lot of detail.

Mileage: 15.  Cumulative mileage: 6,128.

Fair Haven, NY to Niagara Falls, NY

Today's scenic marvel is Letchworth Gorge State Park in Western New York State.  Here is a description from Roadside Geology of New York  by Bradford B. Van Diver:

           Letchworth Gorge, the "Grand Canyon of the east," is the 22-mile section of the Genesee River between Portageville and Mt. Morris that is now under state protection as Letchworth State Park.  It is a portion of the river whose meandering course has been deeply incised into the plateau since the end of the Ice Age, producing remarkably narrow, winding bedrock canyons at either end with nearly vertical walls.  The upper canyon at the Portageville end contains three major cataracts, and the Mt. Morris Highbacks canyon at the lower end is the site of the Mt. Morris flood-control dam.  In the central section, the river now occupies a preglacial valley with high, but gently-sloping sides; it meanders over a moderately broad flood plain.

There you have it.  It ain't a 'grand canyon', but its not bad.  Let's go to the pics:

Letchworth Gorge Canyon

Letchworth Gorge Canyon

Letchworth Gorge Canyon
Below Lower Falls

Lower Falls
70-foot drop

Middle Falls
107-foot drop

Norfolk Southern Railroad Trestle
Above Upper Falls

Upper Falls
71-foot drop

The interesting thing about the Mt. Morris Dam at the bottom of the gorge is that it is a dry dam.  Most of the time it holds back no water.  But about once every seven years the Genesee River floods the gorge and the dam is closed to keep from flooding the agricultural land downstream.  The water is then released at a measured pace.

Three falls formed rather than one probably because at the end of the ice age, meltwater lakes formed downstream that controlled the base level of erosion in the gorge.  The upper falls formed when the river spilled over a scarp (a steep slope) at the edge of the lake.  As the lake receded, the middle and lower falls formed as the river fell over newly-exposed scarps.

Mileage: 229.  Cumulative mileage:  6,113.