Thunder Bay to Sudbury

   I spent Monday getting familiar with Lake Superior and Canada Rt. 17; some people call it the great circle route around the lake. This part of Ontario is not very populated and I was thinking it was good I spent the night in a Thunder Bay because it would have been a long drive to find another place for the night. Northern Ontario is forrest, lakes and rocky outcrops.

   As I looked into the lake close to Sault St Marie I was thinking of the ship Edmund Fitzgerald that went down not far from here. Ships pick up iron ore from loaders on the western side of the lake, close to the mines and take their cargos through locks to eastern lake ports for processing.

   Sudbury is an interesting city geology wise. The worlds largest nickel processing plant (smelter) is located in town. It's stack is a huge landmark and when it was built in the 1970's it was the tallest structure in Canada. Now only the CN Tower in Toronto is higher. The stack is still the second tallest freestanding stack in the world, the largest is in Kazakhstan.

   The plant is on top of a huge nickel and copper deposit that arrived on earth millions of years ago with an asteroid strike. It's believed to be the second largest asteroid strike ever discovered.

   I was surprised at the number of world statistics, very interesting place here in Sudbury.

  

   Tuesday I hope to make it to Ottawa, the nations capital .