Day 5 - Ottawa, Ontario to North Bay, Ontario

Wednesday 8th June (Eastern Time)

Ottawa is a strange place. Our condo was away from the centre and in a quite 'trendy' area with lots of cafes, boutiques and yoga type places. The centre seems to be Parliament and business - not a lot for the average tourist to do. So although we liked the area we stayed in with its tree lined roads and pretty houses I think we won't be hurrying to return to Canada's capital - I prefer Quebec City! It was interesting to visit though.

Today we travelled along the Trans-Canada highway, there were more farms, more trees and the occasional town and even a city - Pembroke. We got some geocaches and even spotted a few big things - disappointingly the statue of a lumberjack in Renfrew and Mussie of Muskrat (imagine the Loch Ness monster) had disappeared!

The road seemed endless at times but I guess we need to get used to that.

When we booked our motel in North Bay on the edge of Lake Nipissing it was on a snowy day in January and we imagined the sun shining and enjoying its heat. Now we sit on our little deck in our warmest clothes with the heating on and wonder when it will start raining again! Still we have caches to get before we have some 'fine dining' in the White Owl Bistro next door!

The lumberjack may have disappeared but there was a pretty cool multi-cache telling us the history of Renfrew instead.

A furtive photo in a strange little tea shop. The 2 customers and the 2 waitresses stopped talking when we walked in the door. They asked what we wanted - there didn't seem to be a menu - and so we said maybe a muffin and a cup of tea. "Oh we don't do muffins, you can have a croissant if you want!"
Somehow the other 2 people - their friends - managed to have scrambled eggs and got a free bag of scones/biscuits to take away with them!
Anyway at least we got to use the bathroom! 

A Noah's Ark at Cobden - it also had a water park and zip rides but it was really cold and windy!

Yes - happy cows grazing in fields

We passed a lot of beautiful brick houses - most unusual.

There was a very sneaky geocache near this mural of a raft

A boat on a stick and the description about it  

A very large nuclear atom in the middle of Deep River with a nearby geocache of course. 

A very busy Trans-Canada highway!

Big Joe Mufferaw in Mattawa. We did an excellent multi-cache here that told us some of the history. Mattawa means 'Meeting of the waters' in Algonquin language. The Mattawa and Ottawa rivers meet here. 

Big Joe Mufferaw was a French Canadian folk hero from the Ottawa valley. He is the hero of a song by Stompi' Tom Connors apparently!

The view from our motel room in North Bay looking out over Lake Nipissing.

It's cold and raining but we have a deck with a view so we will use it!

The wind was bracing as we walked the edge of the lake looking for geocaches.

The wind calmed down just before sunset!

Our best day yet for geocaching - we got 16, a vast improvement from yesterday. We also heard that a huge hole has appeared in the middle of Rideau Road in Ottawa - right where we were looking for a geocache yesterday - perhaps that's why we didn't find it! :D