Sault Saint Marie to Parry Sound

Another day of following a north shore - this time Lake Huron - in the drizzle or outright rain all day. This land has gently rolling hills, with evergreen and deciduous forests covering an underlying terrain of granite. So much water...ponds, ditches, streams, lakes, rivers, and the Great Lakes, and more coming down every moment. Pipeline to CA, anyone???
Road signs today included leaping deer, moose (danger at night), Amish horse-drawn wagons, and snowmobiles (called sleds up here). Saw both deer and moose, passing too fast to snap a photo, but didn't see either of the man-made vehicles.
Tonight we are camped at a KOA in Parry Sound, a tiny bay on the edge of Georgian Bay, itself a side bay of Lake Huron, where my great-great grandfather and great-grandfather lived before they migrated west to the Dakotas. Tomorrow we'll see if we can find the old homestead and perhaps the one-room log schoolhouse where my great-grandfather taught and preached.
All along the roadside today, I spotted little cairns of rocks in an unusual shape that looked vaguely human-esque. At the KOA we stayed at last night, there was a description in their handbook that called these figures Inukshuk, which has a traditional meaning of "You're on the right path" - something that spurs us on to find out more about our ancestors.

SO...about those KOAs we've stayed at: totally different than the ones in the western US with sun beating down on their bare lawns, right next to an interstate. These are largely populated by retirees, often long-term residents in their RVs, and are placed in wooded glens that if it wasn't raining or swarming with mosquitoes would be quite pleasant and picturesque. I have yet to hear a screaming child! :-)
We'll likely run out of Deep Woods Off, however, and we try to catch as many of those nasty critters as we can that manage to slip in the RV when we're getting in and out. Can't imagine our ancestors having to put up with a) incessant rain and resulting dampness and b) fighting off clouds of mosquitoes, with no respite....and no bug spray. Yuck.
We're still seeing a myriad of lilac bushes in full bloom, and the peonies are just now starting to bud out. I saw coral bells and bleeding hearts this morning, blue lupine growing along the road, and a variety of iris in bloom in rocky gardens. Columbine, both cultivated and wild, has shown up along roadsides and in gardens, and this evening I got my first sighting of lily of the valley, something we can't even get in CA from a florist, but which grows like a groundcover up here. I remember my mother's garden which had all these flowers and more, so I feel quite nostalgic!
As the rain patters away on our rooftop, Sascha sleeps in her crate and Bill digs through family history records, we all feel quite content, as the Inukshuk says, "We're on the right path."

One of the many Inukshuks we saw along our route

Lily of the valley blossoms, very fragile and precious, and growing like crazy up here!

Not sure what the pretty pink bush is, but underneath is an old family favorite "snow on the mountain", a great groundcover