June 7, 2016

 It was raining on Sunday and we thought as long as we were just sitting around in the motorhome, it might just as well be moving, so we left Elliott Lake for Sudbury

This was going to be just a couple of nights, but as we were gearing up to leave this morning there was a problem with the motorhome. Michel spent the day inside the motor removing the air conditioning compressor. This afternoon he took the part to a CAT dealer and they ordered a new one. It should be in tomorrow morning  so hopefully he will be able to get it back in without too much difficulty. We should be back on the road on Thursday. 

In the mean time …. We spent most of Sunday at “Dynamic Earth” – home of the “Big Nickel”. This is a mining tour where visitors descend 7 stories in a glass enclosed elevator into the depths of the earth to a replica of an underground mine. A real mine of course is much much deeper, and I am glad we were only 7 stories deep!  During this hour long tour, we saw the transformation mining has undergone over the past 100 years.  It was very informative and very interesting.  Michel worked in a mine way back when he was 19… in Sudbury, but that mine no longer exists and most of the young people working never even heard of it. 

There is a walk-through theatre featuring a state of the art presentation that takes visitors step-by-step through the processing of nickel and copper, from the mill to the smelter and then to the refinery. Visitors can even pan for gold.

We watched three short films: The History of Mining in Sudbury;   Sea Monsters;  and How the Earth Works.

All this took us into the afternoon and we still wanted to get over to Stack Brewing. We had heard in Sault Ste. Marie that this micro-brewery did ‘tasting’ and for some reason we thought it was a place to eat and sample beer. They also said that maple syrup was used in the making of the beer. We found out that basically none of this was true. At least the eating part of it – no restaurant.  Oh and the maple syrup part of it.  They do not use maple syrup to make their beer. They make unusual types of beer though  “Vanilla Chai” being one of them.  As far as the tasting goes we did sample each one of the beers and we bought 4 cans of different kinds to try.