Of course, spending the entire day at Science North meant that we would have to drive late to Sault Ste. Marie. We spared ourselves enough time to scrounge up food, fuel, and toiletries and headed west. We were bound to go because we had reservations for Friday morning on the Agawa Canyon Tour Train. Those Johnston Kids were asleep when we rolled into the Sault KOA campground around 11 PM. They woke up for a snack and we went out to look at the near-full moon through our telescope. We’re still working on the whole inside-voice-in-campgrounds-during-sleeping-hours thing. Kids have the interesting ability to whisper and shout at exactly the same volume.
I think it’s a bit misleading to call a KOA a campground. KOA campgrounds are aimed at the RV crowd, and it works. To me, it looks like a parking lot with trees between the spaces. Every site is what I’ve learned to call a “pull-through”, where you drive in one side, and out the other, no time-wasting turning or reversing required. Hook your land-liner up to the on-site electricity and water connections, point the kids at the in-ground swimming pool, connect to the complimentary WiFi, and relax in an insect- and animal-free natural setting. Ah, this is camping!
I don’t mean to sound ungenerous. As much as I’m put off by the sterilization of nature, the KOA was ridiculously clean. The washrooms were better than some hotels I’ve stayed in, the WiFI is actually a nice touch (this page wasn’t published by telegraph), and a pool sure buys a little down time from entertaining bored kids. We plan to hit one again when the wilderness needs to be scraped off and batteries recharged. Not yet though. We slept for about 6 hours then packed up and took off again for the train. The pool remained unswum.
We were seated in car 3, despite our tickets saying car 2. This was an upgrade of sorts because while car 2 had standard coach seating, the seats in car 3 were arranged in quads with tables. It was a mixed blessing because the crew had obviously deemed car 3 to be the family car. We found ourselves seated next to 3 or 4 other families with children of various ages. My favourites were the crew cut, 10 year old brothers named Travis and Luke who pointed out everything we passed loudly and redundantly.
The train had screens in every car, showing the view from the front of the train looking forward. It was amusing and worrying to observe that children often preferred watching the grainy video of train tracks, to looking out the window at the actual terrain.
The train tour takes you through a good example of Canadian shield geography. Along the way, it passes over a couple of impressive trestles that make for good photos, and stops in Agawa Canyon park, which is still only a third of the way along the full passenger route. You could still go another 8 hours north if you were looking for the really 
antediluvian mosquitoes. Agawa Canyon Park isn’t all that big but serves to stretch your legs in a picturesque loc
ation. It has a circular trail that visits the Lookout, at the top of 300+ stairs, and two waterfalls, the Black Beaver Falls and the Bridal Veil Falls. It’s an easy jaunt on a gravel trail. The signboard promised a 40 minute round trip hike to the Lookout, for example, but we easily finished it in under half that time. They must be estimating for septuagenarians. Slow ones.
So Lake and I were talking about septicemia and I was explaining how some bacteria excrete compounds that are poisonous to us. That led to an explanation of excretion as something all living things do. Some bacteria excrete methane or poison. Plants excrete oxygen (or is that correctly called respiration?) and people poop. “That’s just one way people excrete,” I said. “Can you think of another way that people excrete?”
“Um… By talking?”
That’s my boy.
I have actually been to Agawa Canyon on the same train. Back in 2003, Steph, a couple of teammates (one sane, one not), and I raced in EcoChallenge North America. The race started in Sault Ste. Marie with the train ride up to Agawa Canyon. The railroad line was even a race sponsor. I spent a good part of our hike telling Short Pants and Baby Girl race stories, so I got quite excited on the way back when they played a short doc about the race on the train’s screens. I’m sure I saw myself in at least one of the race pictures they showed. That’s so cool. I thought the world had forgotten about that race.
Those Johnston Kids were running on fumes by then, having had only 6 hours sleep the night before, so they crashed hard, sleeping most of the way back, despite Travis and Luke’s best efforts.