Thunder Bay, Nipigon to Cochrane, Iroquois Falls to Thessalon and the Soo, and on to Detroit (posted from the library at Southfield, MI)

(this post covers 22-26 August, 2007)

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Sunday, 26 August-

Today we worked on several little projects for Mom and Dad, getting some keys made, replacing a sticky lock, replacing a dishwasher door spring, replacing a screen door sweep, etc,… all little things that need doing. Each seems like a small thing to do but somehow they manage to speed up the clock and evening comes in no time. Mom and Dad took us out to a nice dinner and then we watched ‘Coma’ with Michael Douglas and Genevieve Bujold. I am very happy to report that I can watch an older movie like that and have no recollection of it whatsoever.

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Saturday, 25 August-

We had a pretty good night at the Sault Saint Marie Wal-mart last night but woke early and were on the road by 0800. Today was another make-some-miles day. We headed down I-75 in a light rain, listening to the rest of our Bill Moyers’ Journal podcasts, We drove into Gaylord for our break then gassed up and put the pedal to the metal and listened to ‘CBC:Manitoba This Week’ and ‘CBC:The North This Week’ podcasts. Our trip back to the Detroit area was an easy one and we made it to Mom and Dad’s by 1500. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening catching up on family news and talking about our trip then watched ‘The Gift’ with Cate Blanchett. Cate is amazing. This time she plays a small-town southern woman, a fortune-teller, and she’s so very, very believable. Every detail is just right, from inflection to mannerisms to reactions, she’s pitch-perfect.

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Friday, 24 August-

Today was a day to make miles. After breakfast and showers we drove west on 101 through Timmons and on to Chapleau before turning south for Thessalon and then on to Sault Saint Marie, a 425-mile day. The area from Timmons to Thessalon is quite isolated and beautiful, particularly toward the end. Timmons and Chapleau are mining towns (gold and copper, I believe) but we’d go a hundred kilometers at a time without seeing anything but trees and lakes with perhaps an occasion sign to a hunting or fishing camp dozens of miles off the main road. I was surprised how good the road was, particularly in the most remote portions of it. About 80 miles north of Thessalon we entered the Algoma district and the terrain changed from rolling forest to dramatic granite ridges rising abruptly among the pines. No wonder a tourist train runs up this way from the Soo—these granite-ringed valleys and the river are fantastic. The other thing we noticed here was a change in color of the leaves on deciduous trees. We’re starting to see yellows and a few reds-- on the 24th of August!
At the Soo we crossed back into the US after an hour’s wait in line—not as bad as we expected for a Friday evening. We jumped off the interstate at the Wal-mart exit and set up for the night then watched “Swordfish” on DVD. I can’t recommend it. Lots of action and a few interesting special-effects moments but I didn’t like how the director exploited Halle Berry and the female extras. I realize it’s a fantasy but the macho elements were so sophomoric I’d think Travolta and Hugh Jackman will, when they grow up, someday wonder “what was I thinking?”.

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Thursday, 23 August-

This morning we left Wild Goose Lake and drove into Geraldton to look around. We were surprised to find a fairly-modern and pleasant town this far out in the bush. We then drove on (and on, and on!) through Longlac, Hearst, Kapuscaning, and, by late afternoon, Cochrane. Again, the towns up here are modern and pleasant. They are sited at gold or molybdenum mines or paper mills. There’s nothing but bush for long, long stretches between them but by ‘bush’ we’re talking boreal forest, lakes and rivers --- not bad if you can get it! Heck, Kapuscaning even has a Wal-mart.
At Cochrane we stopped in to see what the Polar Bear Express is all about. For $100 per person you get a 4-1/2 hour train ride on the Northern Ontario railway to Moosonee (which is on the river some 15 miles below James Bay proper) and a return trip that evening. I’d love to see the Moose Factory fur trading post and the little town of Moosonee itself but perhaps we’ve got ‘headed for the barn’ syndrome—it just didn’t seem all that special for the costs we’d have to pay to get there. Maybe another time.
After Cochrane we turned south and drove to a private campground near Iroquois Falls for the night.
Overall our drive across the most northerly road in Ontario was pleasant but perhaps a little too familiar. Because the road is a Trans-Canada alternate route there were more trucks than we like to see and, in fact, one coming from the opposite direction threw up a stone and cracked our windshield yet again. That’s the third crack this trip! Of course once the window is cracked it’s not a big deal to get another (and another) but it’s rather rude of them, wouldn’t you say?
Our campground for the night is a pleasant one which is mostly dedicated to seasonal campers, i.e., local people who rent a site for the entire camping season. The owner said he has been thinking of converting to an all-seasonal format since there’s a five-year waiting list for a site but some of his regulars might complain. They like to have friends with camping units come visit and stay a few days. Thank goodness. There was nothing else within a half-hour drive and we were ready to stop for the night.
After a leisurely supper we watched the movie ‘Rat Race’… mostly good fun in the “Mad, Mad, Mad World” tradition.

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Wednesday, 22 August-

From Sandbar Lake Provincial Park we drove on to Thunder Bay via 17, a very scenic drive through rolling hills of pine with a few white birch and maple trees, all interspersed with massive granite outcrops of the Canadian Shield. For the last two days we enjoyed seeing the ultra-flat plains around Lake Winnepeg slowly turn into gentle rises and drops as we drove through the Whiteshell and on to Sandbar Lake at Ignace. And today we continued the trend to rougher terrain until we saw the distinctive mountain just south of Thunder Bay and Lake Superior in the distance. In Thunder Bay we stopped at the local Seattle Coffee shop for an afternoon coffee-and-wi-fi break to could check our email and update the blog. We lost an hour crossing back into the Eastern Time zone this afternoon so it was late afternoon by the time we got back on the road and headed out of Thunder Bay for parts unknown.
Several days ago we had decided we didn’t want to take the same north-shore-of-superior route back to The Soo, even though it’s very scenic. That would have left the northern-most route across Ontario undone. It’s quite a few miles more to drive across Highway 11 to Cochrane and then circle back to the Soo but on the other hand it’s all new territory to us and so worth the extra miles. I can’t imagine sitting at home and looking at the Ontario map and thinking, “Gee, we were so close, why didn’t we go see what the country looks like up there?”
We drove on toward Nipigon and as we approached we saw spectacular palisades at Red Rock. These are sheer walls of granite rivaling views in the Rockies, and in fact reminding us of our first sighting of the Canadian Rockies last summer as we neared Jasper National Park on the Yellowhead Highway.
At Nipigon we turned northward again (toward Lake Nipigon) and found ourselves following the shore of a spectacular lake on our left and granite palisades on our right at the perfect time of day—the last hour before sunset. The far side of the lake was slowly falling into shadow while the massive palisades and the white birches below them and atop them were lit up by the reddish rays of the sun. This went on for mile after mile after mile, until our road finally turned away from the lake and climbed atop the mountain. There we were rewarded with long views across the rolling ridges, all in a thick carpet of greenery accented by the white birches.
We had seen that Geraldton was about a hundred miles from Nipigon and as we neared it we found what we were looking for—Wild Goose Lake and a private campground there. We’re normally not fond of private campgrounds but Ontario’s Provincial Park camping prices are so high ($24 per night for a tent site) that we’ve found we can do as well or better in a private campground. The Wild Goose Lake Campground was great. We met co-owner Brigette who led us to a nice, open, and private campsite by ATV and chatted with us. The site was near modern bathrooms where showers were available (albeit for $.75 for four minutes) and the site cost $18. After the long day driving we didn’t last long after our late supper. We were in bed reading by 21:30 and asleep shortly thereafter.

Thompson redux, the Interlake, Gimli, Whiteshell Provincial Park, and back to Kenora (posted from Seattle Coffee, Thunder Bay, ON)

(this post covers 18-21 August, 2007)

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Tuesday, 21 August-

We awoke early this morning- shortly after 06:00- and decided to get on with our day. We had a rainy and windy night which interfered with our sleep for a couple of hours but then we slept very heavily and awoke refreshed. After breakfast and showers we drove east to the Bannock Point petroforms area. A trail leads back through the boreal forest to areas of bare rock—the Pre-cambrian Shield—where petroforms thought to be as much as 1500 years old lay. A common form is that of a turtle, which, as we learned earlier in our trip, is the key animal of the Ojibwe creation story. All the world is a giant turtle on whose back everything rides. It was easy to see this is an area of great significance. Around the area hang dozens, if not hundreds, of colorful pieces of cloth left by people who still use the area for religious or tribute ceremonies. We saw special (modern) tribute stones, one a set of coal-size crystalline stones placed at the eight points of the compass and a white heart-shaped rock in the center. And we saw ceremonial bowls, tobacco tributes, pouches of unknown materials, and a human effigy-doll laid in places of special significance. It was all very striking. We could easily imagine being here at dawn, or dusk, or in the light of a full moon and feeling a particularly-strong connection or sense of wonder.
We then drove on to the Alfred Hole Canada Goose Refuge, just outside of Whiteshell Park. There we met an enthusiastic, young and very knowledgeable woman ranger in charge of the center. She told us about the five different subspecies of Canada geese which came through the center during their migration—including one named for the center. She pointed out one goose which had drooping wings and said it was a Lesser Canada goose which just came in from the north late yesterday or this morning, the first she has seen this season with the drooping-wing problem. The drooping wings indicate a vitamin deficiency characteristic of geese right after they migrate in from areas such as the tundra where their food plants have lower nutrient values. After a few days here browsing the higher-nutrient plants of this lower latitude, the goose will be able to lift its wings into their normal resting place.
After lunch we started out again on our more-or-less homeward path, taking 44 down to the Trans-Canada Highway just east of the Manitoba-Ontario border. At the border we stopped at the visitor center to look for another copy of a particular map we like (the Northern Manitoba Adventure Map) and chatted with the very nice visitor center woman we had met on the way in. We told her of our travels throughout the province and promised to send her an email summarizing our wonderful Manitoba trip.
We then drove on to Kenora again, where we stopped at the Safeway for supplies and a frappacino. We then drove on via 17 across the beautiful ridges and lakes between Kenora and Ignace. By then it was after 17:00 so we camped for the night at Sandbar Lake Provincial Park, spending our evening listening to Bill Moyers podcasts, catching up on our logs, and reading.

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Monday, 20 August-

After a wonderful night on the windy western shore of Lake Winnipeg, we drove into the town of Gimli to visit the Icelandic Heritage Museum. Because of several factors in Iceland in the 1870’s----- much colder than normal temperatures, crop failures, famine, and disease ---- approximately one-quarter of the population emigrated to another country. A group of Icelanders petitioned the government of Canada to grant them a new territory for their exclusive use. Amazingly, Canada granted them a large contiguous piece of land – a reserve for their exclusive use -- on the western shore of Lake Winnipeg and emigration began in 1876. But a smallpox epidemic and the harsh winters and hot summers resulted in about 250 of the 300 original Icelandic families moving on to North Dakota. Later, the borders of the reserve were opened up and Gimli today has only about 30 per cent of its residents claiming Icelandic roots. We enjoyed our visit to pleasant little Gimli but today it’s becoming a resort town for nearby Winnipeg and is a little too civilized for us given its many ‘resort’ subdivisions, golf courses, etc. In other words--- boring!
We then continued down the western shore of Lake Winnipeg until we could turn for Ontario at Selkirk and continued on to Whiteshell Provincial Park in a light rain. Whiteshell is an 1800 square-mile park with a variety of landforms and aboriginal petroforms, i.e., ceremonial sites featuring figures of humans, turtles, snakes, and birds made by piling and lining up stones to form a shape.
We visited the Whiteshell Natural History Museum which had excellent taxidermy mounts of the park’s wildlife and a good section on wild rice harvesting in the area and the rest of the province. I loved getting a chance to handle a mid-century Trapper Nelson pack and packboard—it reminded me of my Boy Scout days.
After the museum we checked into a campsite at the Nutimik Lake campground nearby and spent the evening reading and blogging.

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Sunday, 19 August-

This morning we dropped by the library again to connect to the net and finish up email and checking our online accounts. We then gassed up and pulled out of Thompson, for the last time, headed south.
A few miles out of town we picked up a hitchhiker. His name was Ralph Alexander and he’s an Ojibwe who lives in the Cree town of Nelson House and works as a substance abuse counselor at the Nelson House Medicine Lodge (the tribal clinic). Ralph had dropped off a truck and some furniture for his daughter who was moving to a First Nations town further north to begin her new job as a nurse. He was now hitching back to Grand Rapids, about a three-hour drive from Thompson.
Ralph is a very interesting and friendly guy and we grilled him mercilessly, asking him question after question about aboriginal life in the area, about his occupation, about moose hunting and fishing (his hobbies) and about his wife and kids. The Medicine Lodge has a 17-week program of holistic healing which uses ceremony, psychology, lectures, and workshops to help their clients and Ralph is proud of his work. He says they have about a 75 per cent success rate. Ralph is married to a Cree woman so he picks up some of the language from her but says he still has a hard time with it. He also had a terrific sense of humor. We were talking about differences in wildlife between here and Pennsylvania and I asked if they have turkeys this far up. He replied, deadpan—‘Yeah, I know a few turkeys” and then smiled. He had told us he preferred to counsel outside his own community because it was so difficult to counsel his own relatives so I added: “And some of them are your relatives, right?” He liked that.
Ralph has heard a sasquatch. Yep, a bigfoot. Last year there was a big to-do around Norway House (we passed the turnoff to Norway House with Ralph) about the ferry operator having videoed a sasquatch. It turns out the guy is related to Ralph and told him a few days after it happened that he was still hearing the sasquatch make screaming sounds they’ve never heard before. Ralph went up there and heard the sound, which he says can’t be described. When we asked whether it could have been a cougar, he said, no, it’s not like that, nor is it like an animal under duress (like a rabbit’s screech when being attacked). Ralph was completely serious but who knows whether he was leading us on or not. Thank goodness we had asked about the Norway House sasquatch without indicating one way or another whether we believed it.
We eventually made it to Grand Rapids and dropped off Ralph at the gas station while we filled up for the next long leg down ‘the Interlake’. We had driven a hundred miles without seeing any type of habitation, business, or even a sign —just mile after mile of flat boreal forest and the hydro towers (electrical towers) running parallel to our course. But we did see a bear! A beautiful young black bear was walking along the road but disappeared into the bush as we approached and Labashi never got a shot off (a camera shot, that is).
We continued south, bound for Gimli on Lake Winnipeg. I ought to have my head examined for this one. For some reason I had set Gimli as my goal and we drove more than 450 miles today to get there. Gimli is the center of the largest Icelandic community outside of Iceland and we hear it’s a nice little town but it would still be there tomorrow and the next day. We passed several community campgrounds along the way and we could have stopped there but I wanted to see the lake so we didn’t get in until 18:30.
After supper Labashi and I walked along the west shore of Lake Winnipeg and imagined the voyageurs making their way along this massive lake. We saw black-tipped pelicans and after awhile had a fleet of white bugs fluttering about us as the sun set. We saw one of my favorite birds, a cedar waxwing, hovering and darting about oddly and it took us a minute to realize he (or she) was catching the white bugs. We were fascinated by his skill. He’d watch from a branch for a minute, then dart straight to a bug, get it, then flutter and pick off two or three more bugs in quick succession before returning to his branch. What a display!
As we walked on we also saw the slowest, cutest bat ever. Apparently the cedar waxwing wasn’t the only one interested in bugs. A bat fluttered toward us but had a hard time making progress against the brisk wind coming from our backs. But he didn’t give up despite the fact that he was making such slow progress upwind. He’d dart a little sideways to pick off a bug now and again as he went. What a cutie!
We returned to the van and spent the rest of the evening blogging and reading.

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Saturday, 18 August-

Today was a recovery day. Before leaving for Churchill we had emptied and cleaned the cooler so this morning after our very long, hot showers we shopped for perishables and block-ice to start using it again and replenished the food box. We then dropped by the visitor’s center to see Carol. We had promised to let her know how our trip to Churchill had gone. Carol was a bit upset, though, because vandals had broken the head off the spirit-wolf statue in the side yard and had broken the ears and snout off three others a block away. Thompson is known for the fancifully-painted spirit-wolf statues throughout the town and heavily promotes them in tourist literature. Worse, the one at the visitor center had special meaning. It had been sponsored by a local man whose wife, an avid gardener, had recently died. He had bought the concrete statue of the howling wolf with his own money and had paid an artist to paint an intricate garden scene on it. The other wolves will eventually be auctioned off to raise money for town beautification projects but this particular one was to be kept permanently at the visitor’s center. One of the center’s security cameras was pointed at the wolf but the area was not lighted at night and the vandals could not be seen. After that bummer we stayed and chatted with Carol awhile. She is a lifelong resident of the Thompson area but has never been to Churchill. By providing details on costs and where we stayed we were hoping to encourage her to make the trip but I don’t think she will.
We then had lunch at Boston Pizza and I was finally able to taste their peppercorn poutine--- WOW was it peppery and very, very good.
We then drove to the library (which is closed on Saturdays) and parked within range of the wi-fi signal. I spent the entire afternoon writing a blog entry for this special week while Labashi wrote her log and read. After supper she took over on the laptop and I read for a few hours before we left for the campground at 2200.
We set our alarm for 2315 and checked for northern lights. We had a great starry night but no aurora.

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Churchill! (posted from the Thompson library)

(this post covers 13-17 August, 2007)

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Friday, 17 August-

Our overnight went pretty well this time. Though our makeshift ‘beds’ were uncomfortable, we split up and each took a four-seat section and were able to lie down a little more. We each got three or four hours sleep though I still was up around dawn at 0430. Again, a hearty breakfast fixed all and we felt a lot better today than we had at this point on the way up.
Our trip to Thompson was even longer this time but we didn’t mind. This time it was a 23-hour trip. We saw two bald eagles and a hawk on the way back. We had a wonderful time talking even more with Marilyn and Linda and then had a curious coincidence. At lunch time there were only two seats available when we entered the dining car so we sat with a couple we had seen going up, around town, and now on the way back to Thompson. The gent had a tee-shirt with the logo of the Sam Waller Museum in The Pas, a favorite of ours. I asked if he had enjoyed the museum (figuring the answer was yes if he had bought the tee shirt!) and he cagily asked, ‘well, what did YOU think?”. I said we liked it a lot, to which he replied with a big grin, “Good… because I’d the director of it!” To which I replied (also with a smile): “Then how about answering my email?” Incredibly, the one person I had sent an email to in Canada (after we had left The Pas and were in Thompson trying to find out more about Bert Huffman) was sitting across from me. Ron Scott and his wife Patty were a delight. Ron’s quite a canoeist and when we pulled out a map of Northern Manitoba, he pointed to an ad and asked ‘recognize anyone?’. It was Ron in his canoeing duds on the ad for The Pas. We had a wonderful hour or so chatting, all about the museum, Sam Waller, and “The Northland” poem. And get this: Ron is planning a canoeing trip next summer—a 30-40 day wilderness canoe trip to York Factory. Now THAT’s a canoe trip.
The day went pretty quickly but by late afternoon I was ready to get off the train. Unfortunately, it was about that time we pulled off to a siding to shut down for an hour while three freight trains worked they way toward and by us. We finally rolled into the station about 22:00 (scheduled for 11:00 this morning!!!). We grabbed our gear and went to the appointed pickup spot only to be left wondering. I went inside and called only to get a message telling me Colleen’s voice mailbox was full. Labashi went in to try a few minutes later, at which point Colleen showed up, giving us her apologies and saying she had had to go pick up her husband from the bar— he had called and said he was probably too drunk to safely drive home (Canada’s a wonderfully-different place, isn’t it?).
We were very happy to find Mocha Joe all safe and sound and went to bed for a long and blissful sleep.

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Thursday, 16 August-

We woke early for having been up last night and Labashi couldn’t wait to get back on the road to look for polar bears (I, on the other hand, was ready for breakfast).
Labashi won this one and we drove out as far as the twin golf balls but saw nothing new. We then drove to Cape Merry and took the walking tour with our delightful guide, a young aboriginal woman named Adelia Spence. I got a kick out of Adelia dressed up in her green Parks Canada uniform and red mittens, wearing stylish white-framed sunglasses and carrying a Remington 870 Marine stainless-steel riot shotgun. Adelia told us she had the bangers and Carolyn, the other ranger, had the slugs today. Carolyn went out ahead of us and surveyed the rocks by binocular with her shotgun slung over her shoulder, then signaled that it was okay for Adelia to bring us out to tour the gun ramparts, powder magazine, and cairn which make up the park. Adelia did a great job of giving us the history of the area and introducing us to buffalo berries (Canadian soapberries), gooseberries, Arctic cotton, and lichens (there are three types—orange, green, and black. The black you can eat but Adelia says she has tasted it and it’s almost tasteless and was used only in the starving times).
As we took our tour we talked about the ship lying offshore and Adelia said it’s a grain freighter awaiting dock space. This, of course, is prime grain-shipping season and is critically important to Churchill’s economy. We turned away for a few minutes and when we looked back the ship was gone—as if picked up by an alien spaceship or something. It took us a few minutes to realize a fog bank had swallowed the ship and was headed toward us. In another ten minutes we were in fog and the rain started coming down. Time for breakfast at Gypsy’s!
After our late breakfast (actually at lunch time) we called for an appointment at the Northern Studies Centre and got one for 1300. We rolled out there and took a nice little tour for $5 each. I had thought the centre had been developed as a teaching site but its mission is actually one of logistics support for researchers. They make all the arrangements, house and equip researchers (include rental shotguns) and fly them by helicopter, generally to Wapusk National Park a critical polar bear habitat east of the centre.
We then decided we had better get busy—we had to have the rental truck back by 1530. We loaded up the coordinates of Churchill’s two geocaches and smiled when we found one was only a half-mile from the centre. We found it (“Rusty Bear”) in short order and then blasted out to Cape Merry to find “Chilly Churchill”. That left us 15 minutes to gas up and return the rental truck but we made it. The rental truck had cost me $75 to rent but $49 to fill up with gas. We did 162 miles in an area where the longest road (we took) is only 12 miles long.
After returning the truck we packed up for our departure this evening and called for the taxi to pick us up at 1900 for our 2000 depature. The taxi didn’t show and it wasn’t until we called to check that we learned the train was delayed to 2230. That time seemed to fly and we were soon aboard and departing.
As we pulled out of the station we said the only thing we wished we had seen were the northern lights. Labashi looked out the window and there they were—the best we’ve seen yet. We watched them for an hour before clouds moved in.


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Wednesday, 15 August-

We awoke greatly refreshed in our comfortable Blue Sky comfortable beds—what a change from last night! We went to breakfast at Gypsy’s on this rainy, 50-degree day with Marilyn and Linda, our breakfast tab being picked up by the B&B (nice!)
The rain just got harder as we drove to the tour office and boarded the bus to our boat. As we crowded around the outdoor table to get ponchos, the rain came down harder yet and the wind blew it sideways. We had decent rain jackets but no rain pants and our pant-legs were soon soaked. The regular briefing about the belugas was cut short and we boarded, with some surprise, an open tour boat for a quick ride across the bay to Prince of Wales Fort.
Our tour guide, Bob, gave us a good tour of the Fort, which today consists of little more than massive stone walls, 35 feet thick in some places. The northeast corner is sagging a bit and under re-construction. I loved seeing a dozen-or-so big cannons lying along the wall like so many logs, each a masterpiece of power capable of throwing the ball a thousand yards and each damaged in some way. The damage had been done by the French, who took the fort in 1782 (that was a while ago, eh?). (A brief description is at http://thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0006487)
Upon disembarking the boat to tour the fort we had been introduced to the realities of life in the Churchill area. There are polar bears in the area and Parks Canada has two shotgun-wielding rangers on the island for our protection. Both were carrying Remington 870 12-gauge riot guns, one loaded with ‘bangers’ and one with slugs, we’re told. (I’d be willing to bet the guy with bangers also has slugs). The ‘bangers’ are to scare away the bears (hopefully) and the slugs are there in case a bear refuses to go and presents a danger in which tragedy can only be avoided by killing the bear.
We had strict instructions to stay in a group and of course we ‘adults’ told the older children we were going to trip them if a bear appeared and we needed to beat them back to the boat.
With that in mind, it was a surprise to us when we found ourselves separated from the group (though behind the gates of the fort). We had been taking photos on the ramparts and had been asked to take a photo of one of the other tourists. When we turned around the group below was gone and the gates shut. But one of the rangers was nearby and when we passed he scolded us (gently!) for being separated from our group. But it only took a minute to catch up and we realized that the head count back at the boat would have caught our absence before the boat’s departure (and of course the rangers were still there). Still, we thought it a bit careless on Bob’s part to have departed the Fort without all of his little duckies all in a row. (We looked like little duckies, all dressed in our identical red ponchos).
We then boarded the boat and headed back across the Churchill River mouth. We immediately saw belugas, in fact, dozens of them traveling in small groups (see http://www.seanorthtours.com/morepics2table2.html ) We spent the next two hours drifting or slowly idling among them. We could also hear them. The mate put a pair of hydrophones over the side when we stopped and they easily picked up the incredible array of sounds. Labashi even saw several of the belugas mouthing the mikes. Karaoke fans, I suppose. We learned that the belugas were called ‘sea canaries’ because their sounds could be heard through the wooden hulls of explorer ships.
At one point we thought we might be in for an experience. The captain had shut down the engines and when he went to move the boat away from one of the channel buoys about to attack us, the engines wouldn’t start. We were lucky and the wind prevented us from drifting into the buoy (the boat was small enough that we could have pushed off) but it took a few minutes to resolve the problem and get the engines going. I noticed the captain didn’t shut down again. I asked the mate what she had been doing in going below decks with a bucket. She had drained a water trap in the fuel line but there wasn’t enough water to worry about. Interestingly, she said she had to take the fuel-tainted water below and take it ashore for proper disposal. Even that small amount of diesel fuel couldn’t go overboard.
After our beluga adventure we had lunch at the Seaport Inn before touring the excellent Eskimo museum. This museum was started in 1946 by the rector of the Catholic Church and still today is owned by the church. It has case-after-case of interesting and beautiful stone, bone, and antler carvings and the world-class collection includes a rather innocuous chair which, upon further investigation, turns out to have come from one of Roald Amundsen’s ships of exploration.
Later that afternoon we rented a pickup from Tamarack Rentals ($75 per day) and began touring the area on our own. We drove east of town past the airport (where the road changes to dirt) and began our search for polar bears. The bears, it turns out, like the rocky coast and hang out among the rocks. What you DON’T want to do is go walking out there without a shotgun-wielding guide. But we could drive the road from Churchill out to the rocket range, some 12 miles away. The problem is there aren’t many places where you can see the water’s edge and it would be easy to miss a polar bear in the area. We drove to the ‘twin golf balls’, now-abandoned radomes which used to house sixteen-foot radar dishes used to track sounding rockets at the nearby rocket range. The rocket range was established in 1959 (remember the ‘International Geophysical Year’?) and was used to launch over 3500 rockets into the high atmosphere for research on weather and the northern lights. In the mid-Nineties, the range was leased by a private company and re-named ‘Spaceport Canada’ but the venture failed when the market for commercial space launches tanked in the late Nineties.
After the twin golf balls and an attempt to get closer to Bird Cove didn’t find a polar bear (one had been sighted there the day before), we drove to the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, hoping to take a tour. But we arrived there too late in the day for today so planned one for the next day and continued exploring side roads, hoping to see a bear. Off in the distance we could see the tour helicopter circling a peninsula of land jutting into the Bay so we knew they were seeing bears but we couldn’t get closer. The helicopter company promises you will see a polar bear or you will get a free ride out to see one until you do. Then again, the ride is $250 a person for a half-hour ride, three-person minimum. And we had no interest in seeing bears in a noisy helicopter.
We continued to check off the roads we were permitted to drive (the others had too many soft areas and if you got stuck, it could be an interesting night. Cell phones don’t work here and you wouldn’t want to try to walk out, particularly late in the day or at night).
Our travels took us down the Goose Creek Road to the Marina. We later learned that the Churchill River had been partially diverted into the Nelson to raise its water level for the hydro turbines. This change in river level had been devastating to Churchill and it took seven years to determine that a weir could be put in the river to raise levels to acceptable levels. The many-million-dollar project included development of a small marina above the weir and a water-pumping station to assure the supply of fresh water to Churchill and avoid salt-water encroachment from Hudson’s Bay. We read a superlative book on the subject back at our home base at Blue Sky, one of the many advantages of going the B&B route.
Afterwards we cruised back toward the rocket range and it happened: as we drove down a section of road heading straight for the bay and approached a 90-degree turn, there at the turn was a polar bear. You could almost read its body language. “Rats,” it thought, “just as I have to cross an open area where I can be seen, these guys drive by.” The bear didn’t run but it did amble purposefully down over the rocks and started walking along the water’s edge. We were extremely lucky to have a good viewpoint over the area just 50 yards back. We sat there with our binoculars watching every move for the next half-hour. The bear soon came to a small inlet and instead of going around, it just walked through the water. Shortly thereafter, it went for a swim. We watched it intently as it swam in a leisurely but surprisingly-efficient manner, fading from view as the daylight died. The last we saw him he was swimming out away from land. What an incredible sight!
That evening we were so excited that it took a while to calm down and go to bed. But before we did we decided we’d get up and check for the Northern lights later in the night. At 0200 I heard Labashi stirring and she came back a few minutes later to tell me she was seeing something. We half-dressed and went out to the truck (checking carefully for polar bears lurking nearby since we had seen a photo of polar bear prints taken in the front yard of our B&B) and headed out of town toward the rocket range. We could indeed see strange light, but unfortunately it was behind the clouds. Oddly enough, the clouds would break here and there but we’d not see the lights behind (they must have been higher or lower) and in short order the break would close up. After an hour we headed home but we loved the wild feeling of listening to the brisk wind whistle by our lonely pickup out on the polar-bear-infested tundra east of Churchill. We will long remember it.

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Tuesday, 14 August-

Our train was originally scheduled in to Churchill at 0830 but we had left more than two hours late. The schedule showed a 14-and-a-half hour journey for the 342 mile trip but our conductor told us it would take 19 hours as we departed Thompson. It actually took 22 hours. As we started out, something didn’t seem right about the timetable as I counted off the seconds between kilometer-markers and figured we were doing about 30 miles per hour. What I hadn’t anticipated was the muskeg. The train to Churchill was at onetime known as the ‘Muskeg Express’ and we soon left the boreal forest behind and began crossing the muskeg. In this area the ground is soft and the track forever in need of maintenance. The train slows to ten-to-fifteen miles per hour and sometimes it just very slowly creeps across a narrow roadbed above swampy land on both sides. At one point I heard someone nearby say a bee was flying alongside the train and was considerably faster than us. We would occasionally come to a more solid area and speed up again, but only occasionally—or so it seemed, anyway.
I gave up trying to sleep as the sky lightened around 0400. By 0600 I had to get up and fortunately breakfast started at 0630. A hearty breakfast revived us quite a bit and we enjoyed sitting in the dining car’s seats and watching the sun rise into the sky.
We spent most of the trip looking out the windows and were surprised to see virtually no wildlife. We’d see an occasional duck or raven but only once did we see a pair of sandhill cranes and we saw no four-legged animals at all. We asked about wildlife sightings and heard they see an occasional moose or muskrat, but not very often.
As we rode along we couldn’t help but wonder about how difficult it would be to try to walk through this area. There are many stops identified along the track but the great majority of them are nothing more than a sign and no visible trail leading in any direction. We did have two major stops for the native Canadians at Pik and Ilford and then the hydro town (i.e., the location of a major hydro dam) of Gillam.
We did see a very intriguing sight along the way. Well above Gillam we saw a survival lean-to and it appeared to have been used fairly recently. The lean-two was obviously sited close to the track and in an obvious clearing so it could be easily seen. It looked like something built by “Survivorman” Les Stroud or Bear Grylls of ‘Man vs. Wild’ (tv ‘reality’ shows about survival skills). It was a lean-to of tamarack or spruce poles covered with spruce boughs, most of it still in place. The fire ring was black with soot and didn’t appear to have any recent growth coming up through it, giving the impression of recent use. We have to wonder who built it and why. Was it someone waiting for the train to come through to rescue them? It doesn’t seem you’d have a survival shelter and a fire for a routine stop and you’d think travelers through the area would have a tent so who could it have been and what was their story?
After our long, slow ride to Churchill we arrived, as I said earlier, at 1600. Our luggage bags have backpack straps which can be pulled out of a zippered compartment to turn them into backpacks so we chose to forego the taxi (though it was only $7 for a taxi) and walked the ten-minute walk to our B&B.
Our B&B was ‘Blue Sky Bed and Sled’, run by Jenifor Ollander and Gerald Azure. We had the unusual privilege at staying there even though Gerald and Jenifor had just left on vacation. The original plan had been for them to greet us before leaving later that day but then their schedule was moved up a day (and we would have missed them anyway because of the late arrival of the train). Their home is on Button Street at the edge of town and their back yard abuts the tundra--- polar bear territory!
After settling in we walked back into town and had dinner at Gypsy’s restaurant. After a bit of walking around we returned to our home for the next few days and met Marilyn and Linda, two incredible women who had been staying at the B&B and had extended their stay for a few days and had taken the role of our ‘lead dogs’, i.e., someone to help us understand how things work in Churchill.
Marilyn and Linda are retired nurses and veteran travelers. Marilyn is from a farming family in Petaluma, CA and Linda a former Navy nurse now living in southwest Georgia. They were planning to take the same beluga-and-fort tour the next day and had a rental truck so could give us a ride to breakfast and the tour office — lucky us!
We chatted a bit but were pretty tired so called a night by 2200 and slept like babes.

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Monday, 13 August-

Today we spent the day hanging out and awaiting our departure for Churchill that evening. We slept in and took our showers, then took our good-old time packing. We dropped in again at the Visitor’s Center and talked some more with Carol (just chatting) before spending the entire afternoon in the library. I spent an hour or so on the web but then spent most of the afternoon reading ‘Canadian Geographic’, ‘The Beaver’ (Canada’s history magazine), ‘Canadian Aviation’, and ‘Canadian Woodworker’ magazines while Labashi perused two books about the building of the Hudson Bay Railway and another about Churchill. Early that evening we had a fantastic “gourmet pizza” at Boston Pizza. If you want to try the second-best pizza sauce ever (almost as good as Pontillo’s), get some of Boson Pizza’s ‘signature sauce’ on the side for one of their gourmet pizzas.
Our train was supposed to depart at 1755 but we had talked with Colleen Smook (owner of McGreedy Campgrounds) about shuttling us to the train station and she said it wouldn’t go until at least 1930. We were anxious to get to the station so shuttled out there around 1830 but didn’t depart until 2000. But we enjoyed talking with two young fisheries biologists who were headed to Churchill to scuba dive to obtain water samples to establish a baseline for future water studies.
The boarding process went easily and we settled in to our seats for the long ride, turning around the two seats in front of us to provide a nice little four-seat sort-of-private area for us and our carry-on gear. At the Winnipeg train station we had been told our carry-on was limited in size but the divers were carrying giant gear-bags aboard and it became apparent that the only limit is how much you can carry.
By 2300 people most people around us were stretching out across the seats and their leg supports as makeshift (but very uncomfortable) beds. The leg support brackets of the opposing seats could be swung under their padded areas to make a flat place to span the distance between seats but the problem was they ended up about an inch higher than the seats. We could lean our seats back a little more than an airplane’s seats and slump down a bit with our feet on the far seat but the leg-support platforms made it uncomfortable. Through the night Labashi managed to fall asleep for a half-hour here and there but I don’t think I got more than ten minutes sleep at a time and only a total of maybe an hour and a half for the night.

Thompson and Nelson House (posted from the Thompson, MB Library)

(this post covers 10- 12 August, 2007)

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Sunday, 12 August-

This morning we woke to a beautiful sunny day. The overnight temperatures were around fifty (Fahrenheit, that is) so it was a cool breakfast and wash-up but the morning sun feels great.
We drove into Thompson and stopped at the RCMP office to see what they would recommend for parking the van—just so we’d know (and to see the RCMP office). The recommendation is to park at City Hall during business hours and leave the keys with them in case the vehicle has to be moved. I like our deal with Colleen better so we’ll go with that. The RCMP office looked like any modern up-and-coming small-city police office—very clean and professional—and friendlier than many.
Today our goal was Nelson House, a Cree community which historically had a Hudson’s Bay Company fur-trading post but today is a Cree reserve or what we know as a reservation. We only drove a mile or so out of Thompson when the good road ended and our 50 kilometer road to Nelson House turned to gravel with alternating stretches of rough asphalt. It wasn’t long until we were passed by some young fool in his SUV who kicked up a stone and put another crack in our windshield. We continued to look for wildlife without much success but finally did see two pairs of sandhill cranes. We’ve seen the cranes in their wintering grounds in Florida (in the Ocala and the Everglades) and were surprised to hear their distinctive calls here in the North, even though we knew they are migratory. Last September we had passed through the extensive sandhills south of Valentine, Nebraska and learned about them being a favorite sandhill-crane habitat. Thus we were surprised to see them in this stunted-but-continuous coniferous boreal forest.
As we neared Nelson House we were greeted by a large billboard informing us we were entering Cree lands and all visitors had to register at the tribal government offices on weekdays or by making a call to police on the weekend. We didn’t have a working cell phone so could not comply but hoped we’d find a phone in Nelson House. We stopped at the local (and only) gas station/convenience store and spoke with a friendly young clerk as we bought some soft drinks for lunch and as he rang up the purchases of a few of the local folks. When I asked about registering as a visitor he said we probably should stop at the RCMP office and tell them we were here. As we prepared to leave, a woman who had been in the store walked up to the van and pointed at the kayaks with a big smile. She said she had paddled a boat like that when she was a girl. We had the impression she wanted to say more but didn’t. Her name was Mabel. A man walking nearby waved and asked if we needed a guide. I assumed he was talking about a fishing guide and said no, we were just taking a drive through to see the town because of its history as a fur-trading post. As I started to pull away I realized we hadn’t exactly registered and we could possibly offend someone if we drove into the wrong place so we asked if he had meant he could give us a tour of Nelson House. He said for $20 he could give us a tour of town. We of course are a little wary of the situation and of letting a stranger in the van but this seemed OK. He introduced himself as Ralph Moore, brother of Jimmy Moore, Chief of the Band. Our impromptu tour actually went well. I don’t think Ralph has done m/any tours but perhaps that just made him try all the harder. He would tell us what each building was and that alone was helpful because most weren’t marked or were marked in Cree. Ralph told us we need not worry about registering since his brother is the Chief but I thought I’d stop at the RCMP office just to be sure—until we saw it was closed and I was even happier to have Ralph with us in case we were stopped.
Nelson House sits on the juncture of three rivers and a large lake and is the government center for the 5000+ members of the Band. Ralph told us the lake is polluted, though, and they can’t swim and there are no fish, due, he says, to mercury poisoning by Manitoba Hydro. We were a little confused, then, about why there’s a fish-processing plant in town (and would have missed it entirely without him) and why Hydro causes a mercury problem but we didn’t think we should press the point. We were also glad we had Ralph when a floatplane took off from the lake. We wouldn’t have known it’s the tribal floatplane which not only is available for the clinic to use in emergencies but today is ferrying kids to bible camp.
But Nelson House does have its problems. The Band government declared it a dry town but alcoholism is a big problem and housing is poor. The tribal pow-wow center, the medicine house (clinic), the new job training center, and some new housing all look good. But the streets and yards are all dirt (some very muddy), and many of the individual houses are shabby and boarded-up yet with people living in them. The Band has signed a partnership agreement with Manitoba Hydro on development of a dam which is supposed to bring in millions of dollars in income per year but local residents are suspicious and fear the deal is yet another governmental land-grab in disguise.
Our tour only lasted about forty minutes but it was money well-spent. We enjoyed meeting Ralph and learning about the reserve.
After our long, rough drive back to Thompson we went to the library since we knew it was open this afternoon (a library open on Sunday but not Saturday, eh?) and did a little more research on Nelson House. We found a video about pollution problems of the lake but that one talked only about the town’s sewerage lagoon polluting the lake. We also found a news article about the residents being split on the vote for the dam.
At the library we read in the Winnipeg Sun of the damaging hail storm south of us yesterday in the areas we had passed through last week. It passed just north of Riding Mountain National Park and there damaged some 3500 buildings in Dauphin before tracking southeast, then east through Brandon and the north side of Winnipeg, causing millions in damage. The Sun calls it one of the Top 10 weather events in provincial history. In Dauphin alone the damages to buildings and cars will exceed the bill for storm damage done in the entire province last year. Hail was reported to be golf-ball-size in some areas, baseball-size in some, softball-size in others though the only photos we saw of it were somewhere between golf-ball and baseball-sizes. Another article said the hail turned a best-year-ever grain crop into a worst-year-ever yield in minutes for farmers in the path of the very large storm. Canola and wheats were hit hard.
After the library we returned to our campsite for another of Labashi’s excellent medley meals and a glass or three of Schloss Laderheim. No movie tonight, though. We're in the wilderness, you know.

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Saturday, 11, August-

Today we were rained in. The rain started overnight and most of the day, not hard but persistent. We had been up late so got up late with our movie so arose late but still wondered what we would do today. We drove out to the airport to see it but it was too big—too commercial—to be interesting. We drove into town and stopped at the visitor center to ask Carol where to find hunting and fishing gear, thinking we’d see where anything different is offered up here. But there’s no specialized sporting goods store, it all comes, apparently, from the Canadian Tire store or the Wal-mart. We took a walk through those stores and the mall, mostly looking for items not available in the states and to see the shoppers. There’s a large Cree population here so it was interesting to see the many First Nations faces, many of whom would not look directly at us but rather cast their eyes downward around us whites (or perhaps that’s my imagination talking).
Later in the day we drove to the Library and, though it was closed, parked outside and picked up the wireless hotspot signal. I uploaded some photos from the digital camera while Labashi read her excellent book about the fur trade in this area.
Afterwards we bought a box of wine (we really like the Schloss Laderheim Reisling that comes in what they call ‘casks’, i.e., boxes) and went back to the Blockbuster for another movie for this rainy night. This time we brought home ‘Who the #$%#@ is Jackson Pollack?” and “Joyeux Noel”. The first is a funny documentary about a California truck-driving woman who bought a painting for $5 at a thrift shop and is convinced it’s an authentic Jackson Pollack painting. After many promising-but-inconclusive attempts to prove it’s an original Pollack, she has been offered millions of dollars for it but refuses, believing she’s being cheated.
The second film, ‘Joyeux Noel’ or ‘Merry Christmas’ is a French drama telling the story of World War I fraternization. Scot, French, and German units declared a cease-fire on Christmas Eve in December 1914 to celebrate Christmas and, the next day, to bury their dead. Highly recommended.

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Friday, 10 August-

We left our campsite at Paint Lake Provincial Park thinking we’d probably be back. Paint Lake is about a half-hour south of Thompson and has the only campgrounds listed in the AAA guide. But you never know. So I didn’t reserve another night. We are running a bit of risk that we might not be able to find a campsite on the weekend but if that happens, we know there’s a Wal-mart in Thompson and we can probably stay there overnight. The Provincial Parks in Manitoba have also been good about having overflow areas and, besides, things are supposed to tail off after the August three-day-weekend.
Upon reaching Thompson we stopped at the tourist center. There we met Carol, an interesting and somewhat-quirky woman. Carol teaches in the winter and has several part-time jobs in summer. She became a board member of the tourist center and started working there after her teenage son ‘found himself’ after working with the center’s forge. He took to the metal-working arts and now makes custom knives as a hobby, all after starting out as a bellows-pumper for the museum forge. Carol claims to have started baking at two years of age and hosts a web site with her many recipes (it’s genieinafilebox.com).
Thompson is only three years older than I am, celebrating its 60th birthday this year. It was founded by International Nickel Company (INCO) after establishing an agreement with the provincial government to spent $175 million developing the mine and a town around it. Today, Thompson is the the third-largest city in the province (albeit with a current population of 13,000) and is called ‘the gateway to the North’. Its airport is second only to Winnipeg with regard to number of air movements. While the hard road ends just north of Thompson, it has two airports, a seaplane base and a Canadian Rail (VIARail) depot. It has a hospital, provincial offices, and a very active civic board.
After our museum tour at the tourist center we stocked up at the local Safeway (they have a Starbucks in the Safeway!!) and Wal-mart, then toured the town. We found a good wireless hot-spot at the library and spent the next few hours uploading the blog update, handling our email, reading the Winnipeg Sun, Northern Miner and browsing through the excellent library.
When we bought our train tickets in Winnipeg we were advised not to park at the Thompson train station overnight but rather to check with the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) for their recommendations on where to safely leave the van during our absence. At the tourist office we learned of a campground which both stores the vehicle and runs a shuttle to the train station so we thought we’d check it out. We found the McCreedy Campground north of town and met Colleen. She not only does the storage and shuttle for our trip for a reasonable price ($7 per day) but also rented us a campsite for $10 a day, saving us both the hour-long back-and-forth drive to Paint Lake but also saving us $5 a day in camping and park admission fees.
After several turns through town we selected Boston Pizza for supper. We’ve seen the Boston Pizza chain in Winnipeg but just thought it’s a pizza shop, perhaps with a few pasta selections. We were surprised to find a very nice, new, upscale restaurant with a large menu and fantastic food. We settled on splitting a pad-thai dish, then a cactus-potatoes appetizer, all with an excellent Two Oceans Chardonnay and a Jackson Trigg Merlot—and, uh, a chocolate martini. They also have a peppercorn poutine I have to try sometime. We enjoyed chatting with our server, Tatum MacDonald, a Metis-Scot- woman who prides herself in keeping her French current and wants to send her kids to a French-speaking school. What a great evening.
We then stopped by the local Blockbuster and browsed the shelves for something interesting. A woman manager-type checked on us to see if she could help and we asked for ‘something Canadian’ or shot in Thompson or about the North. She blanched, then said she knew what she wanted but couldn’t remember the title. She buzzed through the aisles until she found ‘The Snowwalker’ and brought that to us. That evening we enjoyed The Snowwalker on our wide-screen TV (actually our laptop computer propped up nearby) in Mocha Joe. Good movie! It stars Barry Pepper as a bush pilot who crashes while taking an Inuit woman to the hospital and they are forced to walk out, surviving only because of the woman’s knowledge of survival in the harsh tundra. Good prep for Churchill!

============== END OF 12 AUGUST POST =====

Sometimes, Labashi get's a little too close to the wildlife!

(Actually, Mom and Dad, don't worry. This one was taken from the van)

"Wally Beaver", the mascot of Creighton, Saskatchewan (according to Jenna). I should have gotten a better picture. The black oblong shape at lower left is a beaver tail. Wally is a half-walleye, half-beaver. I've not seen many of these. I did see a jack-a-moose (a jackrabbit with a moose's antlers) in the Sam Waller Museum in The Pas but that one looked like a fake so I didn't take a picture. (click on the picture to enlarge it)

The 'hot showers' building at Grass River Provincial Park northeast of The Pas.

Lake Audy, Duck Mountain, Swan River, The Pas, Flin Flon, Creighton (Saskatchewan), Snow Lake (posted from the library at Thompson, Manitoba)

(this post covers 5-9 August, 2007)


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Thursday, 9 August-

Last evening as we drove across 39 and the Grass River Provincial Park, we skipped the first campground because it listed only ‘cold showers’ while the second one listed ‘hot or cold showers’. We were surprised, then, to see the water supply beside the little shower building. It’s a 50-gallon plastic water tank on a stilted platform and draining into a complex set of black-painted pipes running back and forth across a black piece of plywood, and then into the building--- a solar shower, in other words. We made the mistake of waiting until morning to take our showers, thinking the tank would hold the heat of the day well but we didn’t count on it being both a cold-ish night and a cloudy morning. In other words the showers were cold. We decided we could make it one more day without one.
But we did enjoy our conversation with the older teenage boy running the place with his dog Jesse. I had noticed the water-treatment building had solar panels and I heard several campers start up their generators this morning. When I drew water at the tap on the water-treatment building it ran very slowly, indicating it was being pumped by a low-power source, I realized there is no AC electricity to the park. That made me curious about the teenager’s quarters which were part of the campground office. We stopped in and talked with Kiley, who said he had started working here the first of May but just a week ago was brought a generator. He explained it as ‘there’s just so many books you can read’, which puzzled me for a moment until I realized he had not only received a generator, but also a satellite-TV dish and receiver—quite a step up! His lights, stove, and fridge are propane-powered and his contact with the outside world is via what he called CB radio but I’d guess he’s using one of the province’s Motorola two-way fleet radios as opposed to a Citizens Band radio. I was also curious about the contents of the water-treatment shack. I envisioned a complex chemical-treatment setup and asked Kiley if his duties include change chemicals or monitoring them. He said the setup consists of the solar panels on the roof to charge a set of lead-acid batteries which in turn store the electricity and power an ultraviolet-light water purifier. It’s a super-simple setup that requires no checking on his part but a technician comes through once in a while to check on it and test the water quality.
We then drove on to Snow Lake, another mining community, this one of only 800 people. The little town had two thousand people a few years ago but some of the mines closed. There is hope in that another mine is about to open and it’s said the new mine will bring in 1000 people so perhaps the town will revive.
After a drive-through of the town we toured the Mining Museum, which we had heard (from our friends in the Creighton visitor’s center) is a good one. A teenage boy of about 16 gave us the tour and did a pretty good job of it. The mines here process gold and copper and the museum does an excellent job of helping us understand what daily life would be like in the mine. I happened to browse through one of the time books used to record miner’s hours of work and saw some interesting entries. The typical miner worked eight hours and took weekends off, like the rest of us. But I saw the records for one guy who worked seven days a week for four months straight. I can’t imagine.
After the museum we stopped for gas at the only gas station and I realized it was also a small restaurant. Several men were talking to each other across the tables so I asked Labashi if she’d like to get a piece of pie or something and listen in. The conversation was pretty much what you’d expect—the hail storm ‘down south’ (in southern Manitoba, that is) earlier today of grape-size hailstones; the Utah mining disaster (“I understand they have coal columns supporting the roof. Coal isn’t hard enough for that is it? They’re supposed to get to them today but I don’t hold out much hope for them, eh?”)
A man and wife sat near us and the man noticed our kayaks when he peered out the window. As they prepared to leave he walked over and said he sees a lot of boats in this little town but not many like those and wondered where we are from. We only chatted a friendly minute or two with him but when he left that started the other three people in the restaurant talking to us and before long we were old friends—well, acquaintances anyway—and we talked easily for a half-hour or so with them about where we had been, where we were going, what to see, what they were doing here, etc. Very nice people, these miners.
After Snow Lake we drove back down to the main highway (39) and turned north again. We stopped at Pisew Falls, a very impressive sight indeed, before finally reaching Paint Lake Provincial Park by 1800 and settling in for the evening to blog, read, and listen to CBC podcasts about Manitoba. This one is ‘Manitoba This Week’ and it originates from ‘the Peg’ (i.e., Winnipeg). I absolutely love hearing the program start out with something like “We’re in the St Boniface Hospital today to talk about…” and we know exactly where St Boniface Hospital is in Winnipeg—we drove right by it last week. It’s the hospital of the Grey Nuns on the eastern shore of the Red River, just upstream from The Forks (the fork of the Red River and the Assiniboine, that is). Or to hear, as we did today, “and now we have (so-and-so), from Cranberry Portage School” and we drove past that school yesterday. I just love it.

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Wednesday, 8 August-

This morning at the campground we chatted with a couple from the Calgary area who used to live in Flin Flon. She had been a teacher at the local high school and he a ‘transport driver’ (a truck driver) before retirement. We had a long chat about the area and that’s where we first heard about the bonus the miners had been awarded. It was just a very pleasant chat that reminds us of how alike our lives are though they are separated by so many miles and different cultures.
We then drove back to the Saskatchewan visitor center to see its museum we had missed yesterday. There we had one of the highlights of our trip. Last night we had met Jenna, a very intelligent teenager who was a delight. She was there again today and we also met Dennis Strom, apparently the manager of the tourism office. What an amazing pair. When we asked about wild-rice production practices (because we had seen a roadside ad for a wild-rice company), we not only learned about wild rice production figures in millions of tons per year, but also about how California became a wild-rice power-producer, but only after buying Saskatchewan’s seed back in the Eighties. They then led us outside to see the wild-rice parcher and separation equipment formerly used by a local producer and explained not only how it worked but how producers went about getting a license to produce the product ($25 to get a license to set up a test plot for a year, then another $25 for a ten-year license plus a fee (3%?) of any take OVER the estimated yield). While we had been under the impression that wild-rice is hand-harvested in canoes, we learned it’s harvested by airboats here. Some use a Florida-style airboat, some use a pontoon airboat (we saw one later in storage at Cranberry Portage) which they drive through the lakes to knock off the wild rice heads. And that was just the wild-rice discussion!
We also learned about Japanese balloon-bombs. During World War II the Japanese constructed hundreds of sophisticated balloon bombs which carried two incendiary bombs and a 15kg anti-personnel bomb. These were launched from Japan, each into one of the seven major jet stream currents circling the globe from Japan to North America. Early bombs carried radio equipment which helped track their progress. Later, once information was gathered about how long the balloons would take to reach Canada, timers were apparently used. The museum has a piece of fabric, reportedly from one of the balloons which failed to ignite. It’s a coated paper, reportedly a painted mulberry paper. Dennis says he has a lead on a location for one of the large iron rings used to hold the bombs in place under the balloon.
We also saw ‘Wally Beaver’, a jackalope-style taxidermy joke, reportedly the mascot of Creighton. The back half is a beaver, the front half a fish-- a walleye. Get it? And we saw a hockey jersey for a local team called the Creighton Aches and Pains— a team of older hockey players who had their own song, ‘The Aches and Pains Drinking Song’ (which, according to the song sheet, is ‘sung to the tune of The Engineers’ Drinking Song’).
At one point Dennis put a rifle bullet on the counter and told us a story. A gentleman he knows had three milk-can-size metal containers of these bullets. During World War II, his Dad had been in the Canadian Defense Forces and at one point they were told to bury all their ammunition and guns to keep the Germans from getting them if they came in via submarine to Hudson’s Bay and then overland into Canada’s interior. The son had recently gone out with a metal detector and had found the three milk cans of ammo but wants to go back to look for rifles. I wrote down the markings stamped into the shells and want to check into this further to see if it could be true.
After our delightful multi-hour stop at the Creighton visitor center museum we drove on to Denare Beach to look for fossils. We first took in the Northern Gateway Museum, where we learned about the art of birch-bark biting, a Cree art form practiced by women. After selecting just the right type of birch bark, the artist folds it several times and bites in a pattern which, when unfolded is geometrically perfect and can consist of flowers, patterns, even animals. It reminds me of the German paper-cutting arts.
We then drove down route 367 for about 15 kilometers of dirt road to an interesting local geological phenomenon: limestone crevices. After parking we started walking a trail and suddenly came upon a crack in the earth (actually in the rock) about fifteen to twenty feet deep. From there on the area had various cracks and holes, some you could step across, some fifteen feet wide and you had to go around. At the bottom of several we saw ice, even though today is a very hot day, in the mid Eighties.
What we didn’t find, though was a good place to look for fossils—the limestone was just too solid and massive.
We continued 367 to the end where we came to the river. Across the river and a half-mile upstream is Beaver City, a gold-mining ghost town. A gold strike drew a thousand miners to this area before World War I and a local gent established himself and built a small town and appeared well on the way to becoming rich—he owned most of the town businesses. But World War I started, most of the miners went home, and his town quickly became a ghost town.
We parked beside the river and walked back a nearby dirt road leading to Lake Amisk and a view across the river to where Beaver City had been. It was great to see this area and imagine being here almost a hundred years ago when our trip back to civilization wouldn’t have been quite so easy.
We then drove back to Flin Flon and I stopped in at the Orange Toad for a coffee. We drove to an overlook of Reed Lake for ‘foursies’, in this case an excellent guacamole dip and chips. We then gassed up and departed Flin Flon, heading south for a change.
We drove down to Route 39 and turned east to cross through the Grass River Provincial Park. There we found a pleasant campground and spent the evening blogging, reading, and thinking about our remarkable couple of days in The Pas and Flin Flon.
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Tuesday, 7 August-

I heard my new all-time-favorite poem for the first time today:

Leave the roaring streets behind you,
Leave the throbbing shops and marks.
Leave the curse of business ethics,
narrow minds and broken hearts.

Northward, northward turn your vision,
To a land that’s fresh and braw.
Till you’ve tasted God’s own freedom
In the wilds around The Pas

There’s a life that grips and holds you,
In the wilds around The Pas.

--- from ‘The Northland’, Bert Huffman, July 20, 1920.


Fantastic, isn’t it? We heard this poem in the Sam Waller Museum in The Pas this morning. We had driven through The Pas yesterday afternoon and it looked to be a ghost town because of the holiday. We wanted to see it again this morning, this time on a work-day.

‘The Pas’ is the official name for this historic trade town of 6000 people. Its name comes from a Cree word, “wapa’skwyaw”, meaning ‘wooded narrows’, later shortened to ‘Pasquayah’ by the French and ‘Basquiau’ by the English. Later, French voyageurs called it ‘Le Pas’ (‘the pass’). The first usage of ‘The Pas’ in a document was in 1821 and the name became official at incorporation as ‘The Town of The Pas’ in 1912. The Pas sits on the Saskatchewan River and thus on an important fur-trading route to the interior. Today it calls itself ‘The Gateway to the North’ and it feels like a frontier town even today.

But it’s at the Sam Waller Museum that we learned about the rich history of The Pas. Sam Waller was a teacher who, after retirement, started a museum, and a very fine one. Sam was a collector and packrat and had collections of everything from animal skulls, to birds, ancient coins, smoking pipes, brass harness decorations, seashells, insects, medical specimens (a two-headed calf, for one), (and many more categories) and, of course, anything to do with the history of The Pas. We spent the morning there and then came back after lunch to finish. My favorite thing though, was the reciting of ‘The Northland’. When you enter the main gallery a motion sensor detects you’re there and plays a recording of the poem by a gruff, old-time voice, a hard voice, a no-nonsense voice, one that has known hard work and has no respect for anyone who hasn’t.
While in The Pas I stopped in at the local two-way radio dealer to ask about satellite phones. I had seen a billboard on the way up—one that basically said cell phones don’t work beyond here so come see us about a sat-phone. The best deal is a GlobalStar. Cost is $995 for the instrument plus service. The phone looks like one of the larger cell phones of today but has a large antenna rod of about ten inches in length. Unlimited talk is $75 per month for a one-year contract. Casual use is $26 a month plus $2.49 a minute of talk time. I learned that that MTS (Manitoba Telephone Service) does have repeaters along Highway 10 so some cell service is available but only close to the highway. MTS also has a two-way radio service which depends on a series of repeaters (but it’s unclear to me how that works for anything other than fleet use).
In mid-afternoon we left The Pas and continued up Highway 10. We passed a sign marking the 54th parallel before we went through Cranberry Portage. We stopped briefly at the town park where preparations are getting underway for an art fair this weekend. A very large tipi dominated the green and is billed as the world’s largest tipi. The tipi poles are 70-feet long and it’s 65-feet across at the bottom.
Shortly after Cranberry Portage, we once again had our windshield cracked by a stone thrown by an oncoming truck. The same thing happened last August in Saskatchewan, just an hour or so after we entered Canada from North Dakota. We continued on that trip and I didn’t get the windshield replaced until the next inspection. That means my just-cracked windshield is less than a year old—in fact it’s only ten months old. There goes another 250 bucks.
Another hour of travel put us into Flin Flon, one of our main goals for this trip. Originally, it was to be the farthest north we would travel on this trip before turning back--- but that was before we had a better map! Flin Flon is a mining town of about 6000 sitting on the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border. It’s named for a fictional character of a dime novel, an early sci-fi Jules-Verne-like adventure tale. The story goes like this: In 1915 a group of prospectors were portaging the Churchill River found a copy of a dime-novel called ‘The Sunless City’ which had a character named Josiah Flintabbety Flonatin. They read the novel during the long evenings but could not finish it—the last part of the book was missing. Nevertheless they talked on and on about the many adventures of ‘Flinty’ or ‘Flin Flon’, the grocer-turned-adventurer who built a submarine and followed a river into the earth to find a sunless city of gold and an underground lake. Later, the prospectors found a promising outcropping on the shores of a lake which reminded them of Flin Flon’s lake and they named their claim after him. The city later developed there and was incorporated as Flin Flon in 1933.
Today the town is dominated by a Hudson’s Bay Mining Company complex (one of the mines is the ‘777 Mine’) and an enormous smelter stack. The ore is broken down into high-grade copper and zinc. And apparently they’re doing quite well. The mine is selling their products to the Chinese and had such a wonderful year that each of the front-line employees received a bonus of between $24,000 and $35,000 this year. I had been very curious about all the brand-new looking Ford pickups we had seen in the area, all driven by young guys. We later learned these guys are locally called ‘the bonus boys’.
Upon entering town we stopped at the visitor’s center and asked about wildlife viewing opportunities. Our host couldn’t help but offered to call the conservation office downtown. We opted to go down there and talk directly to the conservation office guys. Downtown we found the provincial government offices in a very odd building which reminded us of the Pompidou Center. The officers were very nice but it was apparent there wasn’t a lot of hope for seeing much wildlife here—it just isn’t the same as Riding Mountain National Park. We drove all around through Flin Flon, hitting almost every street in our grand tour. To many, Flin Flon isn’t worth a visit. The Rough Guide to Canada calls it “an ugly blotch on a barren rocky landscape”. The skyline is dominated by the absolutely massive smelting tower and the buildings over the mine shaft entrance.
But the town still took the time and made the effort to build a boardwalk around their centrally-located Ross Lake and to build a replica of Flinty’s submarine for us to admire. Once we had a chance to see the outlying area, we could see why people would like Flin Flon. Just a few miles in either direction are lakes, lakes, and more lakes, all clean, clear, and surrounded by the beautiful Canadian woods and rocks. The fishing is reportedly excellent and the wild feel of the place only accentuated by the rough, gritty nature of the town.
Later that afternoon we drove into the next town, Creighton, Saskatchewan and chatted with the visitor’s center clerk who recommended we go to the local dump if we wanted to see bears! We followed her directions and did take a turn through the dump but it was too early in the day for the bears—but we did want to see the dump anyway to see what it was like. Surprisingly, there was no offensive smell and the materials being dumped by local residents were all well organized by an on-site manager.
After the dump we drove into Flin Flon and had a frappacino (me) and a smoothie (Labashi) at an excellent little coffee shop/used book store called ‘The Orange Toad’. This was an interesting little place. Here in a run-down-looking little mining town was a nice, clean little upscale coffee shop and it was drawing in the customers despite its street being closed for construction. The drinks were among the best we’ve had and when we met the owner it was clear why--- she’s a perfectionist and knows her stuff. I wish she would open a shop near our home!
While in the coffee shop we met a couple from Fairfax, Virginia, who, like us, came to Flin Flon simply because we were curious about the oddly-named little town so far up the map of Manitoba.
After supper we drove to a road recommended for possible wildlife viewing by the conservation officers. It was East Little Spruce Road and led to a dirt road passing Whitefish Lake and skirting Sourdough Bay and into the moose reserve. Alas, we saw no moose or any other wildlife of significance—only seven little bunny rabbits. But the lakes in that area are classic Canada and in the late evening light they were spectacular.
We drove back to the Wal-mart and went to bed only to have a truck come in to the lot at midnight and park next to us and leave his motor idling for the night. That was enough of that—we moved across the street to the Visitor Center campground and slept well the remainder of the night.

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Monday, 6 August-

We slept well in the overflow area at Duck Mountain and in fact we slept later than usual as everyone else seemed to be doing on this holiday Monday. After a quick breakfast we took showers at the little pay-showers building and headed north on provincial road 366, forty miles of dirt road through the park. We crossed out of the provincial park and into the provincial forest, where we found a ‘forest interpretive center’. There we spent an interesting hour browsing the exhibits and talking with Taylor, a teen-age boy of about sixteen who was in charge of the center. Taylor rides his ATV to his job, a daily ride of 15 kilometers each way through the forest, a ride he relishes. He seemed a typical rural teenage boy--- interested in ‘skidoos’ (we call them snowmobiles), his ‘quad’ (four-wheel ATV or all-terrain vehicle) and working outdoors. He shot his first bear when he was 12 years old and also got one last year, both hunting over bait stations. He told us the winter temperatures get as low as 40 C below up here. We works part-time for an outfitter and participates in refilling the bear-bait stations. He said this outfitter uses oats, sugar, and grease for this purpose. The ‘grease’ used to come from a rendering facility in Saskatchewan but that’s now hard to get—it’s being turned into automotive fuel. When they can get it, they use deep-fryer grease from restaurants in the nearby towns of Minitonis and Swan River.
Back on the road we descended Duck Mountain into the plains below and on to Swan River, a neat and apparently-prosperous farming town among very large farms of grain fields. Out here they use the largest-model combines and tractors with doubled-up wheels front and back. At Swan River we picked up some supplies from the Extra supermarket before pressing on. I like to shop the different supermarkets, both for variety and to see what’s available locally. The differences between here and home are minor but they do make it apparent how the system works—the buyers for major chains determine what we get to choose from on our grocery store shelves. Some things you just can’t get here, even in the same chains like Wal-mart and Safeway. Starbucks Double-shots, for instance (you can get Frappacinos but not the little cans of espresso and cream called ‘Double-shots’). Coke in the 100-calorie cans or 12 ounce bottles is rare. You can get cheddar-cheese-flavored mozzarella sticks but cheddar-cheese sticks are rare and, when found, small and expensive. Actually, though, I’m amazed at the variety of food available in these small towns. I’d think I’d find white and perhaps chocolate milk, for instance, but I also saw strawberry-flavored milk and banana-flavored milk in the rural Swan River Extra. One thing we’ve found in Canada that we really like and haven’t seen in the States is Allen Peach Cocktail— a just-right light peach juice. Butane stove cartridges are common (and inexpensive) here while difficult to find in the US. As I said, minor differences overall.
We proceeded north up Provincial Highway 10 and soon passed alongside Porcupine Mountain Provincial Park. It lay just across the valley from Duck Mountain and seemed so similar that we didn’t stop. After passing it, the landscape seemed to abruptly change from mixed boreal forest to almost exclusively coniferous boreal forest, mostly consisting of stunted spruce and tamarack. After a few hours we came to The Pas, an interesting little town. Today it looked pretty shabby. The streets were empty because of the holiday and almost everything was closed. We gassed up and continued on through town to Clearwater Lake Provincial Park.
We were surprised to find the campground nearly full since the holiday weekend is over but learned that many people extend their holiday weekend to a full week. We took a short walk to the lake and it is indeed a clear and pretty one and very large. The park also has a unique attraction, ‘the caves’. We had learned about these at the Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg. These ‘caves’ are actually fissures and in spring they provide an amazing spectacle. They are host to thousands of red garter snakes which mate at this time of year in roiling balls of dozens, if not hundreds, of snakes. The exhibit in the museum was wonderfully realistic but of course can not compare.
After our walk we had supper and then watched our first DVD of the trip—‘Hitch’ with Will Smith. It’s a silly movie but we were in the mood for it and enjoyed it very much. We felt particularly snug as we watched a movie in our little van as a thunderstorm pelted the van.

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Sunday, 5 August –

My last post ended in mid-afternoon on Saturday so let me finish off the day here rather than edit it into yesterday. After uploading the blog at the pizza shop yesterday we took a back road out of town and that paid off. We blundered upon a mama black bear with three of the cutest cubs. They were very close to town and while watching the bears we could turn and see kids playing in the street only a block away. But the bears were completely focussed on looking for insects in the tall grasses and paid us (and the kids in the distance) no heed. Labashi jumped out and took some pictures but the bears wouldn’t look up so we believe the pictures only show their backs in the tall grass.
We then drove west of route 10 toward Lake Audy. About two-thirds of the way there we crossed a cattle-guard at a fence row (a cattle-guard is a set of about ten parallel pipes about four inches in diameter, generally built as bridge crossing a creek or trench or just in the ground. Cattle and bison can’t cross it but cars and people can). That put us into a bison enclosure of a few miles on a side.
We cruised the enclosure roads looking for bison but saw none for the longest time. Then we saw a lone bison working away from us. Then one almost hit the van. It popped out of very heavy underbrush at the edge of the road just as we passed and made a comically-quick u-turn back into the brush, quickening pulses for all of us. We drove on to Lake Audy campground (another of the $15 National Park rustic campgrounds) and found a great spot overlooking the lake. After supper we cruised the roads around Lake Audy but weren’t seeing anything. Then we popped up over a hill and there were a dozen bison working their way up a draw that would cross our road. Three cars sat on the road at the opposite side of the draw, also watching. We watched for a half-hour or so as the herd very slowly browsed its way up the draw, crossed the road one or two at a time, then began browsing along the other side of the road. They slowly moved away from the road where several of them lay down, apparently bedding for the night. We returned to the campground and just before dark we listened to our weather radio and were surprised to hear a severe thunderstorm was predicted for Riding Mountain Park. A heavy, black squall line built in the clouds over us but the storm passed to the north of us and we just had a short, light rain and strong winds. Once that passed we had a wonderfully cool night for sleeping (60 degrees) and I took advantage of it.

In the morning we pointed Mocha Joe back east toward the main road, some 15 miles of dirt away. We drove through the lower bison reserve tour road, thinking we were taking a shortcut. What we hadn’t counted on, however, was meeting almost the entire herd of 32 in the woods. Last night we had named the largest of the sentry bison “Mr. Big”. And there in front of us this morning stood Mr. Big—right in the middle of our little dirt two-track with several of the grumpy young bulls behind him on the road and the rest of the herd spread more or less evenly on both sides of the road. If I had tried to back out of the situation, I’d have had to back up for the better part of a mile and I thought ‘no way’. But then again, Mr. Big and the boys didn’t look happy to see us.
Mr. Big glared at Mocha Joe, engaging him in a battle of wills. Mr. Big wasn’t about to give way, and neither was Mocha Joe. Fortunately, Mr. Big blinked first. He haughtily turned partially away and began rubbing against a tree, shaking it mightily, rubbing one side, then the other. Was this a ploy to fool Mocha Joe into thinking he could pass only to be rammed by Mr. Big as he drew near? Then, abruptly, Mr. Big tired of the game and wandered off, disappearing into the thick underbrush without even glancing back. In short order the young bulls followed. We had been given permission to pass.
We continued back into the little summer-resort town of Wasagaming, looking for a piece of good Canadian pie. I had a surprisingly-wonderful mocha at a little hole-in-the-wall espresso shop called ‘The Upper Cup’. Labashi was looking for a better pastry selection so we moved on to a crowded little bakery and there Labashi found an excellent strawberry-rhubarb slice and I had a tasty little apple pastry. We then made phone calls home, just to check in. That’s always a pick-me-up even on such a beautiful, sunny and fresh day as this.
As we walked about town, we noticed a small gift shop with a poster promoting ‘Bite Me’ bug-proof jackets. We wandered in out of curiosity and there met Rachel (ra-SHELL), the owner of the shop and – it turns out—the creator of the jackets. We learned she had lived in northern Manitoba and had moved around quite a bit as her husband was transferred in his job working for ‘the hydro’. At one time she made fur parkas and someone asked her to make a bug jacket because the bugs are so terrible in northern Manitoba. She has sold many of the jackets in northern Manitoba and is ‘down south’ here in Wasagaming for the summer to run her gift shop and is thinking of selling some on Ebay. We loved the jackets and bought two of them; they’re the best-made bug jackets we’ve seen. And after we bought them Labashi had a great idea. She asked Rachel to sign our jackets--- right across the front pockets--- with a permanent marker and in a large font. What a nice little souvenir to remind us of our visit with Rachel and I’m sure a boost for her ego.
After our morning in Wasagaming we drove to the trailhead for Grey Owl’s cabin. Grey Owl was an Englishman named Archie Belaney who moved to Canada in the Thirties and fell in love with the Ojibwe lifestyle and their respect for nature. He became one of the world’s first conservationists and nature writers. He led a colorful and not-always-honorable personal life but his writings, talks on conservation, and efforts to restore the beaver population in Canada earned him a great following. One of the results of his writings was he being named a warden at Riding Mountain National Park where his cabin still stands. We just wanted a walk today so our plan was to walk to the winter-hiker warming hut 3.6 km in. Grey Owl’s cabin lies another 5.5 km in so we didn’t make that today. But we did get a chance to try out our Bite Me jackets. We at first felt a little foolish walking in a bug jacket on such a nice day and we had the headnets open. I really loved not having to continually check my bare arms for mosquitoes about to bite. But about a half-hour in we started seeing more than just the occasional mosquito. I’d see Labashi walking ahead of me into a muddy or wet area and come out with six or eight mosquitoes on her jacket and a few more following her. On the way back, we stopped at a muddy area to take pictures of fresh coyote tracks and the jackets saved us. We had at least a dozen bugs on and around us and no bites—well, none that is until Labashi extended her un-DEETed hands out of the jacket sleeves to take the pictures and within a half-minute had five bites. That sounds like mosquitoes were swarming all over us but that’s not the case. There were sections of trail with no mosquitoes at all and for the most part we’d only have one or two hanging about. But in the shadier and wetter sections, we’d see a dozen or so at a time around us and it was at these times that the jackets served us well.
We then drove north out of Riding Mountain and into Dauphin, an ultra-clean little farming town. We shopped at the Safeway and Wal-mart to stock up and then drove on for another hour to Duck Mountain Provincial Park. The highway from Dauphin to the Duck Mountain turnoff was deserted and the dirt road in the park was empty so we were surprised to find the campground crowded, apparently because of the three-day weekend for Civic Holiday. We had to take an overflow campsite in the group-camping area (and were lucky to get it). After supper I took a walk around the area to check out pretty little East Blue Lake and West Blue Lake and then returned to the van to read and blog.

========================= END OF 9 AUGUST POST =======

Kenora (ON), Winnipeg (MB), Riding Mountain National Park

(posted from ‘Pizza Place’ pizza shop, Wasagaming, Manitoba)

(this post covers 30 July to 4 August, 2007)
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Saturday, 4 August-

We both woke early and immediately decided we should look for wildlife again. We popped a granola bar for breakfast and headed out within ten minutes. We were hardly out of the campground when we saw our first of the day—a young bull moose. He didn’t wait around, though. As soon as he saw us he went into the thick stuff. Back on Rolling River Road things were starting to look bleak when we saw an unmistakable dark shape ahead on the road—a black bear. This one was very large but also a shy one, immediately making tracks for the deep woods upon seeing us. But what a beauty.
Between sightings of the animals we were also seeing fresh sign, i.e., scat. (We know they’re fresh because they weren’t there last night; they’re there this morning.) We dug out our ‘Scat and Tracks’ book and tried to match up what we were seeing with the pictures but we weren’t completely successful. We’re sure we saw one old bear scat (not far from where we sighted the bear) and we believe we saw several wolf scats—but perhaps some were wolf, some coyote.
On the way back to the main road we stopped for lunch at Lake Katherine where I saw a white foam at the edge of the lake. I asked about it later and understand it’s not a type of pollution; it’s natural and happens when the the wind is blowing fairly strongly (as it had been) across the lake.
We then drove to the visitor’s center and talked to the rangers about our sightings. Apparently the lynx sightings are pretty common. The fisher is rarer but they were hoping we had seen a wolverine—something known to be in the area but rarely sighted.
We then tried the wireless connection at the Elkhorn Resort but it was terribly slow. Next we tried the wi-fi at Pizza Place and finally had a good, fast, reliable link so we spent the afternoon blogging and planning the next portion of our trip.


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Friday, 3 August-

After another nice night at Bird Hill Park we did our laundry at the campground laundry then drove into central Winnipeg to buy our train tickets for our side-trip to Churchill. By mid-afternoon we were anxious to get out of the city given it’s a three-day weekend (‘Civic Holiday’ is the holiday being celebrated) and we wanted to avoid Friday afternoon traffic. Traffic did seem busier than normal but did not cause us a problem. We drove west on the Trans-Canada (Route 1) to Portage La Prairie and then took the Yellowhead Highway (Route 16) to Riding Mountain National Park. That put us into Riding Mountain about 18:00. At the Visitor’s Center we checked into camping and found it’s $26 with no services at the main campground but we could drive a few kilometers east (on dirt road) to Whirlpool Lake and stay there for $14.85. When we asked about wildlife viewing we were directed to a dirt road beyond the campground. That meant we could register for our campsite, have supper, then look for wildlife—good plan!
Our exploration that evening was great. Leaving the campground we first saw a coyote pup lying in the road. Labashi jumped out to take a picture but I moved the van when I shouldn’t have and the pup walked off into the bush. Fortunately (for me), we saw a second pup just 40 yards or so down the road. They appear to be orphaned--- we’re not sure. On the wildlife road (Rolling River Road) we were at first disappointed to see it was just a narrow corridor through the bush. But then we saw our first-ever fisher— well down the road but it paused long enough for Labashi to positively identify it before it moved on. On our way out, we saw our first-ever Canadian lynx. We first had only a brief view as it ambled across the road and into the woods. We thought that was it but we were nearing an intersection so I turned around and drove back—and there was the lynx walking down the left track, it’s back to us. I followed as quietly as I could and slowly gained on it. We stopped and saw it do a very cat-specific movement; licking it’s paw. Then it turned in profile to us and that image will stay with us forever—what a sight! Soon afterwards it crossed into the woods and disappeared but we had had a nice, long lynx sighting.
We continued once again toward the end when a bird flew up in front of us and paced us, then dropped to the ground just off our left side and in front of us. It was a timberdoodle, or American woodcock. I’ve seen three or four of them over the years but always as a blur. This was the first one to land nearby and give us an extended view. What a beak!
As darkness neared we drove to the park’s East gate and turned around. As we drove the winding road climbing back up the escarpment, an elk cow walked out onto the road.
By the time we returned to our campsite it was nearing midnight and we were exhausted. Good day!

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Thursday, 2 August-

Wonderful, wonderful night at Bird Hill Park. After breakfast we took the kayaks down so I could treat them with 303 protectant. The Ravenworks is showing a lot of oxidation but there’s not much I can do about it; the sun is very direct out here on the prairie at Winnipeg and there’s very little shade.
We spent most of today looking for an internet connection in one of Canada’s major cities. We had heard that the library has wi-fi so tried that first only to learn that wi-fi won’t be installed in the library system until next month—but we could go across the street to MTS Centre. Once I fired up the laptop I found a pay-screen. So much for free wi-fi at MTS. The library had listed a few others so we picked one specifically showing the word FREE at ‘Second Cup’, a coffee chain. But once there we learned (after we bought our coffees) that it’s not free wi-fi. We finally decided we’d go ahead and buy and hour by credit card but then the Rogers Wireless application to process credit cards didn’t work—it just timed out. We then drove by the University of Winnipeg which reportedly has free wi-fi but it’s downtown and there was no parking anywhere. We tried a spot listed in wififreespot.com but it turned out to be a condo complex with lots of No Trespassing signs. We then tried the University of Manitoba where the visitor center said ‘no problem!’. I would need a temporary userID and password but the librarian would give me one upon request. Everything seemed to go fine until I tried to use the temporary userID/password. That’s when I learned it would work only on a U-of-M public computer—not on a personal laptop. Fortunately, the damage was light. I just couldn’t upload my blog but we could still go ahead and get our email and do some research on possible arrangements for a side-trip to Churchill. We also then made calls to find a place to stay using some US-based calling cards. The only problem was the calling card company detects the call is originating in Canada and charges the call at a ridiculous rate. A new one-hour calling card gets 12 minutes of service. Fortunately for us the calling cards had been given to us so it didn’t hurt quite so much—we just had to allocated minutes very carefully for our calls until we could get a Canadian calling card.
While it seemed the day would have been a frustrating one it was actually quite interesting. Our search took us all over the central and south end of Winnipeg and we had an up-close-and-personal look at the University of Manitoba, particularly its library.
I also had an interesting conversation with the research-desk librarian about Manitoba and Winnipeg. She has been living in Winnipeg for 35 years and says now is the best of times economically for both the city and the Province. Both are struggling financially (as is the University of Manitoba) but things are looking better than they have in years.
After spending several hours at the U-of-M we drove back north to our excellent campsite at Bird Hill Provincial Park and opened up the box of wine we bought on the way. Wine, by the way, is quite expensive in Manitoba. A 3-liter Franzia box which costs $10-11 in the States was $23+. When I asked the clerk why it’s so expensive, she said it’s due to taxes added on by the Province. She leaned over to us and told us she gets her personal stock when she makes a trip to the states. She says she saves about $7 a bottle on ‘Forties’ (whatever they are!) even after she pays a tariff to import them as she crosses the border.

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Wednesday, 1 August-

We awoke to a spectacular morning today. The heat and humidity is gone and we have a pleasant sunny day in the low Seventies. After our showers we drove into Winnipeg and drove through the nearby central neighborhoods— St. Boniface, Chinatown, The Exchange, Osborn Village, and Downtown. After lunch we visited the Winnipeg Art Museum for two hours and enjoyed it but didn’t find anything fresh and new. Later in the day we went to a ‘Great Canadian Travel Agency’ to get information on travel packages to Churchill but the package was out of our league at $1050 per person for a three-day, two-night trip. We then went to the Manitoba visitor’s center at The Forks for Churchill info. Afterwards we walked a few blocks to an Earl’s Restaurant for dinner. We had loved the Earl’s in Jasper last summer and this one was just as wonderful. We had a fantastic rosemary-bread, olive-oil and balsamic vinegar appetizer, split the best chicken quesadilla I’ve ever had, then had a small dry-ribs appetizer before finishing with a berry pavlova dessert. The mix of foods may sound strange but the tastes were out of this world (and so were the chocolate and espresso martinis).
After dinner we returned to the same campsite at Bird Hill Provincial Park north of the city. At $12 a night for a nice, flat, shady and uncrowded site with good showers, a store, and a laundromat nearby, returning is a no-brainer.

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Tuesday, 31 July-

Our Wal-mart night was a poor one last night. A trucker idled his engine all night at one end of the parking lot and at the other end we had a loud noise from the air-conditioning system of the Canadian Superstore next door. We wanted to close windows to keep the noise down but doing that cut off the breeze and the van was just too hot to be comfortable. Yesterday and today we’ve had daytime temperatures in the Nineties and overnight temps are in the low Eighties. We’ve had some relief from the constant wind during the daytime but when it drops off at night, we feel the difference.
After breakfast we drove into the downtown area to the Manitoba Museum. We thought we’d spend about two hours there but at the two hour mark we realized we were less than half-way finished. We had lunch and I fed the parking meters again and we STILL had to rush to finish. Manitoba is so diverse that covering it all takes a lot of museum space. Favorites at this museum: a Bombardier ‘auto-neige’ (snow car), a giant- sloth skeleton, excellent discussions of northern lights and glacier landforms, plus superb and comprehensive coverage of native artifacts and life.
When we exited the museum we were hit with the blast-furnace heat on the streets so decided to call it an early day and head for cover at the local campground. We found Bird Hill Provincial Park just 12 miles away by road but a very different world. Winnipeg is a bustling city with lots of traffic, noise, and heat while Bird Hill has trees, bicycle paths, a nice beach, and a nice, away-from-it-all feel. After recovering a bit I got out the folding bikes and we went for a ride on the super bike path to and around the large swimming lake. After supper Labashi wanted to hang out a bit and I still wanted to ride so I toured the 400+plus-site campground looking for interesting camping rigs. One guy had a converted school bus but it didn’t seem very special while another guy had a very interesting home-made pickup camper. This one was a little crude in construction but had a pop-top. I’d like to have seen how he attached the canvas tent section between the main body of the camper and the roof and how his roof-raising mechanism works.
After dark the winds picked up and it seemed we had a strong thunderstorm coming in but it took the longest time to arrive. The wind whooshed around us quite heavily until after midnight and then a heavy but short rainstorm cleared things out and we were finally able to get sleep well.

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Monday, 30 July-

This morning we left our Wal-mart parking spot early and drove into Kenora for an internet connection at HoJoe Coffee on the main street downtown. Labashi planned out our next few days while I uploaded my blog entry and checked our email. Afterwards we moved a few blocks to the Lake of the Woods Museum, an excellent local museum. Kenora was an Indian portage known as ‘Portage of the Muskrats’ and that name, unfortunately, became ‘Rat Portage’. Rat Portage grew dramatically from the 1870’s to the early 1900’s as gold was discovered and the railroad came through. We loved seeing the historic photographs of the main street which were taken in 1874, 1880, 1886, 1892, and the early 1900’s. Through the years a few townspeople proposed changing the name of the town but it wasn’t until 1905 that the Maple Leaf Flour Company refused to build a flour mill in the town because they didn’t want the word ‘Rat’ on their flour bags and the die was cast. The town took the first two letters from Keewaydin, Norman, and Rat Portage to become Kenora. I’d love to live a season or two on the lake near Kenora. Lake of the Woods has 14,465 islands (according to the Museum) and given the size of the lake, many of the islands and island passages are remote and seldom visited. What a great place!
After Kenora we drove west to the Ontario-Manitoba border. The landscape changed from hilly to mostly flat but was still heavily wooded for miles into Manitoba. Then it suddenly opened up to flat plains and a sea of grain fields as we approached Winnipeg. In Winnipeg we first found our Wal-mart for the night and then went looking for a second battery-operated fan to help us cope with this second stretch of very hot weather. We then drove to a small park and found some shade for Mocha Joe and took it easy for the afternoon before returning to Wal-mart for the night.