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.
(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.
----------------------------------------------------------
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.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 16:07
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