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 =======
(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 =======
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 14:14
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