View from the front window

‎For the next 6 days, eastern side of the canadian rockies up the bow valley from the provincial park. We are about 50km from banff so still in the foothills, but there is the odd flash of snow visible. Much more my style than being on the prairies 

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the Fido network.

Manitoba, Saskatchewan and now Alberta

Winnipeg I’m sure is a lovely city, when the sun comes out. It was a dreary, overcast day when we visited and the historic district had buildings dating back to 1895. The area reminded me Cornhill in London on a wet day. The Forks historic site presents the 6,000 year history of human presence and activity at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. Due to heavy rains and snowmelt, the rivers had burst their banks, and all the walkways were under at least 6’ of water, so we didn't get to see it at its best. Assiniboine Park was lovely with recently planted flowers now in bloom.

Mark found a small chair to rest in while I took some photos

The sculpture garden was nice and had lots of bears at play:

We also visited the Royal Canadian Mint, where coins are made for half of the countries in the world, including Australia and New Zealand. They also had a gold bar weighing 23lb and an armed security guard right behind it!

  

We continued across the prairies to Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan

These grain elevators are in every town along the railway line on the prairies. Most have been revised and silos added to them and in other areas, they are new and huge! We also had another time zone change. We’re now on Mountain time which seems quite bizarre as we’re still on the prairies. Apparently it’s not really Mountain time, its just that Saskatchewan doesn't practice daylight saving! Moose Jaw is also known as Little Chicago as during Prohibition in the US, alcohol was produced here and smuggled across the border by ‘bootleggers’ working for Al Capone. We did a tour of the tunnels, Capone’s office, bedroom and the local ‘club’ where he used to conduct business.

Moose Jaw is also home to the Canadian Forces Snowbirds, 431 Air Demonstration Squadron, flying CT-114 Tutor aircraft. We spent the afternoon at the History of Transportation museum, which now includes the Snowbirds exhibit which was previously at the air-force base.

Canada is on the move! This is the first official week of summer and we’ve seen more caravans (travel trailers), 5^th wheels and motorhomes in the last few days than we have in the last two months. Many people will be making a long weekend of it in order to celebrate Canada Day (July 1^st) which is a national holiday. Most of the campgrounds are fully booked so we were lucky to find a spot in a provincial park 33kms out of Moose Jaw.

On the move again and another day, another province, as we cross into Alberta for an overnight stop at Medicine Hat, before continuing our journey to Calgary.

Sunshine capital of Canada

is allegedly Medicine Hat. Except of course on the day I'm there - it takes a long time to refuel badger (100 gallon tank), and when you are doing it at the cheap petrol station with no roof and its raining sideways at you it gets a bit grim.

Horrendous drive this morning - 50kph headwinds gusting to 70 meant that we couldn't get into top gear and just watched the fuel gauge drop mile by mile, and even at 12 tonnes the wind was bouncing us all over the road - 12 feet high with the aerodynamics of a brick on its side. The prairies are a bit more undulating than we expected, and for reasons best know to the surveyors the road does actually twist and turn quite a bit, so that the wind was sometimes coming at us completely sideways and causing such a drop in pressure that the spring loaded awning over the door was half extending as we were going along. Interesting.

Sault Saint Marie to Kenora...

… was this week’s journey – 1,170kms.

We spent a week in Sault Saint Marie, for the most part just killing time as two days would have been enough. The city is on the St Mary River and is twinned with Sault Saint Marie, Michigan. The International Bridge, at 3.2kms long, joins the two cities and spans three operating ship canals.

Not a lot happens here and one afternoon we were listening to the radio and the top story on the news was a 61 year old woman had been attached by a raccoon while she was gardening! Well, I completely lost it and laughed so hard tears were rolling down my face. It wasn’t the attack as such (I’m sure raccoons can be extremely vicious!), it was more the fact that it had made headline news!

The weather was awful when we left, with visibility down to 500m in some place. Needless to say, we didn’t see much of Lake Superior as we drove to Marathon. The next day, however, was much better and the views from Badger were breathtaking

We carried on around the lake to the next big town, formerly Fort William and Port Arthur, the two towns merged in 1970 to form Thunder Bay. We spent a few days at the Fort William Historical Park. This was the inland headquarters of the North West Company and the fur trade. For two months over the summer every year, the trappers (also known as Voyageurs) used to come in from the interior and trade their furs for goods.

These pelts were then bagged up and sent by canoe to Montreal – about a 6 week paddle of 18 hour days. They we tough back then. Fort William Historical Park has been recreated in the year 1816, with all the volunteers dressed in period costume and acting like it is 1816. It was all very well done. We saw some of the local wildlife on the trail:

We also had some beautiful sunsets there too

Just outside Thunder Bay is Kakabeka Falls, also known as Niagara of the north. It drops 40m and the sound of the rushing water was amazing and so loud!

We continued along the Trans-Canada highway to Kenora in Lake of the Woods. This is what the sat-nav showed – we are in lake country!

Kenora is home to Husky the Musky, a very tasty lake fish. I'd like to see the pan that would cook this one!

I decided to bake some of my ‘world famous’ raspberry and white chocolate muffins (which smelt wonderful!) and had a chipmunk trying to get into the bus. It sat on the top step, begging, then scrambled halfway up the screen door trying to get in. Needless to say, he didn't get any J 

Tomorrow we leave Ontario (finally!) and head for Winnipeg in Manitoba, on our journey west.

Nuts to Texas...I've driven across ONTARIO

‎Ok, it has taken the best part of a month, but given that is spans new york, pennsylvania, ohio, michigan, wisconsin and minnesota we've not done too bad. Actually it was a lazy pace, and it's still smaller than western oz and the northern territories...

And we are also out of the woods and lakes and onto the prairies, which will make a change but I'm sure will be equally fed up with the same view after another 1400km.

We did get to see one moose by the roadside and another dark something wading across a small lake/flooded stream ‎that could have been a moose or a black bear, but as we were going downhill at 100kph I didn't get much chance to take a good look.

Go west...

… life is peaceful there, Go west, lots of open air… Well, lots of lakes, rivers, forests and very picturesque. 

From Montreal we headed 200km west to Ottawa, the nation’s capital. The Parliament building (also known as ‘the Hill’) looked quite familiar:

While we were there, the bells started ringing and at first I thought I was hearing things. The Star Wars music, both the Jedi and Emperor themes, were coming from the bell tower. Now, I’m not sure what the national anthem of Canada is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not either of them! As it turns out, a lady rings the bells at midday everyday, and does a varied repertoire depending on how she feels. We thought it was quite bizarre, especially given that local elections in Ontario are coming up in the next few days! Or maybe we were just reading too much into local politics J

Next we visited the Canadian Museum of History and learnt all about the First People and European influences, the fur trade and Confederation. We still wanted to know more, so we then went to the Canadian War Museum and found out about the war of 1812. To us, all we knew about 1812 was the Napoleonic war in Europe, but here, the US tried to invade Canada and conquer the British colony, claiming it for herself while the Crown was busy fighting off the French in Europe. As the US President Thomas Jefferson said at the time, it was a “mere matter of marching” as many Americans had assumed the Canadians would be eager to join the US. How wrong they were!

We also had a drive out to Smiths Falls and the Rideau Canal museum. The Canal connects Ottawa (on the Ottawa River) with Kingston in the south, on Lake Ontario, and is over 200kms long. The canal opened in 1832 as a precaution in case war broke out with the US again. It was a great feat of engineering and most of the original structures are still intact. It was registered as a World Heritage Site in 2007. 

We also saw this little beaver having his lunch on the banks of the canal

From Ottawa, we continued west another 270kms to Mew Lake campground in Algonquin Provincial Park. The park was established in 1893 and is the oldest provincial park in Canada. It is huge and currently it’s about 7,600 square kilometres (2,950 square miles), and about a quarter of the size of Belgium! With over 2,400 lakes and 1,200kms of streams and rivers, there’s a lot to explore. We were only there for two days and our campsite was right on the lake front so we decided to chill out on the first day. This was the view from our table:

And the other side of the lake, can you spot Badger hiding in the trees?

A bear had been spotted in the area but I think Mark’s snoring might have scared him away! The next day we went on a 3 ½ hour hike through the pine and maple forests to a lookout and Bat lake. The trek was worth it:

From Mew Lake, we headed north to North Bay and skirted around Lake Nipissing, then carried on west to Sudbury, 325kms in total. Nickel-copper ore was discovered here in 1883 during the construction of the railway. Greater Sudbury is the home of the Big Nickel (50 years old this year) and one of the largest nickel and copper mining areas in Canada.

From Sudbury, we continued to follow the Trans-Canada highway another 150kms to Algoma Mills. Here, we are on the banks of Lake Lauzon on one side, and a short walk to the North Channel that feeds into the Great Lake Huron. This is the view from the back of Badger:

… and the islands in the North Channel with Lake Huron beyond on the horizon.

Tomorrow we continue on the Trans-Canada highway for another 170kms to Saulte Saint Marie, which is on the border with Michigan. After that, it’s only another 1,400kms to Winnipeg then another 1,300kms to Calgary. Piece of cake!

Canadian Tennis

I think I have worked out why the canadians have had such a good showing at the French open this year - the invention of the battery fly swat, or l'executeur. It's a lot of fun, very satisfying and seems to have become the national summer sport. We'll never win the war, but it makes the battles a lot more interesting, especially when you hear the zzzzzzz of a mozzie in the night and you can just wave it around in the dark until you get a nice rewarding flash of blue and yellow and loud cracking noise‎. Badger does have fly mesh up at all the windows and vents, but they are still getting in somehow, so this evens it up.

We also picked up our first passenger somewhere, maybe algonquin. I was putting stuff away in the storage basement at sudbury and there were a pair of eyes looking back at me - some kind of mouse. Campsite neighbours gave us some glue traps so I had to dispose of him the next morning, not the most pleasant of jobs but given that they hunt pretty much anything else round here there is no point getting squeamish.