Western Dreamz TripLog
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Friday July 2, 2004 - "And they're off"
It's Friday night, a quarter after nine and I am sitting in the car burning an MP3 CD to the external burner from the external hard drive, running off the power inverter. Neenerneet. We are about 30 minutes from Wawa, in Lake Superior Provincial Park at the Rabbit Blanket campsite. We left Craig's at about 8am and covered over 700 km today. Believe it or not the sun is still up and going strong... looks like sunset up here will be somewhere between 9:30 and 10. Today was rather uneventful. We stopped for breakfast in Muskoka and were served by the craziest lady with the craziest eye makeup. Unfortunately we didn't get a picture, but we DID forget to tip her (bad karma #1). Most other stops were Tim Horton's or Canadian Tire. Rocky bought a camp stove and I bought sunglasses (in case you were wondering who is the coolest of all [ps: it's not me]). We also stopped at the Big Nickel (Big Deal) where they tried to charge us $4 to park and look at it. Recommendation #1: Don't bother with the Big Nickel (or as we call it, the Big Stainless Steel), and if you must, then try to talk the parking attendant into letting you in for free. Our only other stop was at a rather cool gorge where they were sucking gravity's energy to make electricity. We're taking it a bit easy today since the 5 weeks hasn't even officially started yet. Perhaps some more interesting stuff will happen tomorrow as we battle the rest of Ontario. To finish up, here are some pictures of our site (which is awesome by the way - recommendation #2: take site 31 if you visit here). And here is a picture of me being a supreme nerd (writing this on my laptop at the campground). Oh I almost forgot... we also saw the Conservative Party's Party Bus coming the opposite way on the highway. Unfortunately we forgot our rotten eggs at home.
Saturday July 3, 2004 - "One time it!"
When I left off yesterday, we were about to get the fire started and commence chilling, however it was not to be because of our soggy wood. No matter though... we had the camp stove and Rocky's superior culinary skills so we were able to eat despite our clear lack of woodsman skills. Carrying on in the theme of this update, I will mention the place we stopped for a photo-op yesterday (and forgot to put in the log): Big Wood. OK, on to today. We hit the road bright and early (10AM) after swimming at Rabbit Blanket for a total of 26 seconds. Our first stop was Wawa, home of the Giant Canada Goose (or is it the Jimi Hendrix Sound). It was parade day there or something, so we didn't get far enough into town to see if there was a Tim Hortons. Back on the road we passed through some of the best scenery so far offered by Ontario. Rocky cliffs and hills covered in trees, with fairly frequent small lakes and glimpses of Lake Superior. We had to pass the same slow-ass truck three times since we stopped twice: once to take a photo of a bear on the side of the road (we were the only motorists who gave a shit about it -- damn tourists!); and once for coffee. Later, we hit up the Ouimet Canyon Provincial Park. This canyon is some number of kilometers long, 1000m wide and 1000m deep, and the walls are basically vertical. It was caused by some volcanic stuff followed by some glacial stuff, which is pretty much how all of Canada was formed from what I can tell. Our next stop was at a rest area to make lunch, where we discovered that the black flies are indeed smarter than us. We couldn't figure out why these damn bugs were swarming and landing on us, yet were uninterested in biting. That is until we got in the car and discovered that we were covered in bloody spots where they had feasted without us knowing. I guess they inject some sort of anaesthetic or something. Our arrival in T-Bay was marked with a visit to the Terry Fox Monument, where rocky found a fly devouring a moth, and I defied the laws of probability by landing a flipped penny on it's edge. On our way out of town it started raining... hard. Not wanting to set up camp in a torrential downpour, we decided to keep driving until either the rain let up or we became too tired to continue. Well we ended up driving through Dryden, through Kenora, across the border and even through Winnipeg, finally stopping at 4am on the south shores Lake Manitoba. The campground we found there was just like the rest of the province. Flat, long and straight. All of the sites ran alongside a single endless road that followed the shore of the lake. We found a semi-sheltered site and were set up in 5 minutes (and asleep in 6).
Sunday July 4, 2004 - "Oop oop a doo"
We successfully avoided camping in the rain yesterday... everything was still dry when we woke up (at noon). It turns out Lake Manitoba is big. Big enough such that the other shore was not visible. Our campsite was separated from the water only by a few trees and a small beach. THe water looked quite dismal (probably due to the crappy grey skies) and the lake was a bit marshy where we were. The beach by the campground entrance was probably much better though. From the looks of it, the whole campground is basically a beach area where you can stay the night. We paid on our way out... only $7! We need to find more campsites that cheap. The rest of the day was dedicated to finishing off Manitoba and getting a start on Saskatchewan. Driving that stretch felt like driving to Windsor (for 7 hours). Our destination was Buffalo Pound Provincial Park, Northwest of Regina. Lucky for us, it started raining about an hour before we got there and didn't stop. Not quite ready for another 7 hours of driving, we decided we would stay there anyway. On the sideroad toward the park we just about smoked a deer. We were basically on an empty country road surrounded by fields, we'd passed only one car in 20 minutes when BAM... a deer launched out of the ditch right in front of us and booked it to the field on the other side causing us to both crap our pants. The park was interesting: As you approach, there is an office which is basically in the middle of a farmer's field. After registering though, you drive down into a valley full of trees with a lake at the bottom. We were given site #1 which turned out to be really good. sheltered with large trees and lots of space. We still got a little wet but it could have been worse. We set up camp, started a fire, ate, killed the fire and went to sleep (dreaming of sunny skies on Monday). Oh Mister Sun. Sun? Mister Golden Sun. Please come out and play?
Monday July 5, 2004 - "Medium One and One"
Guess what we woke up to today? Rain! Yaaaaaaay! I've got mail! Yaaaaaaay! I"m gonna go to Hawaii! Yaaaaaaay! Sorry... back to business. We grumbled, packed up the wet tent and took a look at the lake before we left. The valley that we were in was quite cool. The walls of the valley were fairly steep, and very bermy (bermish?). Hopefully the pictures do it justice. The water seemed quite swimmable, however we weren't into it so we just showered and left. Today would mark the end of Saskatchewan and the beginning of Alberta. Here's some advice for anyone planning to hit a Tim Horton's in the praries. They do not understand what a "regular" coffee is. The first time we tried to order a medium regular, we were asked "One and one?" and the second time we were asked if we'd like cream or sugar in it. So we deduced that the standard order here would be a "medium one and one". I must congratulate the girl working in Moose Jaw however, since she knew what I was talking about (I've continued ordering "medium regulars" since I'm a stubborn Ontari-ble -- or is it Onterrible?) Another good game to play is "how much does coffee cost in this province". I don't think it's humanly possible to figure out how all of the taxes work into the coffee price. We should have been logging that instead of all this other stuff, since it's probably the most important information for other travellers. Back on the road, we were happy to see the skies finally clearing and offering some rain-free driving. The scenery between Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat was quite amazing due to the small hills everywhere. Rather than being flat as a pancake, the fields were rolling with grassy hills littered with cattle and the occasional oil rig. None of the crops were very high yet, though some were blooming into giant fields of yellow flowers. After Medecine Hat we decided to head North toward Drumheller which is situated in the middle of the Alberta badlands. The badlands were something to behold, and the pictures probably do not live up to the real deal. Many of the hill faces still had open mine shafts and remnants of the structures that used to be attached to them. One mining site was still standing, including the old rail bridge leading to it. Most of the small towns in the area have turned from mining to tourism, with Drumheller being the king of tourist-towns in the area. Drumheller goes so far that it even has a tourism radio station with a recorded voice talking about all the places to spend money. The best part of the station was the breaks in the recording where they played a touching instrumental version of the Macarena. Due to the huge number of fossils they have found in the badlands, the theme of the town is dinosaurs; it apparently has one of the best dinosaur related museums in the world. We were not really interested in going indoors due to the weather being great, so we trucked along to the campground at Wyndham-Carseland Provincial Park just outside of Calgary. The drive to the park took us past a couple beef processing plants with huge fenced in mazes full of cattle. Luckily we can just smell one such plant from our campsite. One thing I forgot to mention about all of the prarie provinces is their amazing attitude toward driving speeds. I suppose that everything is so spread out that you have to drive as fast as possible to ever get anywhere. Most divided highways clock in at 110, with most country roads being 100 (and occasionally 90). Speed limits are lower where there are towns of course, but there's something odd about driving 110 down the same road that cyclists use, and being completely within the limits of the law. I must note that New Brunswick has the same approach to speeds, so if only Ontario and Quebec could wake up, we all might get from one coast to the other a little faster. Tomorrow: BC!
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