Sleeping Giant, Neeeeepawa, and Saskatoonie

May 25

Blogging on the go! I LOVE IT!!! All of the following was written while driving to our yet to be determined, next stop near Winnipeg. We are currently somewhere between Dryden and Kenora.

With only one day down, it was an early morning on the 23rd so we could get some more kilometers between us and the Bay. With Cochrane behind us and emma at the wheel, we were on our way. We stopped in Moonbeam to take a picture and as we were were taking the last one, a car honks at us. At first I thought it was just another one of my admirers, but it turned out to be one of emma’s roomate’s parents running an errand (we are now passing through Kenora). It made for some good small town laughs, as the last thing we were expecting was to bump into somebody we knew!

A last minute decision had us driving down the 631 towards White River. This way we could see more of the drive along Lake Superior and as bonus, Winnie the Pooh’s birth place (White River)!!! While stopped for some Pooh pics, I noticed that the flower bed was smoking and kicking off some serious heat!!! Our first experience with Spontaneous Combustion! Being good citizens, we notified the tourist office before continuing on.

(We are currently stuck at a construction stop for 10 minutes waiting for the lovely lady to change the sign from red to fluorescent yellow/green).

Just outside of White River, I had my first taste of true forest fire devastation. It was incredible to see whole ‘mountains’ looking more like the top of my grandfather’s head than a forest. Nothing left but naked trees everywhere.

(I can not get the image in front of me out of my mind. As we waited for the sign to flip (which just happened) I witnessed a truly ignorant scene. Two people in their late twenties, one dawning a gut and a Nascar hat, while the other was the same minus the hat, smoking with their kids in the backseat. It boggles my mind that #1 people still smoke #2 people are still ignorant enough to smoke around their kids. As the saying goes, ‘The masses are asses’.)

OK.. enough bitching and back to it. After 11 hours and 830+ KMs on the road, we arrived at Sleeping Giant Provincial park. We were greeted by a dear at the gates (I swear this was set up as a publicity stunt) which was only the first of MANY we would see on the camp grounds. There were only a few others in the entire park with us, and we were the only ones using a tent. We had the park to ourselves! We decided on campsite 140A which was just amazing!!!! We set up quickly, ate even faster, enjoyed a gin and lemonade, and then brought out the bocci ball!!! Thunder could be heard in the mountains across the lake and it was coming this way. We cut our last game short to clean up camp and then we sat on our perfectly positioned picnic table to watch the storm come in. Well it came, and it sent emma and I running for the tent as we had underestimated the ferocity of this storm. The ‘Blair Witch Project’ played in my head as we huddled in our tent as it was pounded by rain! You could not hear yourself think over the sound of the rain hitting the tarp on our tent! As fast as it was on us, it was… off us. With the expression of ‘Did that just happen!?!?!?’ still on our faces, we explored the campground before calling it a night.

My dreams of going to sleep to the sound of the water crashing against the shoreline was quickly replaced with the beating sound of the tarp against the tent. The same tarp I was praising during the storm, I was now cursing as the high winds turned our tent into one of those New Year’s noise makers. Not the sleep I had imagined.

What I lost in quality I made up for in quantity, getting up at noon!! After breakfast/lunch and some reorganization of the car, we hit the trails…. and got EXTREMELY wet. Who knew jeans could absorb that much water!!! Luckily by the time we returned to camp, it had died down. After 3 hours of wet clothes, it was time for warm food, a hot shower, and some dry clothes. The rain was light, but continuous. Making the best of wet nght, we climbed into the car for some 24 (gotta love modern technologie)!!!!! May 2-4 seemed like the perfect date to watch the first disc of the first season of 2-4! With the sounds of the rain on the car and not us , the strangest realization came to me….. I could not think of anywhere else in the world I would rather be!

A quick dash to the tent and we were dry, warm, and nestled in for the night. I had learned from the previous night and had tied down the tarp better to reduce the noise.
(We just entered Manitoba!!!! BOOOO BYE ONTARIO!!!!) You will notice the amount of driving we did on the 24th… NONE. ? After 2 days of relatively painless driving, the decision was made to combine two legs of the trip in order to gain a day of R&R.

This morning we were up at 6:30am and after some morning hijinx with a very socialized little squirrel, we hit the road. And the road is where we currently are and have been for approximately 8.5 hours with about another 4 in front of us.
*****
May 26th

After our new record length in the car (11.5 hours and 984.6 KMs!!!) we ended up staying the night in Neepawa. No rain this time but the temperature did drop down to close to freezing! Luckily emma and I are used to sleeping close to each other, so we snuggle close and survived!

This morning was a little more laid back, as we 'only' had 7.5 hours of driving to do. ha ha. After some awesome scrambled eggs, we were off and arrived in Saskatoon at what we thought was 8:30, but later found out we had crossed into another time zone, so it was actually 7:30pm!

I am sure there is more to it.. so I may add more details in a later blog, but for now... enjoy the photos (as I know that is all you really care about.. you photo addicted maniacs!!!).

Given'r

B

LINKS TO THE PICTURES!

The Crazy Trip to Thunder Bay

Fun at the Sleeping Giant!

FINALLY out of Ontario to Manitoba and the onto Saskatchewan

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