12 September, 2017, Blog Post No. 16



12 September, 2017,  Blog Post No. 16
10 September – On the downhill run now.  480 km.  Made it thru to Whiteshell Provincial Park just east of Winnipeg where we had stayed on the eastward leg.  Huge improvement in weather, back to shorts and T shirt.  Upsala, English River, Ignace, Dyment, Dinorwic, Wabigoon, Dryden, Minnitaki, Vermillion Bay, Kenora all flashed past in a blur of Tim Hortons and ESSO stations and the inevitable roadworks slowdowns.  I think the Ontario/Federal Govt is taking its slogan “Build on the North” seriously.  The road contracts seem to be enormous judging by the amount of equipment deployed.  Fairly straight run home now, dodging fires and snow.  Clearing Ontario was a great milestone, tho the return weather was much clearer and the views around the top of Lake Superior more spectacular.  We were lured into a superior “Trading Store” in Upsala to buy fudge for stay-awake energy and came out with a beaver pelt (every real Canadian household should have one!!) and a lovely Irish winter sweater for Phil.
11 September - Drove into Winnipeg on a beautiful sunny day.  Passed half way longitude.  Found parking, no mean feat in a large city in our camper and arrive at the Forks in time for lunch, dogs in tow, their first urban outing in months.  They were quite excited but very well behaved, and of course much admired by the Forks crowd.  Shopping and visiting had to be done in relays, one of us dog minding while the other roamed.  Forks is a very nice area, a bit like Granville Island before the tourists took over.  Even more interesting food, a wide variety of ethnic presentations, including Jamaican, Sri Lankan, plus seafood, burgers etc, wildly creative sushi and other Chinese/Asian offerings.  Finally found a small Inuit stone dancing bear which we could afford.  Only setback was we managed to break the TV aerial on a low underpass as we left the Forks area.  On on across the wide open landscape to Portage la Prairie.  We are running close to the CNR lines again; we passed a tanker train with over 120 oil tanker cars.  Pipelines anybody?
12 September – Prairies, prairies, prairies at 115 km on cruise control.  Clouds of butterflies as K walked the dogs in the morning.  We took the camper to a truck wash this morning, the weight of smashed bugs was starting to affect our diesel consumption.  $30 worth of wash and foam time improved things a little but the screen was splattered to near opaque with bugs within the hour.  Weather deteriorated into a smoky haze, apparently from the fires in Southern Alberta and Montana.  This time we were on HW1, eastbound we traveled the Yellowhead HW 16.  HW1 was a lot less interesting and we didn’t have the clear blue skies of the outbound journey.  HW1 also bypasses all the small villages, so lacks the variety of HW16.  It has been a great trip, we feel we have a much better appreciation of Canada now.  A train just rumbled past the camp. blowing its horn, all we needed was some Ian Tyson or Gordon Lighfoot on the soundtrack and we would be living in our own movie set.
A la prochaine
P & K
High point of the drive thru Eastern Ontario

Good view of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg

Visitors to the Forks, Winnipeg, Manitoba

Prairies

Different view of prairies

Another view of the prairies

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