I enjoyed Canada. Michigan was nice, but I feel like my trip
really began in Canada.
I stayed in Sault Sainte Marie for two nights to catch up on
customary hygiene rituals and finish the onboarding paperwork for my new job
peddling curriculum with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH). The Soo is a nice
town and I enjoyed exploring downtown. I also stumbled across the Canadian Bushplane HeritageCentre and spent a few hours learning about wildfires and the planes
used to fight them.
A Beaver, a favorite plane among Canadian bush pilots
Unfortunately, between 12-hour access windows closing and
usernames that did not work, I was not able to get my last bit of paperwork
done. Frustrated to have this still hanging over my head, it was a relief that
it was the weekend. There was nothing to be done until Monday.
Rising early Saturday morning, I started west on the
Trans-Canada Highway.
Before I began, I made a list of possible places to stop and
explore. In the end, that first day I just drove. I was nice to simply take
things in without having a plan. The northern shore of Lake Superior is hillier
and wilder than the southern. The rocks are more rugged and there are many more
small islands. The view never stopped being beautiful. At a rest area overlook
near Thunder Bay, I believe I was even able to see Isle Royale!
Hazy view of Thunder Bay. I think the little bit of land
you can see at the far left is Isle Royale.
I had no worries about finding a place to sleep because
there were a LOT of rest stops. The tricky bit was that not all had toilets.
Most were roadside pullouts with trash cans, and the ones with restrooms were
usually outhouses. I called it a night, along with several other drivers, at a
lovely place along a lake just east of Kenora. This rest stop had picnic tables
but no restrooms. I’ll spare you the details, but I have since worked out
better ways to handle the call of nature when the forest is not that dense and
the sky is not that dark…
The next morning brought me to Manitoba. Entering the Province,
the pine forests opened up and I was surprised to see aspens alongside the
prairie.
During a quick Wi-Fi check in the town of Brandon, I was
pleased to see that, despite being a Sunday, my username issue was resolved.
Quickly filling out the required forms (it took less than 10 minutes!), I felt
relieved to have the freedom to spend the night in Riding Mountain National
Park without the pressure of needing to check my email early Monday morning.
The hour drive north from Brandon to Riding Mountain was the
most beautiful of my whole trip so far, mostly because it was so unexpected. I
rounded a corner to saw nothing but bright blue skies, rolling hills covered
with pine tree edged fields full of bright yellow flowers I now know to be
canola. My attempt at a
picture turned out poorly, so I’m borrowing this one:
Riding Mountain is not actually a mountain. Instead it is a
large rise in the land, and the higher altitude created an alpine-like biome.
It’s basically a boreal forest a few hundred meters above the surrounding
grassland. It would be a great place to do some trail running, but since I discovered
the sole of one of my running shoes was broken, I stuck to hikes.
View from my campsite
Pikachu and Nick Fury guarding my snack from bears.
Bull dozering the ashes
Refilling the water bottles (I got it unclogged and it works like a charm)
My Little Pony photo bomb
Stove for winter camping
(and the last known whereabouts of the My Little Pony friend...)
Morning at on of the Bead Lakes
That small hill is a 70+ year old pile of manure left over from an old saw mill
When I reentered civilization Monday afternoon, I was
greeted with an email saying my job paperwork would be complete once they
received a copy of my passport. After a moment of panic and the assistance of a
very helpful librarian in the town of Dauphin, I got that taken care of and returned
to the road! (By the way, I believe Dauphin, at 51.2ﹾN
is the furthest north I’ve ever been, outside of a couple layovers at the
Anchorage airport).
And with that, I left Manitoba in the rearview mirror.
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