The Road Goes On…

Category: Trips

  • Vegreville, AB to Grande Prairie, AB

    We had an early morning that started with brushing Pepsi and de-fluffing Martin and the van.

    As a treat, we went to the nearby Tim Hortons for breakfast and some planning and getting excited about our imminent arrival in the Yukon.

    Our first stop was a few kilometres down the highway in Mundare with its large sausage monument honouring the Stawnichy’s Meat Processing plant. SMP has been making sausages in the area since 1959 and we sampled and purchased several different items.

    By now it was 10AM, and the Ukrainian Heritage Village a few kilometres down the road was just opening. This reconstruction of what life was like for early Ukrainian settlers includes actual period houses from locations in the area and interpretive staff that interact with you as if you were actually in that time period. This was informative, a lot of fun, and a unique experience. We spent several hours there learning what the life of early Ukrainian settlers was like. We talked to a blacksmith, teachers, and a farmer and his wife.

    We saw some chickens, but the star of the farm animals was a very smart pig that used its snout to open and drop the lid of its feed box to rattle the food into its trough.

    Time for Ukrainian lunch under a big shady tree followed by a serious stretch of highway to make up our daily quota of kilometres.

    Our campground tonight is in Grande Prairie and features what looks like a number of oil and gas workers.

    Our restaurant at the campground was right next to a garage where honey was being harvested and we got to sample fresh honey straight from the comb. Yummy!

    Guess what? One more Ukrainian meal to finish the day prepared by Irina, who came to Canada from the Ukraine only three years ago.

  • Manitou Beach, SK to Vegreville, AB

    After a good planning session of our route to come, we departed towards Edmonton rather late in the morning. It was mostly a driving day and the canola fields gradually turned to bright yellow canola fields with scattered black oil and gas wells.

    Towards the end of the day we visited the Alberta Visitor Information Center in Lloydminster where Jonathan, our competent and very nice associate, hooked us on the Ukrainian history and food in the area.

    Our first stop was the “Cheesiry”, an artisan cheese making operation. Their boutique was now permanently closed, but they had an honour fridge in the barn where one could purchase cheese.

    Unfortunately, after deciding what we wanted, we looked into the fridge and found it void of cheese, save for one small piece. There was, however, a fairly substantial amount of cold, hard, cash.

    The next stop was Vegreville, the site of the world’s largest Ukrainian egg at 25.7 feet in length, constructed in 1975.

    We were looking forward to having dinner at a Ukrainian restaurant that had advertised in the regional tourist information brochures, only to find it was closed and for sale. The city campground office was also already closed for the evening and while it had a mail slot for self-registration, there weren’t any forms available to actually register on. Walmart parking lot to the rescue!

     

  • The Narrows, MB to Manitou Beach, SK

    Our campsite was part of a larger “Resort” complex which included a small store with more liquor than food and a defunct gas station.

    We left after a wholesome steel-cut oatmeal breakfast and continued on our route of less travelled and less repaired highways towards Saskatchewan. Along the way we passed endless fields of bright yellow canola, grain elevators and a few quirky town mascots such as the one found at Gilbert Plains.

    We reached our goal of Little Manitou Lake which we had discovered on our 2008 cross-Canada trip. Little Manitou Lake has a very high mineral and salt content which is said to have healing powers. We visited the spa/pool and spent quite some time in the salty, slightly brownish waters of various temperatures. Ruth found that her mosquito bites were no longer itchy after being in the water.

    Our campground is in walking distance from the spa and is a beautifully treed park. We had a lovely BBQ hamburger dinner sitting outside listening to the wind rustle through the trees.

  • Falcon Lake, MB to The Narrows, MB

    We started the morning by having a huge Ukrainian and Canadian breakfast at the Falcon Lake restaurant. This was our first breakfast out – what a treat! Ukrainian breakfast includes pierogies, kielbasa, eggs and toast.

    Well fed and with a clean van we were ready to embark on the day’s adventure. Today that would be Gimli, Manitoba on the west side of Lake Winnipeg. We took historic Hwy 1, a narrow and hilly two lane highway with a speed limit of 100 km/h and somewhat reminiscent of a younger version of Route 66. It took us to Hwy 9 which led us to Gimli, a town that was celebrating the 34th anniversary of the Gimli Glider incident. On July 23, 1983, an Air Canada Boeing 767 ran out of fuel on its way from Montreal to Edmonton and had to make a emergency landing without power on an abandoned runway at the airport. Captain Robert Pearson successfully landed the jet without any serious injuries to the passengers and crew.

    A permanent exhibit was officially opened today with artifacts and background information. Captain Robert Pearson was in attendance, gave a detailed account of the events, cut the ribbon officially opening the museum and signing autographs. Federal and local politicians, some the crew and passengers from the flight, and a representative of the company that manufactured the ram air turbine (RAT) which allowed the hydraulic systems to continue to operate after a shutdown of both engines were in attendance.

    While Martin visited the museum, Ruth strolled along the seawall with Pepsi and did some street photography.

    After Gimli we drove to The Narrows, an area where Lake Manitoba becomes narrow and checked into our secluded campground for the evening.

  • North Bay, ON to Falcon Lake, MB

    We woke up to some rain and after breakfast planned the day’s route. Pepsi had her say but got bored pretty quickly and left for some interesting activities.

    Our lunch site was right at picnic area adjacent to a waterfall. We took some time to enjoy the scenery and photograph.

    We just made it back into the van when it started to rain. And that rain was just the tip of the iceberg of what was to come. The downpour was so bad that we couldn’t see the road anymore and had to pull into a rest area where we were pelted with hail. Once that stopped we continued on our way only to get hit with a second rain storm and another stop by the side of the road.

    We crossed the Manitoba border, stopped at the visitor’s center and raced the 14kms to the Falcon Lake campground to get the last electric campsite.

    The “resort” at the complex featured Wayne Morris, a magician and hypnotist from Alberta who was performing that night. The venue where the performance took place was filled with pool tables, slot machines, a dance floor and bar. The only dinner choice was chicken fingers and fries. The show was informative, classy and worthwhile and it was too bad that so few people showed up for it.

    On our way back to the campsite we peeked into the bakery to see what breakfast options are available and talked to our camp neighbours about their tractor trailer, trailer and Smart car combination.

  • Kapuskasing to North Bay

    In the morning we woke up to the usual Walmart scene – a bunch of RVs and a truck with idling diesel engine.

    Our drive today took us through some amazing scenery from rocky wooded areas with beautiful lakes to vast plains to spectacular mountainous areas.

    On the way we stopped at the Geraldton Information Center to learn about the history of the area, starting with the native people to the gold miners to the forest fire fighters of today.

    We stopped at the Trowbridge Campground for the evening and took Pepsi for a walk to investigate the campground and were surprised to find a number of vintage cars and trailers at some of the campsites. We spoke to a couple of the owners of the cars and discovered that they were all part of a coast-to-coast old timers rally and were driving from Victoria, British Columbia to St. John’s, Newfoundland over a period of 70 days. Cars included an old ambulance and fire truck. Definitely a sight to behold.

  • North Bay to Kapuskasing

    Today was our first full travel day. We got up early, had breakfast in the van because of the helicopter sized mosquitos, dumped and filled all water tanks and headed north. Yesterday we had passed a sign that said we were half way to the North Pole (45 degrees North) and today we made to the 49th parallel.

    Highway 11 was our best friend. It took us to Temagami where we almost bought a prefabricated bunkie lego-like kit for $8000. All we needed was some land to put it on!

    A short stop at the Information Center and Native Art Gallery followed. The snack bar next door was still closed and so we were deprived of our ice cream, but the moose with the Canadian tie had to do for now…

    A short drive up the road we came across the Thornloe cheese factory where we stocked up on a fine selection of local cheeses and a small strawberry milk shake each.

    Our next stop was to be TImmins where we wanted to take a Gold Mine tour. Fortunately, thanks to the wonder of the Internet, we discovered this attraction had closed in 2013 so saved ourselves the detour.

    We continued on Highway 11 through rain, hail and wind and only briefly stopped at the abandoned Smooth Rock Cafe…

    Our home for the night is the Walmart in Kapuskasing, about 600kms from tomorrow’s goal of Thunder Bay.

  • Markham to North Bay

    Breakfast was an hour long three course feast with lots of conversation followed by a short walk for Pepsi’s sake. Then we were off on our six week adventure. This time we chose to use the northern Trans-Canada highway which took us to North Bay. We stayed at the same little campground that we’d stayed at last year. This gave us the opportunity to just march out the side gate to the Champlain Park and go for a swim in Lake Nipissing. The water was a lot warmer than the North Sea had been in Denmark two weeks ago but still felt refreshing on this beautifully warm sunny day. A BBQ chicken dinner at the picnic table followed and we ended the day by re-watching the last two episodes of House of Cards Season 4. Now that we’ve refreshed our memories of what had happened last year, we can move onto Season 5, all downloaded on Martin’s iPhone.

  • Dundas to Markham

    We had arrived home from our Denmark/Germany trip and went into a mad rush to get the laundry done and pack for the Canada trip. In the morning we finished getting the van ready, picked up dog food at the vet, Pepsi at Holly’s Pride where she had spent the two weeks while we were gone, got our hair cut and had a lovely lunch at our friends Pat and Palma’s house. Well fed and with best wishes we were sent off. The trip wasn’t a long one – we only drove to Markham to spend the afternoon and evening with Martin’s dad. We went for fish dinner and talked for hours before settling in for the night in our van parked in the driveway. Pepsi was really happy to see us after being in the kennel for two weeks.

  • Canada 2017 Overview