The Western World

After the long weekend we drove straight to Vancouver, where we stayed with our friend Fish (Tom is his real name! He used to work with us at the Peaks) at his amazing penthouse apartment in Kitsilano - a neighbourhood in Vancouver that is right on the ocean. Our friend Mia, who also worked at the Peaks, is now a flight attendant and she flew out to hang out with us all for the day. It was an amazing Peaks reunion that involved the beach, the ocean, beers, burgers, water balloons, and a whole lot of fun on Fish's rooftop patio. The next morning Mia flew out and we had a nice relaxing day checking out Vancouver.
Then - completely opposite to anything we've been doing lately - Katie actually flew to Boston the next day for a few days to celebrate her brother in law's 40th birthday, and catch up with that side of the family. During that time Chris got to stay with Fish, who showed him around the adventure side of Vancouver - he longboarded, climbed Grouse mountain, frisbeed, and had lots of adventure.
After our solo adventures we were so excited to be back on the road, and we explored Kamloops and the area. We were defeated a couple of times by the Forestry Service Campgrounds that we had fallen so in love with, because many of them are really backcountry and we can't tell on the map whether they will be easy roads or intense switchback rock roads. The Mazda is so weighed down from all of the stuff we have in it, so a couple of times we had to give up on finding the campsites in order to save the bottom of the car from being ripped apart. In fact, for our night in Kamloops, we spent so much time going to Forestry campgrounds and turning around halfway there, that finally at 10:30 we had to call it quits and we set up at Paul Lake Provincial Park in the dark. Gone are the days when we are watching the sun set at 11 pm ... now by 9:30 we're in the dark!
The next day, we headed northwest to Cottonwood Creek Campground, after checking out Lillooet and (of course) getting rejected by some very severe logging roads that did not get along with the Mazda. It was a beautiful campsite on the river, and we indulged in a delicious steak dinner with green beans, bbq-ed zucchini, and peppers.
We headed into Pemberton the next afternoon, which was a great small town that we explored for a while. We stayed at another awesome Forestry site that night, which felt like it was in the middle of the jungle it was so lush, and the trees around us were huge! Quite the difference from the dry landscape of Kamloops area we had been in only a few days before.
The next day we packed up and headed to Squamish, where we got some groceries and had coffees at an awesome little local cafe (The Cup), and then we headed to our first night of camping in a privately owned campground with Katie's "Labour Day Family" friend Stephanie Furlong and her boyfriend Ryan. It was awesome! You just set your tent up on the beach along the river and call it your site. We had a great dinner and met the people in the site next to us, who turned out to be around our age and from Owen Sound! We had a blast with all of them ... we even had a big bocci ball tournament. It was an amazing night.
We left Squamish very groggily the next morning and headed into Whistler, where Katie's friend Darcey lives. It was the last day of a week long international mountain biking competition (Crankworx)on Whistler Mountain, so it was crazy busy but so fun to watch the finals of the freestyle part of the competition - who knew that there was downhill mountain biking freestyle! These guys were doing double back flips off of 80 foot dirt jumps ... it was wild. We ate dinner at the restaurant Darcey works at after touring around the village and having a blast people watching and taking it all in. After she finished work, we spent the night meeting a ton of really nice people who called Whistler home, who all were very intent on convincing us that Whistler was definitely better than any other place to live. Hmmmmm!
Today we had such a great relaxing day - we took air mattresses to the nearby lake and floated around, surviving the 34 degree cloudless heat by hopping off into the water whenever it got too unbearable. We're about to have a big farmer's market dinner of bison sausage with corn, peppers, salad and fresh bread. Delicious!
On to Vancouver Island tomorrow to keep on exploring ... we hear it's beautiful and are really excited to look around.

Super Side Track

We checked out the town of Rossland the next morning, which in itself wasn’t that exciting but Red Mountain nearby was definitely really nice. Once we were on the road past Rossland, it was officially labeled as the "BC Super Side Track" on all the government signs, which we though was pretty awesome since that pretty muchs sums up the whole trip. We set up camp in Kootenay Creek Provincial Park that afternoon, learning that it was probably best to set up early and then explore since the area was so busy. And wouldn’t you know it, we had to camp in the “overflow”, which is really just a nice way of saying “extra-parking-lot-where-you-can-set-up-your-tent-in-the-grass-beside-the-pavement”. It was literally one parking spot per tent, but at least we were right beside the beach and had a place to lay our heads!
After a swim we went and checked out Nelson, which was an absolutely awesome town. It was as hippy-ish as we had heard, and the whole area was so laid back. It was built around the lake on a slope, so even its look was cool. We toured around for a bit before heading back to camp, where after a pasta dinner Chris pulled out his telescope and hung out on the beach looking at the very bright moon and stars. After showers the next morning we went to Revelstoke, where we set up at Martha Creek Provincial Park, which felt appropriate, and then went to the town to look around. It was another really amazing town, which had a great main street that felt small town-ish while still having all the shops necessary. It was gorgeous. That night back at the campsite we watched a really wild storm head our way overt the mountains and lake, and then the wind got so intense that at the exact same time as our neighbour’s (unattended!!) fire started spraying huge sparks all over our tent, our tarp got ripped up and half of it went straight into the air like a huge wind sail. Luckily nothing caught fire and after a bit of a struggle we got the tarp down and into the car. The light on the rain even made it look like a funnel cloud was headed our way for a bit, but in fact we only got about 45 minutes in total of the storm; across the lake had it was worse and we even heard trees falling from all the lightning.
The next morning we headed north to Yoho National Park, where we checked out a ‘bridge’ made from water pounding against rock until it caved at the bottom, leaving a bridge of rock across the powerful waterfall. We also did a 5.5 km walk around Emerald Lake, where we got to see the cabins Katie stayed in years ago and also the rock where she and the family jumped into the near freezing glacial lake! It was a beautiful walk, and the lake is true to its name – its colour made us keep stopping and staring it was so memorizing, We also practically walked right into a deer who obviously didn’t care at all that we were around – she just kept on munching away beside her perfect lake.
We had the strangest wake-up call yet this trip the next morning. Katie woke up to a lady in the neighbouring campsite saying there was a bear nearby, and then suddenly they were banging pots and pans and shouting that it wasn’t in their site anymore, “it’s in the one beside us, right between their tent and their car!!” whaaaaat? Chris woke to “Chris Chris there is a BEAR in our CAMPSITE!”, but by the time we got to the tent window to see it was already gone. Apparently it had spent some time sniffing around our car and grunting about, and then decided there was nothing good around and moved on. Closest call with a bear yet, and we didn’t even get to see it! Since we were up, we packed up and headed out to Golden. We found out that BC has their own version of “Provincial Recreation Areas”, which are owned by the Ministry of Forests. Basically, since logging is such a huge thing around here, and they have to make roads to log, they make use of the otherwise abandoned roads to create small camping areas – 5-15 sites with an outhouse – that are far away from civilization and (our favourite part) free! So we set up at Waitabit Creek about half an hour from Golden, right on the water. We spent the first part of the evening at a wolf sanctuary, where we even got to howl with the wolves and learn a lot about them. That night we met up with a friend from home, Doug, who showed us a local bar where we had a beer and enjoyed some live music before heading back to our site. Golden: another amazing relaxed BC town – this isn’t going to be easy!
We've also had a lot of fun checking out the "runaway lanes" all over the BC roads ... with all of the steep grades and so many trucks coming through the province, they have developed "brake check" areas at the top of huge hills, followed by the runaway lanes along the hill itself which are literally just lanes that veer off the road and smack into the forest beside it for cars with failed brakes. The weirdest one we saw was a lane that veered off the road, only to join back up with it 100 metres later! So basically you get a moment away from traffic until your car has to zoom back into it uncontrollably. How bizarre.
On Friday morning we got up nice and early and headed west again. After getting an oil change (we have now put 15,000 km on the Maz this trip!), gas, and groceries, we went a couple hundred kilometres north of Revelstoke to one of the Forestry Service campgrounds, with the intention of getting as far away from long weekend craziness as we could. Mission accomplished – we went to Sprague Bay, at the very end of the road and 15 km on a dirt one, where there were about 8 sites and we were set up on a hill above the lake, surrounded by rolling hills and mountains. We spent the next two days doing nothing but relaxing in the sun (at our own private “beach” of smooth sloping rock), swimming, playing scrabble, watching the hummingbirds that were everywhere, sitting by the fire, reading, and enjoying the peace and quiet of our long weekend away from the long weekenders. Aside from our cooler spoiling our milk and our neighbour who watched loud movies in his RV, we were in heaven. If there is nothing else to love BC for (and oh, there is), we have fallen in love with the Forestry Service camping!

We made it ... BC!

It’s been a long while since out last update, (sorry!), so we are going to do two again.

The day after our last update was a long one and such a great one. We had bought a “summer pass” that was being offered, which got us each a ticket for the gondola up Sulphur Mountain, a one hour horseback ride through the valley around the Bow River, and tickets to the Banff Upper Hot Springs. We did the gondola first, which was another great memory for Katie, since she had been up there both with her Dad when she was 11, and her Mom and Mo when she was 18 (and where she encountered the infamous “Eduardo!” crying child!) The view from up there was so stunning. We got the gondola all to ourselves both ways, since there were no other couples around, just hoards of camera happy tourists who wanted to stick together, so that was awesome. We cruised around a side path while the crowds thinned out, and even got to watch a tiny little baby Golden Mantled Ground Squirrel putter around and nibble on whatever he could see. When we were done we went to the horse stables, where we were partnered with our horses and taken out to ride the trail. It was wicked! It was such an awesome way to see the area and it was just so fun to be on horses. Every so often we even got to gallop on them, which was such a blast. Chris’s horse was quite the restless one, so he had a hilarious adventure trying to keep it away from the fields where it really just wanted to hang out and eat grass all day. The cool thing was that the hour felt much longer, and to be honest our bums may not have been able to handle much more!

When we were done we ate some lunch at a rest stop up on Tunnel Mountain, where other than some runaway green peppers (man those things can roll!) we had a really nice lunch with a great view. We did a mini road trip to Canmore that afternoon, where Katie had fallen in love with the Rockies years before, and it was definitely a gorgeous town. We toured around in our car and admired houses that will never be in our price range, and did a walk along the river, then headed back to Banff to soak up the sunset in the Hot Springs. It was so glorious (not to mention free showers!). We went back to camp and devoured quesadillas, and relaxed by the fire before calling it a night. What a great day!

The next day we said goodbye to Banff and explored Kootenay National Park (we were officially in BC!). We did an awesome little hike through a canyon, checked out some crazy coloured lakes and looped through Radium, the town at the south end. It was a nice relaxed day, ending with a fire and some Scrabble. We left in the morning to start checking out BC’s south-east area. We drove up to Fernie Mountain to see the slopes, and checked out the town itself (which looked like a ghost town since they revolve around winter tourism it seems!). We ended up camping farther west than we expected, because the first three campgrounds we went to were full – apparently people were starting their long weekend early! (That, in fact, was when we even realized there was a long weekend ahead). We spent the evening chowing on mac and cheese fortified with cheese sausages and tomatoes, and planning our next few days. Research time is upon us … we had to start figuring out where we wanted to spend the winter!

We're in the Rockies!

(By the way .... Click on the pictures to make them huge! The panorama looks awesome.)
So we finally got our night in Elk Island, which was really great because after a nice hike we did an evening drive and saw a bunch of wild bison grazing the grass near the road. The next night we went about 3 hours north of Edmonton, to Sir Winston Churchill Provincial Park, where we finally got to swim and hang out at a beach. (Until the storm rolled in that is). Then we headed a few hours west and spent a night at Hilliard's Bay Provincial Park, where it looked like it would rain, so Chris put up some tarps. However, it seems that his tarps are the magic touch, for whenever he puts them up, the skies clear and the sun shines!
We had to go back to Bev and Bill's for mail, and since that was a four hour drive south, and we had another four hour drive west to the Rockies, we were convinced by the both of them to stay the night and hang out with them. Done deal! Pizza and TV ... it was beginning to feel like home! But we headed out the next day, after a glorious brunch with Bev at Smitty's. And that was the day that Chris saw his very first mountains of the Rockies, as we did the amazing drive into Jasper National Park from Edmonton. It was so beautiful. We spent the night at Pocahontas Campground, and before going to bed that night we soaked up the views and the hot mineral waters at the Miette Hot Springs (where the water is so hot coming from the ground that they have to cool it by 16 degrees Celsius before it's even bearable!). The drive deep in to the mountains to get to the hot springs is marked as Chris' favorite road yet this trip!
Well rested (but very very cold) the next morning, we explored as much of Jasper as we could. We did an awesome drive to Maligne Lake, where there was a caribou hanging out at the side of the road ... it was massive! At the lake we did a really nice hike, and once we were done we drove to the town of Jasper (where the caribou were roaming everywhere and eating the shrubs out of people's lawns) and had a picnic lunch in the park. That night we stayed at Wapiti Campground, and yet again it was a night that required toques, double layers, and an extra blanket.
The next morning, after hot hot showers, we started our drive down the Icefields Parkway, which was surrounded by stunning views everywhere we looked. We did a drive down a nice quiet road called Edith Cavell, where we saw our first grizzly bears!! ... From the safety of our car. It was a really amazing moment, because they are such powerful creatures it's hard not to be in awe of them. We continued south to the Lake Louise area of Banff National Park, where we did a (crowded) hike around the Athabasca Falls, and stopped at a picnic area to have some lunch. Farther south, we did a short but steep hike up to the Athabasca Glacier, which was so awesome. They had signposts to show where the glacier had been over the last hundred years, and even as late as the fifties it was where our car was parked. That night we stayed at Waterfowl Campground, which had its own awesome little walk over a bridge and around the forest. The views were so incredible ... it was impossible to get used to seeing such immense and overwhelming nature.
In the morning we continued south, and decided to check out the Bow Glacier. It turned out that it was the same place Katie and her family had spent hours checking out many years ago on their trip through the Rockies, and yet again it was stunning. We were really lucky with our timing on getting there, because when we arrived there was absolutely no wind, which turned the glacial lake into a perfect mirror of the mountains around it. Then, within minutes, the breeze picked up and the lake rippled, showing off its unbelievable turquoise colour. Finally we moved on, and we spent the afternoon hiking around both Lake Louise and Morraine Lake, both of which were ridiculously beautiful and perfect. Over and over again, we marveled at the amazing ways that nature worked. We stayed at Lake Louise Campground that night, where we had a relaxing evening of pasta, a campfire, scrabble and tea.
Today we were on the move again, and we decided to take the much more relaxed route on the Bow Valley Parkway (1A), where the speed limit was way lower and the people had time to cruise. (We got a little tired of aggressive vacationers who forgot they were there to relax ... people kept passing us on the Icefields Parkway when we were going the limit and enjoying the views. Didn't they notice what was around them? ... Yes, yes, we sound old). We did a 5.5 km hike to the Johnston Canyon and back (another nostalgic moment for Katie!), which had several beautiful waterfalls and was surrounded by an old, quiet, peaceful forest. We set up camp at Two Jack Campground about 20 minutes east of the town of Banff, and right now we are in the town making good (and much needed) use of their laundromat and internet cafe.
So far, amazing. We are loving the Rockies and the views all around us, and even though we wish we were billionaires and could do all the amazing and very expensive tours (rafts and horses and helicopters and so on), the best part about nature is that walking through it and marveling at its beauty is still free.

More Amazing Alberta

Wow, it's been a while since we updated this! A lot has gone on, but we will try to keep it as condensed as possible.
We went to Livingstone Falls as planned last Monday, where we were met by rain and near freezing temperatures, not to mention hail the next morning. That was the coldest it has been for us so far ... we were in many layers of clothes at night, including toques and snowboard socks and still it was numbingly cold! We stayed there for two nights, and then drove north to McLean Creek Camper Centre, in Kananaskis Country, along the way seeing herds upon herds of rams. We were happy to get back on pavement as we neared McLean, but the trade-off for such civilized things was that we were in RV country, where the sites were gravel and the privacy was nonexistent. We were staying there for three days, which made all of those things feel unbearable, but it was the only campground in the region with showers (even though they were $2.00 for five minutes!), and we wanted to be close to Calgary for the Stampede. On Thursday we went to Calgary to see their Science Centre's Body Worlds exhibition, (the picture on that link is one of the things we saw, and it's a real body) which was absolutely amazing. We were blown away by what we saw, and stayed there for hours looking at many variations of real bodies of people who had donated themselves to science. Unreal!
The next day was the one we had been waiting for ... the Calgary Stampede! (<-- such a cool picture! We were sitting under where it said "Calgary Stampede"). We got gold seating tickets for both the afternoon Rodeo and the evening Grandstand Show, and in between toured the city a little bit and ate at Milestone's on their famous Stephen Ave. pedestrian walkway. It wasn't entirely pedestrian at one point: a very confused young tourist and her sister, both slurping their Booster Juices, tried to turn from the "sidewalk" part of the street to the "road" part, crushing the passenger door into a fixed metal garbage container. As she tried to back up, she ended up denting and scratching the entire length of her car, getting so stuck a passerby had to take over and drive the car for her all the way out of the street (yeesh, tourists eh?).
Anyway, the Stampede actually lived up to its claim of being "the greatest outdoor show on Earth" ... we were amazed by the Snowbirds, the Rodeo itself, the four motorbikes criss-crossing each other in a huge metal ball while more did tricks in the air above them, girls doing triple back flips onto balance beams that were no wider than their feet being carried by men beneath them, the hundreds of dancers, the fireworks .... it was incredible. The whole day was so great, we thought it would be a once in a lifetime experience but now we want to go back for sure!
The morning after the Stampede, we left MacLean Creek suffering from a major excitement hangover after so many quiet weeks of camping. We spent a long time at a Mazda Dealership getting a few things fixed up, and by the time we left at 5:30 pm it was pouring. We drove several hours to Elk Island National Park, just east of Edmonton, where upon arrival at 10 pm we found out that they had no sites left, nor did any park within a 2 hour range. Uh oh! We ended up having to make a nervous late night call to Chris's cousin Bev, who lives north of Edmonton in Fort Saskatchewan, to ask if we could start our visit a night early. She and her husband Bill were the best! They took us in and made us feel right at home, and we even got to sleep in a real bed! They also have two amazing dogs, Mabel and Chubby, who made us feel nice and loved and welcome, for a fair trade of hugs and petting. The next day, we checked out Edmonton a little bit, and even got to see Jake Raynard, a friend of Chris's from high school. He and his wife Mia own a tea shop downtown called Cha Island Tea Co., which was so cool, and we made plans to get together there the next day (his only day off in a month!!!). That night we made Bev a steak dinner, which Bill couldn't join because he is in the Military and was working a 13 hour (!!) shift that night.
The next morning we checked out the infamous West Edmonton Mall which was wilder than we could have imagined: it looked like they squeezed all of the Canada's Wonderland roller coasters into the "play area" of the mall! Feeling overwhelmed by it all we left in a daze, forgetting to even see the zoo part which we were so excited about. We saw Jake after that and had a blast at his closed shop, playing Settlers of Catan (which helped us greatly ... we were having major withdrawal since playing it addictively in Thornbury!) and eating Belgian Waffles that are a part of his menu and so delicious. It was such a great day .... topped off with a great Mexican Dinner back at Bev and Bill's with their friends and their two dogs as well.
We were going to leave yesterday to head back into the camping world, but after about 3o straight hours of rain we realized it might be best to extend our stay under a roof. So instead of setting up a tent on saturated ground, we lay on the couch and had a completely relaxing day of doing absolutely nothing except watch TV (a first in so long!). It was great to have a chance to relax like that with Bev and Bill too, since the days before had been so busy. We finally got to sit around in our pj's and enjoy each others' company.
Today it's back to the camping adventures, and we are headed out to try Elk Island National Park for a second time. Hopefully they will have a site for us this round!
(PS we put up new pictures again ... still in the same Facebook album as last time so scroll through to the new ones!)
(PPS you don't need Facebook to check these out!! ... we thought we should clarify that since we had a few questions about it)
Here's the link! (CLICK THIS).

Pictures Again

Click Here .... for more pictures. The ones on pages 1-3 were there already, we just added some more after them. Enjoy!

Canada Day Week

The park we headed to after the last post (Kinbrook) was crazy busy. It was a sign of what was to come in the two weeks on either side of the Canada Day long weekend, especially since school is all finished now. In any case, we ate an awesome stir-fry and enjoyed a good sunset, surrounded by the soothing sounds of generators and many many people.
We went to Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park the next day, which only had 4 sites left by the time we got there, but somehow we got the best one in the grounds according to the lady at the desk. Sweet! We went on a great hike through the Hoodoos, and a landscape similar to the Badlands, where we saw so many deer grazing across the river, including wee little babies, and then we got to watch the male deer fend off some hungry coyotes as they tried to get down into the valley. Eventually, the coyotes gave up, but they gave us quite the show which was pretty awesome. Another deer on our side of the river also walked up to Chris (about 10 feet away) and didn't care at all that we were there. He just kept on munching the grass and cruising by.
The next morning was Canada Day. We had done some research and found out that Waterton National Park, in the far southwest end of Alberta, had a large campground of first-come-first-serve. So we packed up and headed out to get there by 11:30 am - two and half hours before check-in was even allowed. When we showed up, we were stopped and turned around because the entire park was already full for the whole weekend - and it was only Thursday morning! We were pretty disappointed because we had heard good things about that park, but in any case we started northward and stopped in Pincher Creek for gas. And while we were there, we actually got McDonald's - our first fast food of the trip (not including good old Canadian Timmy's). This town would get winds of 120 kms an hour and would last up to 20 days, so Chris was told by a new friend he met in line at McDonald's. Katie also bought a few things at Walmart to cheer us up, like Doritos and magazines. She was really excited about one magazine, because Chris loves trucks and cars, but when she pulled it out of the bag we realized it was an Extreme Radio Control Car magazine!! That definitely gave us both a laugh. It was a magazine on how to personalize and pimp out remote control cars!
We drove past two more campgrounds, both of which had signs in the front saying they were full. We were starting to think that we would be spending the weekend in our car. Finally, after a series of happenstance turns (Chris turned right instead of planned left because the van in front of us was driving like an idiot, for example), we ended up at Castle Falls Provincial Recreation Area. (Check out the pictures and also where we were on the map!) We didn't even know that Recreation Areas had camping, but this one said it did and so we checked it out. We saw one site open, and we almost called it a day right there and set up we were so excited, but we decided to keep looking. We even went over to the next grouping of sites, and there we found the best site we could possible imagine. It was 20-30 metres from the rushing rapids of beautiful Castle River (the picture on the top right is our backyard), surrounded by forest and hills, and there was really only one campsite within our sight. It was perfect! We set up right away, then drove back to town to make out first beer purchase of the trip. It was Canada Day, after all. We relaxed in the sun, and explored the rapids, and eventually met our neighbours. They were Craig and Anne-Marie, from Newfoundland, and they had moved to that area three years ago. We ended up hanging out around their fire later that night, chatting and laughing and having an amazing ending to an amazing Canada Day. It was awesome!
We spent the next three nights at that sight (although our fun neighbours left the next morning), since we knew that we weren't likely to find anything anywhere else, especially that nice. It got very very cold at night (about 4 degrees), and the days didn't warm up much past 15, but that was because we were in an area that got sprinkled with a tiny bit of rain every morning and was under the weather influence of some very big mountains nearby. We checked out the waterfall down the road, and played lots of Scrabble, and read, and just relaxed all weekend long. It was perfect. There was definitely action going on around us (one guy chainsawed himself in the leg on Friday, and we drove by police and a helicopter landing in a field on Sunday), but it was all out of earshot from us so we just got to enjoy the roaring of the water in our backyard.
Yesterday we moved on, and although we went to Park Lake Provincial Park first, the wind was so bad we wouldn't have been able to set up our tent. So we drove all the way back from near where we came from and went to Oldman River Provincial Recreation Area. Turns out all Recreation Areas are not made equal - our campsite had a stunning view of the garbage, the outhouse, and the highway bridge, while the roar of the water from the weekend got replaced with the rumble of trucks going by all night. We had thought it would be fun to check out the central region of Alberta, but we realized the parks just don't have much to offer so back we go into the foothills of the Rockies.
Today we went to Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump, which is a World Heritage Site that preserves the area where the Plains Indians would corral hundreds of Buffalo at a time and then scare them into stampeding over a cliff to their deaths. It has over 9,000 years of history that has been found in the form of bones and tools, and it was an amazing place. We ended up staying there for two and a half hours, as we explored the histories of the people and the land. We are staying in Livingstone Provincial Recreation Area tonight, and the next two nights are yet unknown. By the 8th, however, we will be up near Calgary (don't worry, we reserved a site Jen!), because we have got ourselves tickets to the Calgary Stampede on the 9th - both the rodeo and Grandstand evening show. It should be a blast, and we just found out Katie's cousin Martin will be there around the same time so hopefully we will be able to meet up. In the meantime, it's time to explore the foothills of the mountains.

More Pictures ...

We put up some more recent pictures .... enjoy!
(...and added some comments to the other album too, to explain what those pictures are about. You can still get to that one by clicking on the link in the other pictures post from before.)
(click here)

Goodbye, Land of Living Skies!

From Prince Albert we went northwest to Meadow Lake Provincial Park, where we stayed at a site really close to a nice beach. After dinner there we went on a 6 km hike around Kimball Lake, and apparently we were the first to do so in a long while. It was super overgrown and a few times we just made up where to go, and we got a Great Blue Heron really mad ... almost half a dozen times we accidentally snuck up on it, and it "yelled" and screeched angrily at us from high up in the trees, only to fly away in the direction we were walking. Also, exactly halfway around the lake, we heard something loud that sounded like a child screaming, and then something running through the trees and bushes on our left (between us and the lake). When the noises stopped, Chris checked it out with his binoculars, and it turned out to be a baby deer who was so frightened of us that he ran around and then jumped in the lake! By the time Chris saw him, he was about a quarter of the way across the kilometre-long swim he had committed to. His mom burst out of the trees nearby and we think she went around to meet him. We felt so bad, but we kept our eye on him as we hiked and it looked like he made it across. We also saw some huge footprints in the sand of the trail ... they were about three quarters of the size of Katie's feet (although that's not saying that much!), and when we did a little research we figured out that they were most likely cougar or lynx.
We went south the next morning to Saskatchewan Landing Provincial Park, which was surrounded by rolling hills. We did a really cool hike through the hills and saw areas where early settlers had set up there homes in the late 1800's, and our presence scared a herd of cows into running away -- it turns out it's pretty hilarious to watch cows run.
We spent two days there, because we had to wait out the reconstruction of the Trans Canada Highway after the incredible amounts of flooding in that area broke a dam and overflowed the highway. After the pipes underneath it failed, a huge area of the westbound lanes were completely washed out. It was fixed enough to have one lane each way by Saturday, so we went to Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park. We did a cool hike through their forest on our second day there, and then believe it or not spent the rest of the afternoon lounging by the park's pool!! What a bizarre thing to have in a park ... but the beach wasn't nice at all so it worked for us. Also, the park has a dark sky preserve, which we took advantage of with Chris's telescope, but it didn't really ever get that dark out because the moon was so full and bright!
We crossed into Alberta yesterday, and spent the night in Dinosaur Provincial Park, which has some of the most dinosaur fossil findings in North America. We did an amazing hike through their Badlands, and the way that water and erosion shaped the land made it unbelievable to look at. We also got to watch a huge beaver cruise around, munching on plants, and we saw our first Mule Deer lounging in the hills. When coyotes started howling it was almost impossible to find, because it hid so low it looked like a rock from afar. Today we are headed to Kinbrook Provincial Park, and the general plan is to spend about and week and a half in southern Alberta, then catch a day or two of the Stampede, and then start heading north to see Chris's cousin Bev in Edmonton. After that .... Rockies here we come!

Northern Skatch

There's internet up here! That was shocking, and we decided to make use of it since it's around.
So we are in Saskatchewan now, and yet again way back up north. We went to the Provincial Information booth like we did in Manitoba, but the guy at this one was much less helpful and truthfully looked like he wished we would just go away. So we went to Duck Mountain Provincial Park, which was uneventful and incredibly rainy. In the morning we left to a park only about 2.5 hours away (our shortest drive yet between parks) - Greenwater Lake Provincial Park. In the provincial parks booklet we had read it sounded like an amazing place, so we decided to check it out on our way up north. Maybe it is nice, but not when we got there. It had obviously rained a ton and there was no drainage to speak of, so the sites were completely saturated and everywhere we stepped the gravel ground sunk below us and our feet got soaked. Also, the campsite fire pits in Saskatchewan were not too promising; the ones in Duck Mountain were raised up to chest level on poles, and the ones in Greenwater were old garbage bins with holes in them . Not much warmth there, and to get to the one in Greenwater we had to get too wet to enjoy it! We weren't too excited about this prairie province, especially because they also charged lots more than Manitoba and added $6.00 a site if you were from another province. Mental!
However, things looked up when we went up north the next day to Narrow Hills Provincial Park, where the wildlife was everywhere and the landscape was beautiful. (Although it must be noted that we first passed a town called Tisdale, whose welcome sign boasted: "Tisdale, Land of Rape and Honey". No kidding. That was the sign.) We found out that Narrow Hills offered "wilderness camping" in three areas (which meant it was free - but also that there were no flush toilets or people checking that you survived the night in the middle of nowhere), so we decided to check those out. We found an amazing site right on one of tons of lakes in the Gem Lake Region, and the lakes were rightfully named after their amazing and ever-changing colours. The interesting thing about this site was that you couldn't drive right up to it, so we had to park the car and walk our stuff down about 100 metres. That really isn't much of a walk, but it made us think more than usual about what we needed to make dinner and set up camp since our stuff wasn't 10 feet away like usual. We had leftover pasta for dinner and brought all of our food related stuff (and basically everything we didn't need for the sleep) back to the car. It rained for about an hour, but after that it cleared up completely and was unbelievably calm and quiet. We had a fire and read and relaxed, watching the lake change colours as the sun set, and then we started hearing the cries of a bear about 100-150 metres away. It kept making noise, and so we could hear where it was traveling as the sound carried through the still air. We went to bed, and Katie was pretty nervous, but Chris kept her calm. It truly was incredible how still the night was - there was not a single frog or bug noise and the absolute still air kept the leaves in the trees from rustling. At one point in the night we heard the footsteps of something huge plodding down the hill towards the site, and when we woke up in the morning we found the tracks of either a moose or an elk. They were enormous!
We packed up and left to Lac La Ronge Provincial Park, which is the most north we can go in Saskatchewan for camping. It was really beautiful there (except for the stupid waist high fire pit!), and we spent the night playing scrabble by the fire and woke in the morning to coffees on their boat dock in a bright hot sun (Finally!). The best part about that place was their weather forecast ... the Environment Canada weather site had a picture of a smokey fire instead of the usual little icon of sun or rain. The "current condition" was "smoke", and the forecast for the morning was "local smoke". We thought it was so funny ... apparently it was like that because there were 37 fires in the area and 6 were out of control .... but nobody seemed concerned about it so it must not have been that rare.
Now we are on day two at Prince Albert National Park, which is the best yet in Saskatchewan. It is a huge park and has an actual ground level fire pit (and the one we got is brand new), and we are surrounded by incredibly tall pines (which bent like crazy in the wind and sounded like massive creaking doors!). They have a major bear warning out right now, and two massive bear traps set up, because apparently a mama and two cubs are wandering through all the sites. The traps will just relocate them, not hurt them, and we have yet to run into any. We always clean our site after eating and before going to bed, so there is no real reason for them to come see us. The cool thing about this park is that there are deer everywhere and they are not really scared of humans. one hung out with us last night in the campsite next to us while we brushed out teeth and got ready for bed, and it wasn't the least bit scared of closing car doors or our voices. Today we spent hours laying on the beach, which was awesome, and many deer came cruising by us along the forest line totally unconcerned about our presence.
Tomorrow we are onwards again ..... to Meadow Lake Provincial Park and then back south to check out the bottom half.

Picture Links

The real blog post is below, but we also wanted to post this link. It goes to Katie's facebook photo album, where we have put a bunch of the pictures from the trip. Enjoy!
Photo Album (click this!)

The End of Manitoba

(As a side note, that top picture looks like we did some cut and paste, but that is a real panoramic view of the land around us on our hike! You can click on the pictures to make them bigger)
This is definitely the shortest amount of time we have had between our blog updates, but we are more aware of what northern Canada has to offer in terms of the internet, and we know that we will not have much communication in the next week or so.
When we left The Pas it was to go to Riding Mountain National Park, and we got there quite late. Really it was a relatively uneventful campground, but the one very exciting thing we saw was a female moose at the side of the road going through the park to the campground. This was Chris's first ever moose sighting, and Katie can't remember if she saw one at Killarney that one time that Mo did, or if she made that up in her mind. The other first we had in that park was deer breakfast sausage. It was so good!
The next day we went to Spruce Woods Provincial Park, which was recommended to us by the lady at the Manitoba Information Centre. The first thing we did was three huge loads of laundry, which was desperately needed. We didn't quite have enough change for the dryers, so our campsite was converted into a laundry drying station in the beautiful hot sun. For dinner we made the entire thing on the campfire ... we had huge potatoes, red and green peppers, tomatoes, and maple beans (Chris's all time favourite). It was so satisfying.
We decided to make it a two day stay, so that we could soak up the rare sun rays. We woke up that morning to the sounds of a huge pack of coyotes howling their hearts out somewhere nearby, apparently out on quite the hunt. We played an intense game of scrabble in the early afternoon heat, because the hike we wanted to do was going to be really hot and they recommended doing it closer to the evening. The hike was through Manitoba's only desert-like area -- it wasn't quite a desert because it got enough rainfall throughout the year, but it was four square kilometres of sand dunes (that used to be 6,500 square kilometres thousands of years ago!). The trail also went to a large ground-fed pond called the "Devil's Punchbowl", which was a swirling pool of blues, purples, and greens because of the water fed through the sand below. We hiked for about three and a half hours, and ended up doing about 9km. It looked like man-made terrain, because it would go from arid dunes to lush forest in no time, all depending on the elevation and the way the wind brought the rain through the area. It was stunning, and we even got to see Manitoba's only cactus. We thought it was pretty cool looking, but we didn't appreciate how rare it was until we came across a woman on our way back. When she saw us, she asked if we had seen the flower that grows out of it, and when we said we had she was so excited. She said that she had sat near it all morning waiting for it to flower and it never did, so she was on her second trip of the day to see the flower it produces. Pretty cool!
When we got back it was around 8, so we got dinner going. We had garlic deer sausage on a bun ... it was so much meatier and heartier than the sausages we are so used to buying in grocery stores. It was amazing! We could only finish half of the small one that Dwight gave us ... we still have the other half and an even bigger one to enjoy! For dessert we cooked up bananas in their skins filled with chocolate and pecans while we made plans for our journey through Saskatchewan, and had a raccoon visitor who apparently loved the smell of the dessert. That night we heard some very loud noises, which we can only assume were raccoons fighting nearby. We are definitely in the wild!

New Friends!

(PS yet again this is number 2 of 2 so read the 55th parallel one first!)




We drove to Clearwater Lake Provincial Park on the morning of June 12th. The drive was only about 4 hours, but along the way we had our first gas scare adventure (barely made it to the gas station after we left), and then we met a baby black bear on the road. He looked really hungry and straggly, so we think that his mom must have been killed and he was on his own searching for food and water. He was pretty bold ... he came right up to the car to see what we had as we stopped to let him cross the road. We drove to the next campground about ten minutes away, and let them know that he was there, but they said they would have to send the RCMP to help him because all of their conservation authorities were off fighting a huge forest fire somewhere north of us.
When we got to Clearwater we chose a site that was electric, since we needed to plug in our cooler and cool down our food again after a few warm days. One of the main features of the campground was a tiny little hike along the "caves" of the lake, which are actually huge crevices in the rocks where they split apart. We explored that area and then headed back home for a relaxing night by the fire. Just after we finished dinner, we were sitting at the picnic table on our site when a couple with a cute little puppy walked by. As seems to be the common reaction, we gave them a wave as they passed our site. They slowed down, and asked what part of Ontario we were from. We started talking (and playing with the puppy), and they told us that they were just down the road in an RV, with their four kids. They were Jen and Dwight, seasonal campers at the park, and they were from just around the corner in The Pas. As we talked, they suggested that since they know the area they should take us on their powerboat to tour us around the lake that they know so well. So within minutes of meeting these incredible people we were strapped up in life jackets in their boat, getting to know their four kids - Cordelia, the oldest at 11 (and 16 at heart -- so mature and fun!), 9 year old Joshua, (the little man of the house), 7 year old Christopher (little Christopher we called him ... the monkey/wildman who bonded instantly with big Chris), and lastly, 4 year old D'Anna (who was an instant snuggler and heart melter). (Hi guys, if you end up checking out this site!) They took us around the area of Clearwater Lake near our campground, and the lake was true to its name. We could see to the bottom even in the deep deep areas, and as we cruised around we got to see groups of terns flying alongside the boat, and American White Pelicans taking a rest among them on long stretches of rocks above the water. (Much to birdwatcher Chris's delight of course!) All the while we got to watch the sun setting over the lake -- at almost 10 pm because we were so far north! After we got back to shore, they invited to their site down the road to join them in making homemade beavertail desserts. They were delicious! The next morning we went to invite them over for a chocolate chip pancake breakfast -- the best we could offer them after all they had done, and somehow we ended up making them there and eating a huge "family breakfast" of pancakes, bacon, and watermelon. Then they convinced us to stay at the campground an extra day, since it was such a sunny beautiful day and they wanted to show us the beaches and views around the lake in the day. We were quite easily convinced, and before we knew it we were again on the boat under piles of towels, snacks, kids and a puppy. (As a side note, they found that puppy in a bus shelter and after hours of it still waiting there and nobody taking it, they decided to take it home because kids were starting to kick it. They had ads everywhere saying they had him, but nobody responded. They were trying to give him away and to be honest Chris and I were on the fence for a long time about trying to fit him into our packed car. We were VERY close to being puppy parents but it just wasn't doable). They took us to a little beach that was basically their very own since nobody else was there, and we played in the cold water, in the hot sun, among the rolling sandbars, and cooked up hot dogs on their bbq. Then we went over to the more public beach where Jen and Dwight chatted with friends and the kids (yes, that includes us too!) played in the water and on the beach. They cooked up a big steak and potato dinner that night and yet again were insistent that we join the fun, so we ate a glorious dinner, played in the park with the kids, and even played Sequence after the kids had gone to bed. It was like a family vacation day that we somehow felt right at home in ... it was unreal.
Even the next day, we drove into The Pas to get supplies and gas, so they gave us their address to come over and we ended up playing with their kids in the backyard (Chris and the kids had a trampoline party!), and getting teary eyed when we actually had to go for real. As a goodbye gift (as if we hadn't gotten enough) Dwight loaded us up with deer meat that he had hunted himself and brought to a really good butcher -- we now are eating like Canadian Kings and Queens with deer breakfast sausage, deer garlic sausage, and deer salami!
The simple fact that we needed an electric site put us in the arms of the kindest, happiest, most open-hearted family in all of Manitoba, and made the province a million times better than we thought possible. Now THAT is a Canadian experience.

Above the 55th Parallel

The morning after that rainy day we headed out of Grand Beach and toured around Winnipeg. The touring part was pretty accidental, because we were specifically searching for a Canadian Tire, a Walmart, and a place for Chris to get his hair chopped off, so really we just drove in circles looking for those places and in the process saw most of Winnipeg. After we finished hair chopping, returning broken shovels, and buying propane, we headed to Hecla Provinincial Park. We were there for almost less than 12 hours, because after our Winnipeg adventures we got in late, and the next morning we were up by 6 and out by 8 after hot showers to make our long trek north to Thompson. It was about an eight hour drive, and truly, not much happened along the way. One funny thing that did happen was that a big Texan truck came barreling by us at about 140 or 50 in a 100 zone, and then about an hour later we saw him pulled over by the cops. We thought he would have learned his lesson but about an hour after that it was like de-ja-vu ... he came speeding by us again and was out of sight within minutes! We also went through Grand Rapids, which blew our minds a little bit because it appeared that the gas station was the town's main hangout, and there were kids running around everywhere and all the adults were standing around inside the convenience store/cafe part smoking and chatting! Life is a little different up there - apparently the only rule was don't smoke too close to the gas pumps and everybody will be happy.
We also saw a sneaky little gopher who was on the shoulder as we approached and as soon as he saw us he crouched down and shuffled backwards back into the brush ... apparently the gophers up north are much more talented.
Anyway, eventually we got up to Paint Lake Provincial Park, where the campsites were unfortunately quite open, and there was an infestation of weird silkworm-like crawlies that hung from every leaf or every tree. We couldn't walk anywhere without going through their drapery of webs, and they managed to even infiltrate our tent and crawl all over our bed. It was disgusting. However, we trooped through it and even had our first s'mores of the trip. They were amazing. The next day we drove to a nearby provincial historic site, Pisew Falls. There was a 22 km hike there, that suggested hikers allow 12 hours to do the full loop. We laughed at that because so far in our hikes we have averaged about 1km/15-20 minutes, which at the most would have had us hiking for 8 hours with stops. Since we were leaving at 3, and the sun stayed out until after 11, we thought we would be fine. We came with food and were excited for an adventure, especially because it was basically an abandoned trail with lots of brush and dense woods. In any case, about 4 km into the hike, after very long steep slopes and bushwhacking our way through mossy forest, as well as seeing tons of bear prints, we realized we were in a bit over our heads. We kept going for another couple of kilometres, and then after seeing more and more prints (huge ones bigger than my hand stretched out, accompanied by little baby bear ones which meant protective mommas), we decided it was definitely time to turn around. It got a wee bit scary when I stopped to look at a particularly large print and suddenly in the near distance we both heard the cry of a baby bear -- we picked up the pace a bit at that point! We came ready for adventure and definitely got it. We had our butts kicked by that trail but in any case the 11km we did do felt great after so much driving, not to mention we made it out in one piece! (Don't worry, we read the 'bear aware' pamphlet ... so everything that we could possibly do to warn the bears of our presence we were doing! We're practically pros.) :)
That night, it goes without saying, we slept like babies after our adventure. The next morning we were back on the road again ... headed for Clearwater Lake Provincial Park with no clue of what was in store.

Manitoba has Begun!

(By the way .... we wrote two blogs today to catch up. Read the 'rain,sun' one first!)
After Sleeping Giant, we headed to Quetico Provincial Park. We went through the lovely town of Thunder Bay, where the first stand up citizen we came across cut Katie off in her lane and then yelled a stream of words that should not be written in a blog. What a beautiful town!
We were really excited about Quetico because it was well known internationally for its conservation and wildlife, but unfortunately the majority of the park was only accessible by canoe or floater plane. So we went to their main campground, and settled in for the night. We were there too late to buy wood, but Chris used his Davey Crockett skills and gathered enough dead wood from the forest around us to create quite the fire. When it all burned down we went to bed on the coldest night of our trip; it went down to about 5 or 6 degrees and the two of us woke up with even our heads buried deep into our sleeping bag. It was freezing! The next morning involved nice hot showers, which thawed us out, and after a quick breakfast (where we met a very curious little squirrel who jumped right onto our cutting board as we ate) we headed to the glorious province of Manitoba!
Our original intention was to stay at Falcon Lake campground in Whiteshell Provincial Park of Manitoba, pretty much right after the border. Nice name, awful campground, we soon found out. It was pretty much a swamp, and every site was saturated to the point where your feet sunk into the ground when you walked. It looked like everyone was camping in the front yards of a suburb with the lack of trees and privacy. The lady at the Manitoba Provincial Information Centre had mentioned a place called Grand Beach Provincial Park, about 2 hours north of Falcon. Since we had already driven 6 hours that day, another 2 seemed more than doable and we were on our way. Chris loved it, because most of the road was a windy, hilly, inconsistent track, which somebody decided should be a 90km/hr zone. In the two hours we drove that road, we saw two other cars, but lots of beautiful scenery.
As soon as we pulled into Grand Beach we knew we had made a great choice. The sites were pretty and private, nobody was around, and the site we chose was right next to a path to the beach, which is known to be one of the most beautiful beaches in North America. We hiked along the beach's dunes, and watched the two storms coming in from opposite ends of the horizon towards our campsite. When we got back to the site we (well, Chris) set up a tarp haven, cooked up some pasta with veggies and mixed beans (yes moms, we are eating healthy!), and head to bed after a long day. This morning the rain came hard. We were woken around 7 am by the downpour on the tarps above us, and at that very moment decided for sure it would be a lazy, sleepy, catch-up-on-blogs kind of day. We went right back to sleep in the comfort of our dry, warm tent. Now here we are at Ty's Surfside Deli and Bakery (where the owner has been so nice and let us hang out and drink coffees and eat his awesome food and work on the internet for the last few hours!).
So far, so good! (Thompson, here we come!)

Rain, Sun, and the Angry Mom

So it turns out that there are very few places with Internet in the camping world. Which means that we will still try to update as much as possible but it certainly won't be every day! If we get on the web once or twice a week though we should be able to keep up with our fun stories.
SO! Here we go ... From the Soo we spent another night in Pancake Bay, and left the next morning after making very good friends with a chipmunk, to head to Pukaskwa National Park. We got there around 4:30, set up our stuff, and took advantage of finally having some good weather. We hiked for about an hour while we waited for the sunset, and then hiked across the beaches to a rock perch where we watched the sun setting over Lake Superior. Of course, it started raining again early the next morning so we learned how to best pack up all of our gear while it was very wet. Around noon we headed out to our next destination, Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, which we were very excited for since we saw what a cool peninsula it was on early in our planning. The drive into the park was amazing ... we saw 11 deer, a red fox, and a very up close turkey vulture all on the road in front of us. When we got there we chose what the girl at the front desk called the 'best spot in the park'; it was a site right on the very tip of a peninsula in Marie Louise Lake, surrounded on either side by the sound of soft waves. We also soon found out that the ducks of the area really liked the peninsula as well ... two families in particular kept returning to the site throughout the evening and next day to meet up and nibble at whatever food they could find. Unfortunately, the people two sites from us (a dad and his three young kids) were crazy loud which disturbed some of the peace the peninsula had. We ended up having to complain because the dad left the car running for an hour while he blasted his music from it, and when the warden came he started shouting about how he wouldn't want to offend 'those climate-change-sensitive-people', then turned to his son to explain in a loud voice why he left his mother. How pleasant. In any case, they zoomed off somewhere for most of the night, which left us in peace to have a nice fire and enjoy the sound of the water.
The next morning we went on a hike on their Middlebrun trail, which went a couple kilometres through the forest and ended at a beautiful beach, and then turned back around to the start. It was a gorgeous, calm walk, until Katie accidentally stepped into the territory of a ruffed grouse and her young chicks. The mom burst out of nowhere onto the trail with her feathers raised up, screeching and dancing around in an apparently very defensive dance. As Chris yelled 'watch out!!', the bird began to charge at Katie, and she jumped her highest (1 inch) and hightailed it out of there. She didn't even stop running at a reasonable distance. She was gone. Luckily Chris stood his ground, and the bird took her dance away into the forest to lead us (potential predators) away from her babies. When the coast was clear, we continued our calm and lovely hike back to our car, and that was goodbye to Sleeping Giant.

Here we go!

After a long long day of packing on Monday, we finally got to bed around 12:30 am in Owen Sound, and then got up yesterday at 5:30 am and headed to the Chi-Cheemaun. Then we drove in hot, beautiful weather towards the Soo, along the way stopping for an awesome homemade (right out of our new cooler!) caesar pita at Bruce Mines Pier (about 3 and a half hours from where we docked). In between the Soo and our campground, Pancake Bay, we saw a few splashes of rain. We thought nothing of it .... it was still sunny! Then we chose our site, right at the beach, and as we pulled the tent out of the car the rain started. We managed to get the tent up and covered by the tarp, getting totally soaked in the process, and just in time Chris's mom showed up with beers and Cheetos. Basically a life saver! She was in the Soo on business and we all went out for an amazing dinner at a German restaurant called Salzburger Hof in Batchawana Bay right nearby. If you are ever up in that area, go eat there! The food was so good and there was so much of it that the leftovers even made for a perfect lunch on the Sault Ship Canal today.
We also checked out the Canadian Heritage Bushplane Museum, which had some pretty awesome old float planes, but somehow even though we were the first (only) people to get into the flight simulator when they announced the 5 minute warning we waited in the dark theatre for 15 minutes and never got the show. hmm... not meant to be. We just had to use our imaginations. One of the highlights of the day was watching a fox come out of nowhere while we ate lunch. He gave up on the geese pretty quickly and went after some other picnickers, thankfully upwind of us, so while he eyeballed them and eventually got on their table we had a meal and a show.
So we are staying in Pancake Bay for one more night, so that we can get our car a little more organized, and then we are headed north to Pukaskwa National Park on Thursday, where more adventures (and it looks like more rain) await us!

Hopefully this blog works to keep us in touch with everyone. Sorry there aren't any pictures yet but the site was having some troubles. We will try to update this as much as we can, and I think that if you 'subscribe' to it you can get notified when we update it. Enjoy!