The sun setting on the Sleeping Giant....actually, this is the bottom of his head, and his chest...the panorama I took didn't work - but you get the idea!
After setting up camp and having dinner, we walked to the nearby lake, Louisa, and watched the sun set over the Giant's head. Being a Saturday evening, and a long weekend (Labour Day), the park had a talk in the ampitheatre by a visiting amateur astronomer, followed by a session on the beach viewing heavenly bodies through a telescope. The moon, being just past full, was one of the objects we viewed, as was Jupiter, which we could see clearly, with several red bands and 4 of her moons. We also viewed a double, two-coloured star.....most of the nebulae and galaxies were too faint to be seen with the competing moonlight. I did find the presentation quite fascinating.....as a much younger person, I'd taken a keen interest in astronomy, but had let things lapse in the course of over 45 years.
The following morning, summer continued.....and so did we. Occasional fog banks greeted us in the morning drive along the rest of the north shore of Superior, but dissipated as we left the lakehead behind, continuing west through Dryden, and finally stopping at a campsite near Vermilion Bay, at Crystal Lake. We crossed into the Central Time Zone, as well as out of the Atlantic Watershed and into the Arctic Watershed, where the rivers flow into the Arctic Ocean. Crystal Lake was another beautiful site, with a sand beach on a small lake (with resident loons calling). Wifi was reasonable, although the Blog wasn't ready for upload yet. The summer weather along with the previous weeks of rain had created a large mob of mosquitoes, however, so as the sun set, we zipped ourselves safely into our tent, safely away from the busy biters, and called it a day fairly early.
Monday morning we continued out of Ontario, and into Manitoba. Rain and thundershowers were forecast for late night/early morning, and we had ancestors to investigate in Winnipeg, so we opted to drive into town and find a reasonably-priced hotel - which we did. At $68.00/night, it was almost within budget range, and it was only three blocks from the Manitoba Archives building where we planned to do our research. Linda was a bit nervous about some of the clientele in the hotel, and the people lurking around the streets and parking area. We emptied out much of our "irreplaceable" things (mostly genealogical paperwork, etc) from the car and settled in. We were only a few blocks away from Portage Avenue, right downtown, so we took a walk through downtown, and had extremely plain fare for dinner in our room. We don't get much tv while camping across the country, so we watched a couple of hours of that before retiring. A fine Labour Day it was.
Tuesday, although not officially the first day of fall, seemed a bit like it. The sky was dark and cloudy, but the rain hadn't started yet when we got up. We walked to a nearby Tim Horton's for a quick breakfast, and then reloaded the car, which had thankfully not been broken into. The Archives building was a bit unlike the other ones we'd visited, and they could not help us with birth, marriage or death records. The only will we were interested in didn't seem to exist. The referred us to the Legislative Library next door, to look up obituaries and wedding notices, and to the Vital Statistics Building on Portage Ävenue, for birth, marriage and death records. By 1300 we had scanned numerous old newpapers via microfiche, with the help of the friendly staff in the Legislative Library, and we then set out to find the Vital Stats office. Find it we did, but the Province of Manitoba requires requests for the records needed, and then produces Certified Copies or Certificates for each birth, death, or marriage, at $25.00 each. Since our budget could not stand that kind of strain, especially with some of the requests being for people we are fairly sure are correct, but not certain, we decided to go with what we have and do a bit more home research before sending in any expensive requests like that. Everywhere else in the country, it is possible to photocopy the records from fiche for a very small (comparably) fee - but Manitoba seems to think that only certified records will do. Hmmmmmmmm.......
The rain had come and gone while we were researching, so it was time to leave Winnipeg. Westward we went, through Portage la Prairie, and then turned northwest onto the Yellowhead Highway, which runs through Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and BC, north of the Trans Canada Highway. Not only the scenery is Prairie, but the ads on the radio are quite different and local as well - Boston Pizza was advertising free deliveries to your farm for the harvest, and soybean and corn prices were the top issues for the stations.
Prairie Landscape
The Yellowhead gets its name from an Iroquois trapper who had a touch of yellow hair, and led the settlers and trappers westbound through the Yellowhead Pass in the Rockies. The route he followed stuck. The plan was to get a few hundred Km west of Winnipeg, and set up camp, but we continued to drive in and out of rainshowers, so decided to celebrate 16 weeks of travelling, and to reward Linda for her bravery in the "less-than-ideal" hotel the previous night. We have some ancestors we wanted to photograph, in the cemetery in Langenburg, Saskatchewan....and according to our CAA book, there is a reasonably priced motel there. As it's just over the border from Manitoba, we headed there. For the first time in our trip, as we approached Russell, Manitoba, near the border, we started to see No Vacancy signs on all the motels. Okay.....it's kind of scenic here, so I guess lots of tourists enjoying the end of summer! We arrived in Langenburg late afternoon/early evening, and found our motel full. So we found the cemetery and took photos of Gt-Aunt Polly Berger, and Ralph Schentag, and their family, and then headed west again. It was getting too late to consider setting up camp (I HATE setting up in the dark), so we continued on to Yorkton, a much larger town. Enroute, the towns had some motels, all full. Same story in Yorkton. Apparently there are construction crews building pipelines and some kind of Potash plant, and the crews are taking up all available accommodation. Recession? What Recession? None apparent here in North-Central Saskatchewan! We were getting hungry by then, and the sun was setting, so we dropped into Boston Pizza for a bite, tanked up on fuel, and continued west. All motels for several hundred Km were full. At 23:30 we were passing the town of Lanigan, about 100 Km east of Saskatoon. They still had a vacancy, so we took it. So here we are, halfway across Saskatchewan already. We really blew the budget this last week, which was week 16 of our trip. Being a Tuesday, it is again a Day of Reckoning. Totals:
Distance Driven: 2716.4 Km Gas: $300.26 Food: $ 331.89 Accommodation: $300.71 Other: $109.85 Total: $1042.81 Wow! Almost $350.00 over budget - sometimes I wonder if I need to continue this test....but for continuity, and for general interest, we will see it through to the end. For some reason, I am unable to upload my photos for this section of the blog, so this one is read-only! Edit note Sept 10 - added a couple of pics from Edmonton, to complete this section. dj
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