Family Mysteries Unveiled

Happyland was our choice over the Provincial Park nearby at Kakabeka Falls, partly due to cost (a bit cheaper than the Provincial Park) and the services.....wifi (turned out to be weak and intermittent, but ok for email), hot showers. It is interesting that Provincial parks in Manitoba cost 15.75, and Ontario Provincial parks almost double that, at 27.50, which seems a bit much for a tent site without a lot of amenities. I guess they don't want to be competetive with the private parks like KOA and Good Sam, etc. We spent an uneventful night at Happyland, again finding it quite cool. With rain in the forecast for this afternoon and tonight, we may try something new and exciting......a Kamping Kabin. But first, into Thunder Bay proper, to look around, and do some family research. The historical museum is closed on Mondays, so we had to miss that, and went on to the public library, who have a wonderful research area with lots of archives and microfiche of local newspapers. We were able to find obituaries of over 20 family members, and glean more information about them. By then it was late afternoon, and raining.....so off to the KOA east of town, to set up camp. No gas today, and we have the food already, so we can afford to splurge, and go for a little Kozy KOA Kamping Kabin (1 room with bed, electric light, heat, and WiFi). So we took it, and got warm and stayed dry. In our almost three weeks of travelling so far, we've had very little rain, and that only while driving. The cold temps have been bugging us a bit, though, following us for over a week now. It was very nice to have a bit more room than a 7x3 ft. tent, 3 ft. high! We managed to get caught up on a bit of laundry, to get rid of the smoky smell from some of our campfires.







Linda as a Kozy Kamper at our Kabin











Armed with all this new information from the obituaries, we decided to stick around Thunder Bay another day, and find the graves. This we managed, for the most part, in two cemeteries.....Riverside, and Mountainview. Mountainview looks over Mt. McKay, which family legend says is named after my gt-gt-grandfather. We have confirmed that this is a story/legend only, and that it was named after another McKay about 50 yrs before my ancestor could have been here. Other family legends, though, came to life from the obituaries and the gravestones, and we discovered several more relatives and their stories. We tried to drive up Mt. McKay for a view of the area from the higher ground, but an admission fee stopped us.....we were going over budget on the day......and it's hard to convince someone from BC to pay to go up a hill! So we went to the museum instead, and had a good look around, and then met with the curator who was able to search his archives and come up with more information on my gt-aunt, who'd been a high profile citizen of Ft. William in her day. We also stocked up on a few provisions in town, and got some gas at the native gas station, which is a bit cheaper than the rest of town. At 103.9/liter, it is the least expensive gas around here....averaging 105.9 and as much as 107.9/liter......shades of home prices! I had earlier mused about the windshield bugs of Alberta and Saskatchewan. It seems there have been even more, even stickier bugs in Northwestern Ontario, and almost none in Manitoba. I don't believe temperature has a lot to do with it, as we've been having cooler weather in NW Ontario, and that should be keeping them down a bit. There may be government money for a study in this. We are, however, starting to get a "taste" of the biting bugs here, with black flies and mosquitoes encouraging us to apply the Deet, as they attempt to feast on us. I dread to think what we're in for when summer temperatures finally arrive.
Back to the Kozy Kabin for another night, although with that, we are definitely over budget for the day - lucky we've saved a bit on the last few days. Our reckoning for this, the third week: Gas - $223.40 Food - $141.47 Accommodation - $231.91 Other - $52.75 for a grand total of $649.43 for this week......still under by just over $50.00. We travelled 1920.4 Kilometres this last week.