Leaving Regina behind we headed to Manitoba. We had decided to drive as far as Portage La Prairie and settle in for the night. Of course it was the long weekend, and it did cross my mind that perhaps I should call ahead and book a site, but as we like to take our chances and we really never know where we will stop. I call it “flying by the seat of our pants”. This has served us well in the last two trips across Canada and umpteen trips south. Traffic was light and the weather was warm and just a bit windy, but not nearly as bad as Alberta and Saskatchewan. So far the condition of the Trans Canada Highway has been the best in Alberta. Probably because they have more money then other Provinces to spend on their roads,,,,because they are gouging us in fuel costs! As we were coming into Brandon Manitoba, a thick black smoke could be seen for miles. In the Saskatchewan we had seen farmers doing some burns on their fields, but the smoke was not as black as what were we seeing. I found a local radio station to discovered that the streets in the downtown core were shut down due to two structure fires. One was an office supply building and the other was an apartment building. We later heard that both building were completely destroyed leaving hundreds with no homes. Very sad situation. We continued our way to Portage La Prairie and pulled into the Miller’s Camping Resort, which was just off the highway. Pulling in I noticed there were many trailers already parked. Yes a long weekend with beautiful weather will bring people out camping. We went into the office and asked if they had a site for the night. The lady behind the counter asked if we had reservations. I’m thinking “oh crap they are full”. When I said not, she kind of looked a little shocked. But she did have a site, actually there were several sites available. The site she assigned to us was beautiful. Flat, wide and treed on both sides. Anyone who has camped with us knows that Ray doesn’t like parking in the trees for a variety of reasons. One reason is low branches can tear the vinyl on the roof (this happened in Guelph in 2014). Sometimes you just have to suck it up and take what you can get. I happen to like the trees as they provide shade for my pearly white freckled skin.
This was quite a large RV park with a lot of permanent summer campers. We took a walk around checking out the area and getting some much needed walking in. It was very much a family place so therefore we knew that it would be quiet. Unfortunately I had a horrible time getting to sleep and it had nothing to do with the wind, nor noisy campers as it was very quiet. I think it was a Tim Horton’s coffee that I had drank around 2:00 in the afternoon, which I rarely do. I am not sure what time I fell asleep, but when I did, I fell into a deep sleep. We like to get up around 7:00 so that we can relax with a morning coffee and have a bite to eat before we hit the road. But because I was in such deep sleep, we didn’t wake up until 8:45! We never sleep that late!! So we got up and basically packed up without taking the time for coffee. We had showered the night before, but needed to dump our black/grey water tanks (no sani at the site). So we get everything packed and start to pulled out to where the sani dump was. As we were pulling out of the site and making the turn into onto the laneway, a tree jumped out and snagged onto the ladder that goes to the roof!! We now have a partially broken ladder on the back of the trailer. You can imagine what the words were coming out of Ray’s mouth. It took a number of attempts of backing up back into the site to be able to make a right enough swing to get into the laneway.
So that was the start of our day. A late start. A mishap with an angry tree. And me not having my morning cup of coffee. I am not a morning person. I like to get up, have a coffee and slowly start my day. I am not a jump out of bed kind of person. Yes when I worked, I had those 4:30 in the morning wake up jolts which I detested. But that is all behind me. Since retirement, I like to take my time because I have “nothing but time”. Off we headed eastbound towards Winnipeg. Ray had told me that he wanted to take highway 100 that would detour Winnipeg altogether. But I said that driving through Winnipeg was not like driving through Toronto or LA. Winnipeg is not that big, I say. Remember, I haven’t had my coffee. Ray listened to me, the navigator, and we stayed on Highway 1 right into downtown Winnipeg. At one point I missed the sign that showed Highway 1 turning right. We ended up having to find a street to turn left on to get back onto Highway 1. But this is an effort when you are towing and the streets are narrow! Oh my, this brought back memories of taking an exit off of the Golden Gate Bridge and driving in downtown San Fransisco, followed closely behind by Vonnie and Russ! To say the least, I was not in Ray’s good books and I think he wanted to fire me as his navigator. But I do make a better navigator then a driver pulling a 30 foot 5th wheel. Needless to say, Ray makes sure that I get my morning coffee before we head out! On a positive note, I did get to see the Royal Canadian Mint, which I thought was in Ottawa but is in Winnipeg. And when I say "see", I mean while driving past it!!
Now we are heading into Ontario. Ray said that he would like to stop in Sault St Marie (The Soo) for the night as he has a motorcycle buddy that he would like to see. This would be fine, but he thinks it will happen on the same day. Sault St Marie is a two day drive at least! We had to make it to Thunder Bay first and then drive around the beautiful Lake Superior. Using my new App that someone told me about, Park Advisor, I found us a spot called Davy Lake RV Park in Ignace Ontario. Well the GPS took us down the wrong road (it wasn’t my fault this time). I ended up calling the campground and spoke to a lovely young lady who gave me the proper directions, which wasn’t too far away from where we were. We had the place to ourselves. No other campers. There was free wifi, which really was crappy. I had tried to finish my previous blog page and get it posted, which I did after much frustration. Funny thing was, when I took my iPad up to the bed (front end of the 5th wheel) we had full bars and great service. So my lesson that I learned is when I don’t appear to have good wifi, start moving around the trailer!
Today is Monday, the holiday. I seemed to have missed a wedding this weekend, from some of the comments on Facebook. I think my invite was lost in the mail or something, because I surely would have been there if I had received it. So today we drove around Lake Superior. Not quite all the way as we have stopped in Wawa for the night. Lake Superior is the largest of the Great Lakes and appears to be the size of an ocean when you get glimpses of it as driving by. It is the 2nd largest lake in the world. The first one being the Caspian Sea (not sure why it is referred to as a lake if it is called a "sea"). Lake superior is 350 miles long (31,700 square miles) and 1330 feet deep. The Ojibwe refer to the lake as "gichi-gami", which means "great sea".
We are camping tonight in the Wawa RV Camping Resort. It also is a very nice spot with large sites and not many people here. The wifi appears to be working for me,,,,,,but not for Ray???? How can that be? Anyway a word of warning, to who I am not sure. But there are trees surrounding our site, so keep your fingers crossed that we don't lose the other half of our ladder. We might drive 4 hours tomorrow to the Soo and are hoping to be at my sister's house in Minden by Wednesday.
Until tomorrow,,,or the next day!!!
Lori and Ray
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