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food & poetry, but mostly the poetry of food

Food • Writing • Poetry

So yesterday, it rained when we left Montreal River.

And then it was cloudy.

And then it rained.

And then it was cloudy.

And then it rained.

And then it was cloudy.

And, wait, let me think: then it rained.

Yes, and then it was cloudy.

Then we saw some blue sky.

And some wildflowers, or weeds if you must.

We spent some time admiring the scenery while a logging truck chugged along ahead of us.

And then we hit a flat bit, still with the logging truck ahead,

and finally overtook him at Blind River.

We stopped for lunch at Bobbers in Bruce Mines, where the breakfast special was a bargain at $4.95 and the place was packed.

Some more flat bits.

Bait sold everywhere. There were even signs promising you could buy it 24 hours a day.

And then, finally, the sun shone…

and shone…

and shone…

End of the road, Orillia. A few small things we might need overnight…

Indeterminate weather on Monday as we set off from Thunder Bay, but great clouds, and lots of lake.

Lucky truckers. We check out the traffic ahead of us.

It is construction season in Canada, so we’ve seen a fair amount of that. Here’s where your car tires are going (fittingly, into the road beds of new highways).

Travelling through Group of Seven country, most definitely.

A beautiful place on Lake Superior: Old Woman Bay.

Our BCAA guide told us the place to eat in Wawa is the Kinniwabi Pines,

where you can get Canadian, Chinese and Trinidadian cuisine, and where we managed to get a cup of tea. Alas for us we were too early for the Trinidadian (Mom makes the meals elsewhere and they arrive at 5pm) but we were provided with a perfectly fine stir-fry which we could heat up in our cabin later. The brother and sister who run the place told us how the view there sold them on the place and they’re still happy there ten years later. We could see why. Look one way and it’s this:

and the other way it’s just this:

Moose, moose everywhere.

A train, a lake.

Welcome to Montreal River!!

Another spring? Lilacs out at the Twilight Resort.

Not quite hiding behind a tree beside our cabin.

Swinging nightlife at Montreal River.

Richard enjoys a glass of wine and a few pistachios before dinner.

Dinner is served.

The shores of Lake Superior, at Montreal River.

Clever old us, we thought leaving Winnipeg bright and early on a Sunday morning would be pretty simple, but we ran into miles of police tape and traffic redirections – nothing that got in our way – because of the Manitoba Marathon.

We drove along for a while, rain and shine,

bought some fruit (California, not BC)

and saw ourselves

and then were welcomed to Ontario

where the landscape is thick with inukshuk, some say erected by hitchhikers, which are also relatively numerous in these parts.

and then just a lot of northern Ontario scenery, as promised: rocks, trees, water (repeat):

We stopped for lunch and met a valiant dog (kept very busy guarding the place from birds and beavers, according to his owner) who kept a close eye on our rig

while we tucked into some excellent pirogies (hand-made by a local Ukranian woman) for lunch.

And passed many such moose signs,

as well as 3 live and 2 dead ones, and other sobering sights.

And finally rolled into Thunder Bay safe and sound about 11 hours after starting. We had a little ramble along the industrial strip in search of food, to provision ourselves for the next leg. This venture raised some interesting questions, like what was the yellow scum round the edge of all the puddles?

We gave up on that one, and it all ended with a splendid feed.

Saskatoon to Winnipeg today, via Regina. We didn’t stop much: half an hour for coffee in Brandon was our limit, as we had a goal in mind.

Our day in Saskatoon yesterday was excellent for rest and visits. The weather was warm and the trees in leaf. Unfortunately, the trees often look like this in a prairie spring

and this would be why…

Brunch at the Broadway Cafe with Mari-Lou and Albert was for me a welcome ham and cheddar omelette with nice home fries and good coffee.

Supper at Prairie Ink, in McNally Robinson‘s splendid store, with Mary included her chicken salad with pineapple,

my cream of asparagus soup

some Jerry’s ice cream

and the amazing flowering tea. Followed by some brisk book shopping.

We left this morning in a Saskatoon drizzle

but the light was fabulous

the grain elevators occasional

and only a single teapot on the road.

We crossed into Manitoba which can be very flat indeed.

We were puzzled by a field of hay (in bales) that went on

and on and on and on. Anyone out there know what this was?

But finally, after 10 hours’ driving, we reached Winnipeg and had time to check into the hotel, clean ourselves up and scamper down to Dubrovnik, where the menu is pretty swish-standard Canadian, but the quality is exceedingly good, as is the service. We started with an amuse-bouche of seared tuna

and then had Mesclun Greens with goat cheese and fresh raspberries and blueberries,

Ruth opting for escargot with strips of fried portabella mushrooms

followed by poached sea bass with mango chutney

while I had free-range chicken (I hate to ask how free that might really be in a Manitoba winter) with duck mousse and dried cranberry stuffing,

surrounded by lots of interesting vegetables and hiding a nice peppery portion of scalloped potatoes. We couldn’t manage dessert, although it looked pretty good, and left without allowing our photographs to join the rogue’s gallery of celebrity patrons (Pierre Trudeau, Bill Clinton, Richard Gere, Zsa-Zsa Gabor and all that riff-raff).

Due to some unfortunate early morning coincidence, we both woke up a couple of hours before the alarm went off yesterday, and then decided to get an early start, so left Hinton on a gorgeous sunny morning at 7am,

and promptly blew our advantage by lingering over a couple of poached eggs and some salty spuds at a caff in Evansburg.

Richard, our navigator, contemplates the jam selection.

The rest of the day was just drive drive drive.

Saw some deer, but they all stayed off the road.

Decided not to go shopping.

And we got to Saskatoon about 11 and a half hours after we started.

On the way, of course we saw some grain elevators. Here is a mother feeding its young.

In olden times, the young were the same boxy shape as their folks, with the same woody complexion, and grew up sporting the names of their towns or sometimes interesting bible quotations on their sides.

Nowadays the young take after their parents who are rounder and harder and less interesting, and who have sought corporate sponsorship (much like today’s humans who prefer designer logos I suppose) so you can no longer see where you are from a friendly landmark.