Ontari-ar-i-o

Jun 15

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.

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Pegged

Jun 14

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 coffee pot 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).

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Toonie time

Jun 13

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.

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Hope to Hinton

Jun 11

Day 2 dawned wetly and foggily, much like ourselves.

We crossed the Coquihalla in good time, surprised for no good reason to see lots of snow at the summit,

and then swanned down the other side, past some of my favourite landscape, around Merritt

and on to and past Kamloops, noting pine beetle damage

and on and on up the Yellowhead, through Jasper

and finally to Hinton where the L&W; Family Restaurant served us some pretty good greek salad, spanakopita and navy bean soup.

The sun has set

on bunnies large and small and so we hit the hay for another day.

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Hope, pie and we-haul

Jun 10

A while back, Ruth happened to mention she was looking for another driver to help her move her stuff across this chain of Tim Horton’s we call Canada. And so I stepped forward as co-pilot, co-driver, menu scrutineer and chief gastro-whinger.

Before leaving I enjoyed a pleasant Victoria Saturday with Judy and Peg, drooling over the baked goods at Moss Street Market

and then being treated to a quartet of Ferris‘ finest rockefeller oysters…

Have left Anton, who has been doing a good impersonation of a living vacuum cleaner at mealtimes, to convalesce from his (successful) eye op in Sidney.

It’s all started well. Ruth left the lot this morning with the U-Haul van; my mission was to drive her car to her house; only her car refused to start for me (I think it was suffering some separation and relocation anxiety and plain just didn’t like me, as it later started willingly for Ruth). Not a problem though; the car needed to be hitched to the van once it was packed anyway, so I was able to just leave it in the lot and wander around while Ruth’s burly men packed her earthlies into a compact space. Which they did with alarming speed!

Then, ready to head off, there were some more fraught moments in the lot while the cheerful attendant could not find a database listing for the car model we wanted to hitch to the van (which would have meant we would have had to haul a longer, heavier car trailer instead of a dolly). But the heroic general manager finally sussed it out and gave us the all clear, and off we lumbered to the ferry, which we made in plenty of time.

We managed to get to Hope, where the mountains are wreathed in fog, so it was lucky we meant to stop here. After some veggie burger and spinach salad

a good ol’ meat loaf dinner

and a shared piece of lemon meringue

from the Home Restaurant’s justly famous pie case, we had a stroll round the local supermarket where they had proudly flagged Local Products (the cashier explained this meant products that had been packed in Burnaby, rather than in China or Mexico or someplace – hence you could buy “Local” almonds, dates, raisins and escargot seasoning!), and soon we will tumble into dreams, resting up for tomorrow’s haul through the mountains.

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