To the edge of the prairies

Prarie Dogs! These little guys would be way cuter to have around than squirrels.

We actually ended up taking a right at this junction, which lead us to...

Whoever comes up with the best caption for this picture wins my love.

This scruffy vegetation was in stark contrast to the prairie landscape, and right on the border to these really neat sand dunes.

That's Hus standing in the middle of the dune, to give you an idea of scale.

Next stop was the badlands, where we got chased by dinosaurs. I have pictures to prove it and everything.

Today was my first day at the new job. Full day of orientation. Got to ride in a seaplane to Vancouver, which was pretty neat. Even got to be the co-pilot on the way back (really small planes, and they'll let you sit there if you ask). Beautiful scenery on the whole ride there and back. Two more days of orientation, then the job starts for real.

Ours to discover no longer

Going backwards in time, despite our flux capacitor being on the fritz. We still had to go 88 miles per hour, though.

So sad to be leaving the province that they named a town after our general mood.

Our next prominent stop was Winnipeg, which was actually quite a nice town, that I would consider living in, if it wasn't in Manitoba. The parliament building looked like it could be the set for the next James Bond film, as the passageways were quite large, and it was very open-concept-y in general. Pictures won't do it justice, so I'll let your imagination do the work.

Here's an area that was pretty neat. The whole area is built in a depression in the ground, and circling the area that we're pictured jumping on are these metallic posts ("above" my head in the picture). If you read the inscription in front of the posts, there is a description of which stars line up with which posts at what part of the year. The metallic posts even have double circles that, if you stand in the exact centre of the structure, will line up with where the star should be. Very neat stuff. Unfortunately, we went there during the day, and it was cloudy.

This picture is meant to show our lucky timing. There was a flood (obviously still going on, but abated) in the Winnipeg area before our arrival, and some quite bad flooding in the prairies after our arrival in BC.

A labyrinth is not a maze. This is information that could have come to our attention in the brochure before we drove 30 minutes and got ourselves excited about it.

Please note how the lifeguards are dressed, particularly the one behind the other one in the corner. We went swimming anyhow. This is at grand beach, one of the top 10 beaches in North America. Very beautiful, and extremely vast. I can see how it would be pretty stellar on a hot sunny day. The beach stretches out for quite a ways before it drops off (we never figured out how far because we got cold and turned around).

We also made a crucial error at this juncture. We neglected to go to Gimli, a short 20-30 minutes away at this point, to pose with the world's biggest viking (statue). Personally, I would have gone with a giant dwarf, but that's just me.

Next stop: prairies! There was a lot of this...

Next entry won't be for a few days as I'm off surfing for a bit.

Days 3 and 4

Us getting ready to take flight next to the Wawa goose.

The Shania Twain museum was a bit of a bust given that none of us are particularly big fans. More interesting was the mine museum (in the same building and divided by the Shania Twain museum only by a gift shop), where you get to dress up as a miner, and go into the mine. Not sure why or how this is affiliated with Shania Twain other than geography, but unfortunately, we didn't have time to do the tour.

Next up, we took a bit of a detour to check out lake Superior provincial park, which is among some of the nicest Northern Ontario scenery I have ever seen. This was easily one of the highlights of the trip, with us taking several hikes, one of which was essentially up through the middle of a rocky river, having to take detours around the more treacherous parts. Swimming in a few of the calmer pools was also quite refreshing. Also checked out some pictographs from many yesteryears ago. Spent a night there in a beautiful campground with a vast, expansive rock-beach, of which there is a picture on the left here. Still getting used to this whole insert-your-photo-here formatting...

Spent hours "seeing things" in the clouds.

Where's waldo?-->

Just below is Oz and Hus relaxing at one of the many waterfalls we saw along our epic hike.

Above is Kakabeka falls, just west of Thunder Bay; this is where we spent the night. For some reason, at the time we thought this made more sense than checking out the Sleeping Giant. Funnily enough, with all the people we know in Thunder Bay, none of them happened to be available at the exact moment we were passing through on less than 24 hours notice. Anyhow, the park ranger dude we met in Kakabeka falls was one of the nicest people we met along the entire trip; we debated through the rest of the trip (usually whenever we met another nice park employee) as to whether this type of person is attracted to that type of job, or whether that type of job produces such a laid back, genuinely nice person. We also got really lucky with camping, and only got rained on once or twice throughout the whole trip.

That's it for today. Might be going to Tofino for a few days to go surfing, so might not be posting for a bit. Stay tuned for time travelling and the set of the next James Bond movie.

Days 1 and 2

So the trip starts outside of Bancroft, where my family had rented a cottage to celebrate my mom's 60th birthday. Good times were had by all, too innumberable to recount. Went swimming with Jackson, tried to swim across a lake, retrieved two fishing lures from the lake, enjoyed good company around the fire, learned some new card games, laughed at JC freaking out in a canoe, etc etc etc. I learned a new sport from PD called "beersby" which combines both frisbee and beer. If you know me well at all, you can understand why this is now my new favourite sport on earth. We also did some gunnel-bobbing; everyone won:

Oz and Hus came to stay a night, then we departed on our cross country trip. First stop of note: the big nickel.

...oh yeah, Oz and his brother brought pirate patches from a pirate-themed adventure they had (whole other story he can fill you in on), and we thought it would be funny to take pictures in front of all the "world's biggest" things that we passed with them on.

Hus then had an idea to take a detour to Canada's (the world's?) southern-most polar bear reserve in Cochrane. This is a place where retired polar bears from zoos, and/or "problem bears" are housed. The main selling feature of this day-long detour was that for an extra $5 you get to go swimming with the bear. It's going to be that kind of trip.

Unfortunately for us, there was a glass barrier between us and the bear, which prevented us from petting and/or attempting to riding the furry tractor. Also funny was the fact that there were more employees at this reserve (6) than there were tourists (3 - us). Was still pretty neat to be able to watch the bear walk and swim about. Interesting fact about polar bears: they are one of the few animals on earth know to actively hunt humans.

...well, that's it for now. Stay tuned for news of the Shania Twain museum, the giant Wawa goose, and the rest of our passage through ON.