Jun15
Driving along highway 16 west of Saskatoon was a real eye-opener. Our GPS (which we named “Lorna” after a dear friend whose voice is similar) showed us to be 550 metres high on the plain. It felt like we were on top of the world with gently rolling landscape. Beside us we saw the Saskatchewan River valley, wide and beautiful with well cared for farms on the slopes to the river. There were no sharp edges to the land anywhere and we found it to be welcoming. Of interest to bird-lovers, we saw several magpies (‘skjære’ in Norwegian) which we had never before seen in Canada – at least east of Manitoba.

Battleford, about an hour west, is full of history. It was the capital of the Northwest Territories and thus Fort Battleford was the centre of activity for the Northwest Mounted Police (before they became RCMP). Large portions of the NWT were transferred to Saskatchewan when it joined Canada in 1905. Our treaty history with the local Cree Indians leaves much for us to be ashamed of.

June 16
Last night we stopped in Vermillion Alberta, about 60 km west of the border. Today we drove north through a beautiful landscape as we climbed still higher. The farms were large and well-to-do. Three hours to Plamondon, by a large lake called Lac la Biche and even the owner of the campground here is French. The trailer will stay for three nights. We shall not, because tomorrow night we drive the car to Fort McMurray (250 km straight north), centre of the oil sands projects. We have booked one night at a hotel and a tour on Friday. You don’t have to be a supporter of the oil sands to be fascinated by the scope of the place. Just imagine – it has greater oil reserves than any place on earth, except for the Saudi fields. I am skeptical about the dirty recovery process, but compared to the disaster in the Mexican Gulf - - ? More on our visit later.

Jun 17
Fort McMurray is a remarkable, modern, and friendly place. It is situated at the confluence of Clearwater and Athabasca Rivers, flowing north. We are at 58 degrees latitude and the evening sun lasts longer than at home. The drive north this morning was through rolling and some flat forest of mostly black spruce and aspen through 250 km. We saw the Oil Sands discovery Centre and tomorrow will tour one of the Suncor sites.

07 SK and AB

Updated map


Riding Mountain National Park is near the western side of Manitoba - a. beautiful National Park and we were surprised at the height of the terrain (750m / 2400 ft) so far south in the province. We spent a couple of days to walk a bit and see some wildlife including black bear, lynx, moose along the road and bison on a fenced range. We were told that Bison and Buffalo differ in the number of ribs they have and that Buffalo existed only on Europe and Asia. What we have here in North America is Bison. This needs to be checked out.

June 14th we drove from the National Park to Saskatoon – about 580km. Highway 16, the “Yellowhead”, runs north of the really flat part of the prairies. We were amazed that we could drive almost an hour with turning the steering wheel and yet go up and down through small valleys and over hills. Quite beautiful country. The large amount of rain in May and early June has left its mark. Every field has small and larger ‘lakes’ (up to 7 feet deep) and huge tracts of land are still to be seeded. Farmers say that if they cannot plant seeds by the end of next week (Jun 23) they will have to return seeds and fertilizer to their distributors! This may be a major disaster for these farmers.

05 ON west to Portage MB

06 Riding Mountain MB

Jun 7-14
The week went by in a hurry and we have had little opportunity to access the internet. During the three days in Thunder Bay we had lots of opportunities to learn about this city of 110,000 people. Fort William is not a fort but rather a key trading post for furs heading east and supplies going further west into the North-West Territories. And have you eaten old and extra old gouda? The only Ontario factory making this delicacy is here.

On the way to Bryden ON, we crossed the Arctic Watershed. Some distance west of Thunder Bay there was a ridge of hills that took almost an hour to cross. West of it all rivers flow to the Hudson Bay and Arctic Ocean. We also crossed a time zone - didn't know that the west part of Ontario was an hour earlier :-)

This is not a trip to visit the bigger cities of Canada. It is our dedication to Canada only and we plan to learn about smaller communities. So, we bypassed Winnipeg and stopped instead in Portage La Prairie, a great little prairie town, where we found a Toyota dealership/RV place who repaired our fresh water drain tap. It is a first class place for any RV repair. We spent two nights camping in the park on an island in the middle of town! $20 per night with hook ups.

Along Lake Superior

Fort William

http://maps.google.ca/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=113267374780103436207.00048486e9783daaa0e1e&ll=50.243692,-91.669922&spn=1.735456,4.938354&z=8

This is the link to the map we wanted you to see. We are in Dryden tonight and will cross into Manitoba tomorrow. There are some pictures to show and I still need to work on how to do it.

 Patience please!

Sudbury to Thunder Bay

June 3 to 6
Sudbury to Thunder Bay.
Starting out on a trip like this seemed no different than any of our other excursions. We had been through northern Ontario before so the first several days were familiar. The big difference is that we have made no reservations and no promises to ourselves about how far we shall drive, if at all, in any one day. We have a very comfortable sense of freedom, and all we know is that we will be home around the beginning of September.

Did you know that Wawa is about half-way from Toronto to the Manitoba border? Just about 1000 km for each leg. Tim Horton’s place in Wawa was a busy place. Every fisherman with truck and boat on trailer stopped there for coffee and a donut. The entrance to the parking lot had a sign – only visible after we turned in - which said “No Trailers” ! Brilliant. Fortunately we were between waves of visiting fishermen and were just able to make a tight u-turn at the far end, park briefly, and then leave before the next group from Michigan arrived.

The drive west along the north shore of Lake Superior is beautiful, parts of it spectacular. The closer we got to Thunder Bay, the more we saw of that giant lake; it holds more water than the rest of the Great Lakes combined! There are hills that we think must provide great practice for what was to come later. We arrived Thunder Bay on Sunday and stopped at the tourist information, up on a hill with a view over the city of 118,000 people. The Terry Fox memorial is a magnificent tribute to his valiant fight which ended a few km. east of this location. He had completed 3300 km of his cross-country run from St. Johns, Newfoundland; more than half of the total 5800 km.

The bottom tap for our fresh water tank is leaking and I don’t know where. A call to our favourite dealer will tell us.

All is well.