Whiteshell, MB to Nojack, AB

July 15 – hot and sunny, ~4200km from home

We left Whiteshell Provincial Park and headed for Winnipeg. About halfway to Winnipeg we came out of the wooded hills and hit flat, wide-open agriculture – the prairies. You see pictures and hear descriptions of the prairies and it really was unbelievably flat and stretched out as far as you could see (within an 1.5 hour radius of Winnipeg was the flattest prairie we encountered). Initially this gave Josie a very strong feeling of unease, and at first we had trouble driving because we couldn’t judge distances...we would see a car coming, wait for it to pass before turning, and it would keep coming and coming and coming. Eventually we adjusted.

We made a side trip off the Trans Canada to stop in Steinbach, where we ate lunch at the Mennonite Heritage Village. Besides borscht, we had no idea what anything on the menu was, so we took our chances. We ended up getting a bowl of “komst borscht” (warm cabbage and ham soup with tomatoes, potatoes and dill), “vereniki” (cottage cheese pockets that are basically perogies) covered in a cream sauce called “schmauntfatt”, “foarma worscht” (a pork sausage-like item that tasted like real corned beef), coleslaw, homemade whole wheat bread and, for dessert, “rhubarb plautz” (part pie and part coffee cake). Yummy, all homemade. Josie finally got her chance to buy a real old school Mennonite cookbook!

Next we drove to Winnipeg, which was actually quite easy to navigate. First we went to The Forks, which is where the Red River and the Assiniboine converge, also a very touristy National Historic Site. Josie was impressed by the numerous fossils visible in the limestone walls along the waterfront. We left The Forks to walk across the Promenade Louis Riel, only to find nothing very interesting in St. Boniface (except a mass emergence of flies on a fancy new condo building). We stopped by the windiest intersection in Canada, Portage and Main, and wandered into the allegedly hip “Exchange District,” only to find nightclubs and no place to sit on the sidewalk and enjoy a smoothie (which is what our hip-selves wanted to do).

We found our smoothie back at The Forks and then left town. On our way to a provincial park and campground on Lake Manitoba, we saw our first ground squirrel - it sat up on its haunches to get a better look at us (and looked like Duncan - Josie’s miniature Dachshund - when he wants a belly rub). We also noticed a lot of killdeer along the rural roads, even some babies (cutest bird babies ever, also the stupidest). We spent the night camped on Lake Manitoba, another huge lake that could have been the ocean, and it turned out we got to stay for free because the park office was closed the entire time we were there. Also got to witness a huge insect mating mass directly over our tent. Being huge nerds we loved it!













July 16th – rainy, then sunny and hot, ~4450km from home

In the morning it was raining but we went for a short hike to a marsh behind the camping area. We walked to a look off tower where you can see lots of nesting and migrating birds – mostly swallows, unidentified waterfowl, red-winged blackbirds, some sparrows and maybe a yellow warbler. Also saw some new trees like green ash, Manitoba maple and cottonwood.

We left the campground and drove to Portage-la-Prairie, where a couple people struck up a conversation with the Nova Scotians...living up to their license plate slogan of “Friendly Manitoba.” Next, feeling adventurous we threw our plan of driving north on the Yellowhead Highway out the window and swung down south to Spruce Woods Provincial Park. Why? Because this was our big chance to see Northern Prairie skinks (a lizard) and hog-nosed snakes in the wild.

The Park is situated on the remains of a sandy delta where the Assiniboine once ran into glacial Lake Agassiz. We ate lunch and hiked the Spirit Sands trail, apparently your best bet for reptile encounters. The trail was a totally different environment than the surrounding prairies, a huge sand barren complete with sand dunes and cacti (but technically its not a desert, just dry and sandy and hot). The hike was about three times longer than we expected to be and we ran out of water in a sand pit on a hot sunny afternoon. Besides returning dehydrated and without seeing any reptiles (not for lack of effort!), we got to see lots of interesting plants and trees, along with what MAY have been skink tracks.

We stopped to cook supper in Brandon because we couldn’t find any place to get perogies and then said goodbye to Manitoba. We spent the night in a campground near Moosomin, Saskatchewan.












July 17 – rainy in the morning, ~5200km from home

We decided it would be easier to bypass Regina on the way to Saskatoon, so we drove north to meet up with the Yellowhead Highway in Langenburg, Saskatewan. On the drive from Moosomin to Langenburg we hit our first really lengthy construction stop. Compounded by the fact that we had to find a grocery store before we could eat breakfast, the half hour wait for construction was a stomach growler.

We got some groceries in Langenburg, a small prairie town right out of a movie set, complete with a single main street of business, railway and grain elevator. It looked like there hadn’t been any new construction in at least 30 years.

We had our hopes up once again for a perogie filled lunch but when we stopped in Lanigan to inquire where we could find perogies, they told us that despite the Ukrainian Heritage they didn’t know of any place...for a minute or two it sounded like the girl at the Info Center was going to make us some (she was Ukrainian) but she never came out right and made the offer. We settled for nachos and apples from the trunk.

We made it to Saskatoon in the late afternoon and they did have perogies in two locations. We were trying to make it to Alberta by evening to meet a friend of Josie’s, so we opted for the perogie location closest to the highway. BUT, there was no restaurant anymore, closed, gone. Perogie-less in the Prairies once again.

We got back on the highway and headed for Alberta. Despite being really nice people, the people of Northern Saskatchewan were the speediest drivers since Quebec City. We made it to Lloydminster, a border town that is partly in Saskatchewan and partly in Alberta, although we didn’t make it in time to visit with Josie’s friend Candace who lives another 2 hours north in Cold Lake (Hopefully we’ll see her in August). As we were coming in to town we saw our first magpie and our first major oil development besides pipelines and wells, the Husky Upgrader - Hello Alberta.

The Lloydminster campground was full but we got an overflow site close the washrooms. We also got a glimpse of the housing crisis in Northern Alberta, people were living in the campground and working from there.


July 18 – rainy in the morning, then sunny and warm, ~5550km from home

Lloydminster was a fast-food dominated town where most people drive a gigantic pickup truck (not just your average trucks, these are “super diesels,” F250s, 2500s, 3500s, extended cabs, duel rear wheels, extended beds with runner boards and tinted windows). We didn’t stay long, the 2-door Echo didn’t fit in.

Now let us relate a tragic little story. Settlers once came to the Canadian prairies chasing dreams – the dream to live and work freely on their own lands, to practice their religion free from persecution, the dream of building a nation. Josie, too, came to the prairies with a dream, the dream of eating authentic perogies for three meals a day, everyday while crossing the Canadian bread-basket. Josie’s dreams were not to be realized...that is until Alberta.

Now picture Josie with a heavy heart, having driven through Manitoba and Saskatchewan with only one perogie ingestion. Now Josie was driving somewhere on the highway between Lloydminster and Edmonton and see saw a sign...”Vegreville, home of the world’s largest Pysanka”. Wondering what the heck a pysanka was, she pulled off (Scott didn’t have a say because he was napping from the stress of driving with so many giant pickup trucks). It turns out a pysanka is a Ukrainian Egg, and at the tourist bureau in Vegreville they were selling frozen perogies! At last, an end to the perogie drought...we picked up 2 dozen perogies to cook up later.

Shortly after leaving Vegreville we came to the Ukrainian Heritage Village, just east of Edmonton. Thanks to a coupon and a CAA membership, we got in for about 60% off. For lunch we enjoyed authentic Ukrainian food (perogies, cabbage rolls and kielbasa), then wandered the reconstructed circa 1920s Ukrainian village and interacted with the period actors. It was a bit strange but really interesting and neat. We got to go on a wagon ride, learn how a grain elevator works (lots of chutes and conveyor belts, way more complicated than you would think). Scott was excited about the use of cob and how fertile the soil was.

In Edmonton we visited the Old Strathcona district to cruise the hipster shops, only to remind ourselves of how very un-hip we really are. Then we left Edmonton and headed for Jasper, finally stopping for the night in a little highway-side campground in Nojack. We ate some of our Vegreville perogies and fell asleep amid the tall lodgepole pines and the sound of transports roaring past.

Pancake Bay (ON) to Whiteshell Provincial Park (MB)

July12 – cool and misty rain in morning, sunny later in day, ~3100km from home

Got up and saw Erica and Mary-Ann off, then took a walk on the beach before leaving Pancake Bay. The shoreline was beautiful, especially the rocky headlands, green misty mountains, and pebble beaches on the drive through Lake Superior Provincial Park.

We pushed on and arrived in Pukaskwa National Park in the late afternoon. After stopping at the visitor’s center and setting up camp, we hiked two of the front-country trails along gorgeous ocean-like headlands and sandy beaches littered driftwood so dense that you mostly had to walk on driftwood to go down them. The lichens were something to behold since it is so moist in the woods along the shoreline. We also enjoyed checking out different plants, like the encrusted saxifrage (an arctic alpine plant that is a glacial relic since it is so cool along the Lake Superior shore), Pitcher’s thistle, a species at risk, and an orange lily that grows on the side of the road and in the woods. We also had fun seeing lots of spring flowers in peak bloom (twin flower, bunchberry, strawberry, ladyslipper, clintonia and Labrador tea), all about a month behind Nova Scotia because it is so cool here (seems to be a trend to this entry – today was a high of 12 and low of 8).

Next to Pukaskwa National Park is the Pic River First Nation (Ojibway), and they were having their 25th annual pow-wow, which we went to in the evening. The colorful regalia of the dancers were amazing and there were many great drummers and singers. For supper we ate moose sausage, chili and bannock – the bannock wasn’t crumbly and sweet like the Mi’kmaq bannock, it was more like Toutons (fried bread dough Newfoundlanders eat with molasses).

On the way back to the campsite we saw a large red fox with a dead rabbit in its mouth...pretty neat. Pukaskwa is a really nice, low-key National Park with very few campers for a July Saturday. While the front-country and campground aren’t very large, the facilities are nice – to sum up, the park is alarmingly beautiful and underutilized.







July 13 – warm, mostly sunny with rain showers, ~3450km from home

Woke up to rain, packed up and it stopped raining. Walked 3 minutes to the beach at Horseshoe Bay, where the wind was really kicking up some big waves. Left Pukaskwa and hit the road along more misty Lake Superiror shoreline.

Stopped for lunch in Terrace Bay and visited the Aguasabon Falls and Gorge. We found out that they used to drive logs on the river until 1989 and that the town was designed and built by a paper company (almost every town we have hit lately is a pulp and paper town).

On to Thunder Bay and stopped at the info center, where we saw the Terry Fox Memorial and good views of the Sleeping Giant (Scott just happened to be wearing his Terry Fox shirt that day). We parked in downtown Thunder Bay, walked around the waterfront park and ended up walking through Erin’s (Josie’s sister) old neighborhood on our way to find Kanga’s Saunas for supper. We shared an order of Finnish pancakes (thin, eggy and buttery - yum) and fresh fried pickerel (not quite fish and chips but delicious). Besides Kenga’s and the casino downtown, there wasn’t much happening in Thunder Bay. We feel free to now use the phrase, “As dead as Thunder Bay on a Sunday.”

Not far outside Thunder Bay is Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park, where we camped for the night. At the visitor’s center we saw stromatolites (fossilized cyanobacteria colonies, some of the oldest fossils) and learned that Lake Sturgeon can grow up to 9 feet, 300 pounds and can live to 130 years old (they spawn at the base of the falls...the babies are super cute). The falls were also impressive – the theme for the last couple days has been that there is a lot of water in Northern Ontario. And a lot of hydro development; it turns out the amount of water that goes over Kakabeka Falls is controlled by Ontario Hydro and they have a deal with the municipality to turn the falls up (divert less water) on weekends and holidays and down at night and on weekdays. Oh Canada’s untamed wilderness! The other impressive thing is that it stayed light out much later than home, past 1030...crazy North.










July 14 – sunny and cool, ~3950km from home

We started the day by back-tracking to Thunder Bay to pick up Persians, a pastry invented in Thunder Bay that is basically a cinnamon-infused yeast doughnut with a very light textured frosting that makes them absolutely addictive. The shop had been closed the day before, but we couldn’t leave without them. We then headed west through boreal forest and treed bogs. We liked the look of Kenora but kept moving through past the Manitoba boarder to the Whiteshell Provincial Park where we spent the night. Camping in Manitoba is super cheap but there was a ton of litter in our site which was disgusting. Picking it all up was a mood dampener but made it livable! Pizza in the Outback Oven made a yummy dinner that picked up our spirits, as did watching a bit of The IT Crowd on the ol’ lappy before calling it a night. Computers in tents seems wrong, but not as much when you’re car camping every night.

Algonquin to Pancake Bay (Ontario)

July 10 – sunny and warm, rain late in the evening, ~2300km from home

Got an early start and went to see an exhibit on the Canoe and Canadian Culture before leaving the park. We headed west out of the park and then cut south to the Haliburton Forest to visit Erin, Scott’s old Wolfville roommate. She is doing field research in the privately owned forest where they have lots of recreation trails, a wolf research center, a forestry research station, and they selectively harvest trees using horses. We had a great visit with Erin, who showed us around her field station and the area of the forest where she is doing her research on bracket fungi and their effect on yellow birch health in an area that has been selectively harvested. We got to see the hydraulic lift they use to do research in the tree canopy!

On our way down to see Erin we got a real taste of Muskoka cottage country...the radio station was even advertising the Globe and Mail delivered to your dock. Scott was more excited about the Canadian Shield rocks (including banded gneiss).

After our visit, we started north again and made supper in a picnic park outside the Township of Perry. When we got back on the road it was getting dark and raining. Not having any place we wanted to stop and not keen on setting up the tent in the rain, we kept driving. Around 1030 we pulled off into a carpool parking lot between North Bay and Sudbury and shoved all our gear back so we could recline in the seats and sleep – not the most comfortable sleep we’ve had but not as bad as we thought it would be. We made a pair of killdeer unhappy though - they had already claimed the carpool lot as their own.



July 11 – warm and sunny, ~2750km from home

Woke bright and early to the sound of transport trucks. We got on the road and stopped at a picnic park outside of Sudbury to make breakfast, brush our teeth and change. At the picnic park there was the “Jane Goodall Reclamation Trail,” where you can walk back and see an area destroyed by pollution that they limed and reseeded, next to a hill that they didn’t reclaim (a barren rock wasteland)...crazy. Lots of barren polluted areas along the highway next to Sudbury.

We refrained from stopping at Science North or Dynamic Earth and the Giant Nickel, but we did see the Super Stack, a huge smokestack that was above the clouds even though it wasn’t that cloudy, so we felt like we had a decent Sudbury experience. All the way through Sudbury and after we were looking for Erica, another of Scott’s Wolfville roommates, who is cycling from Victoria, BC to Halifax.

We stopped to make lunch and steal internet in Blind River (we assumed it was the same Blind River from the Neil Young’s song “Long May You Run” – at least we had the song stuck in our heads the whole time we were there). After we passed Sault Saint Marie we started to get a feel for the rugged Lake Superior coastline.

We finally came across Erica in a maneuver of complete luck, biking just North of Pancake Bay Provincial Park. We aborted our plan to keep going and went back to Pancake Bay and camped with Erica and her biking partner Mary-Ann. A second nice roommate visit in as many days.

The beach at the park was beautiful, long and sandy with big rolling waves. Except for the lack of seaweed on the shore and the nonexistent ocean smell we could have been on a Southshore Nova Scotia beach. Apparently you can see where the Edmund Fitzgerald went down from the beach, which made it a bit creepier at night.

Ottawa to Algonquin Provincial Park

July 8 – Hot and sunny, with 10 minutes of showers, ~2100km from home

In the morning we got our trip log up to date, did some internet things (the campground had full strength wireless for all the sites!) and drove closer to the city to catch a bus to downtown Ottawa. The Ottawa bus system is awesome; they have entire highways dedicated to buses and direct routes to exactly where we wanted to go!

We stopped at a patisserie in the Byward Market for a pastry snack and walked to the National Art Gallery. Out front was a massive metal sculpture of a protective mother spider, inspired by the artist’s mother, Josephine (Josie decided to feel proud). Inside we caught the exhibit “Making of the New Man” about art in the 1930s and how it was influenced by politics. Also saw an exhibit of photography called “Imagining a Shattering Earth” and tracked down the Tom Thompson and Group of Seven paintings, the Inuit art exhibit and the Impressionists section. We liked the A.Y. Jackson paintings and Van Gogh’s “Iris”. We spent 3 hours at the art gallery and didn’t have the time or energy for any more.

By the time we were done at the gallery it was well past lunch so we went to lunch at Zak’s and shared a 4-cheese poutine (Josie was feeling cheated that we didn`t have poutine in Quebec). We bought produce and Quebec cheese at the market and then caught the bus back to the car.

We left Ottawa for Algonquin Provincial Park during rush hour and arrived at our campsite just as it was getting dark. We camped in the Lake of Two Rivers Campground in Algonquin Provincial Park, which is huge and well used, and we stayed for two nights so we could do some hiking.



July 9 – rain showers in the am, then got sunny and windy, ~2100km from home

It was showering in the morning so we went to the Visitor’s Center. Very impressive displays on the flora and fauna of the park, as well as the history of human use in the park. Informative displays, dioramas and interactive exhibits – like a museum. And we got to see a live Grey Tree frog!

By the time we finished at the Visitor’s Center, the weather had cleared up and became sunny and warm so we went for a hike. We hiked the 10km Centennial Ridges loop, which we heard has the best panoramic views in the park – they were quite spectacular. The wind on the ridges was gusty but refreshing. The forests in the area are part of the Northern Hardwoods transitioning to Boreal, similar to home but with a bit more species diversity – we especially noticed that there were new wildflowers that we don’t have in Nova Scotia. Scott was most impressed by the outcrops of very old metamorphic rock.

We stayed in the same campsite again the second night, had a campfire and drank up the birch sap wine Josie brought from Newfoundland.

Quebec City to Ottawa

July 6 – hot and sunny, ~1600km from home

Got up early and had a leisurely breakfast before hitting the road at 9am. We got out of Quebec City without incident, still crazy drivers though (where are they going at 140km/hr on a Sunday morning?). Stayed on the north shore of the St. Lawrence and bypassed Montreal in order to cut north through farm country and into the hills and lakes of the Laurentians – lots of rural farming communities until the fields turned to hills and the farms turned to lakeside cottages. In the afternoon we arrived in Parc National du Mont Tremblant, the largest and oldest Provincial Park in Quebec. We set up camp at a walk-in site on Lac Munroe and went for a hike after supper. We hiked to a look-off near our campsite, which gave us beautiful views of green mountains, clear lakes, deep valleys and blue sky – at ~130km from Montreal, you can see why this park is so popular. When we arrived back at our campsite we had enough time to go for a swim in the perfectly still lake before falling into bed, hoping to hear the howls of wolves. Alas, we heard only children and loons.








July 7 – hot and sunny, ~1800km from home

We got up early this morning to explore some hiking trails in the park. We went on two short hikes along the Riviere-du-Diable, both of which offered impressive views of waterfalls and rapids. We saw a momma black bear with her 2 cubs, 2 deer and a garter snake, a benefit of being on the road early. We only had a chance to explore a small area of the park, which is huge and broken into 3 sectors, with lots of remote hiking and canoeing routes. We were impressed by the park and excited about new plants and animals, mainly the abundance of cedar trees in the forest, massive non-diseased beech trees, the potential for new frogs and snakes, not to mention wolves!

We left the park mid-morning and found our way to the Village of Mont Tremblant, where we had lunch at a café and used their wireless internet. Brie and almond sandwich – yum. We didn’t have too much time to explore Mont Temblant because we had to go south to Ottawa for a car appointment in the late afternoon.

We left the mountains, hit farm country again and successfully navigated Gatineau and downtown Ottawa during the start of rush hour (thanks Google Maps!). Found a place to camp, Camp Hither Hills, about 10km south of the city. We had a relaxing evening and a shower, called home and went to bed.

Annapolis to Quebec City

July 4 – warm and sunny, ~800km from home
We arrived in Truro late last night and fell into bed at Scott’s moms house. We got on the road after breakfast and headed for New Brunswick, being sure to sing “Farewell to Nova Scotia” as we crossed the border. In the afternoon we drove the secondary roads along the Saint John River and took a couple hours to tour downtown Fredericton – we walked along the waterfront and the historic district and then went to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. Although we saw an Emily Carr (not super impressed) and some Canadian paintings we liked, we couldn’t find the Tom Thompson. There were also 3 paintings by Salvador Dali, Christine would have loved it. The most impressive one was a huge number on the theme of the patron saint of Spain helping Jesus ascend to heaven...very trippy with amazing detail in some places and not others, you couldn’t focus on it all at once. Still weird Dali stuff but neat.
We cooked supper in Hartland, NB next to the longest covered bridge in the world and later passed the town with the longest axe in the world (Josie slept right through it). We had to get back on the Trans-Canada so couldn’t stop in Florenceville, the French fry capital of the world and home of the Potato World Museum. Got off the highway near Perth-Andover, NB for the night and, while trying to find an old road to camp on, we saw a family of foxes playing, a porcupine, a Canada goose on a beaver dam, a small black bear and also managed to come to a gate that was the US border. Camped close to the border so got to hear 4th of July fireworks!


July 5 – hot and sunny, ~1250km from home
We got on the road early and stopped in Grand Falls, NB to see the Grand Falls Gorge. We couldn`t find a way down into the gorge but did find some neat trees (yes we had the hand lens out before 9am IDing ash trees). The falls and gorge were enormous, an insane amount of water entering the steep gorge. Despite clear skies, it was misting at the edge of the gorge and everything was dripping wet like it had been raining for a week. Some good rainbows above the falls. After stopping at a farmers market and the grocery store we got on the Trans-Canada towards the Quebec-New Brunswick border. After we hit Riviere-du-Loup we got tired of the highway and took secondary roads along the St. Lawrence – lots of flat farmland sandwiched between the river and the hills. We had some delicious strawberries from a roadside stand with lunch and got back on the highway for about an hour before landing in Quebec City. Finding the campground was an adventure – huge freeways, crazy speeding Quebec drivers, lots of cars and squealing tires (not ours). We ended up making a wrong exit that allowed us to find a much less stressful route to the campground. The campground itself was interesting – it was situated in the suburbs behind a trailer park, and most of the structures seemed to be permanent trailer/cottage combos.
After we were set up we decided to head downtown to see the old city and get in on some of the 400th anniversary celebrations. Thank God the campground had a navette (shuttle) that went straight to the Chateau Frontenac, though even being a passenger was a bit of an adventure. We wandered around the very crowded old city then went outside the wall to Rue St. Jean to visit a chocolate museum (!! after I pestered Scott a bunch) and have supper at a restaurant called The Hobbit. How could we not? The menu was pretty heavy on the elk/duck/deer/etc., but we managed to find a couple of veggie burgers and really nice fries. To our meat loving friends and families, the dishes looked interesting and if you’re in the area you should give it a try. There was a free concert downtown with some Afro-Cuban band, we were exhausted by the time we caught the shuttle back to our campsite.
After driving in the heat it has become apparent that there are 2 kinds of days on this trip – days when we can shower and days when we can’t.