In the realm of the Elder Things

I think that today may have been the shortest distance travelled in the span of this roadtrip. We didn't have very high aspirations because there is just so much to see and do in Banff National Park.

We started the day with a sweet buffet breakfast at the Banff Springs Hotel, with the energy received from that we proceeded to tackle the Sulphur Mountain trail, it is a 11km behemoth that ascends 700m to the top of the summit. Fortunately, about 3km in there was a gondola that takes you up the rest of the way. Now you may call me lazy, but we were pressed for time and the views were truly spectacular.

That's the whole city of Banff down there, it looks like you could crush it with a rock if you were a super villain.



 The gondola station at the top of the mountain is about 600m above the rest of Banff, which is already about 700m above sea level. The top of the summit is about 700m so you make up the last 100km by walking a board walk that climbs to the top. It's very accessible, and there are lots of little self guided tour areas to learn about the local area that high in the air.

You had a great view of the surrounding mountains from up there, and especially the slopes downward of Sulphur Mountain.

This wasn't from the gondola, this was from the top of the whole damn mountain

What I also found amazing was that there were still trees that high in the air. I enjoyed it because it gave me something to frame pictures with.

I can see why they put these things on beer cans. They ARE pretty majestic

The observation platform at the gondola station even had a Canadian Flag, it made me feel very patriotic.

You are tourists, inheritors of all the river valleys in Canada, but this mountain, this mountain is MINE

Finally, we managed to make it across the 1km boardwalk after taking a deluge of pictures. We weren't able to get to the final summit due to stability issues, but I got a nice picture of the weather station that was at the top of the mountain. It had an interesting story, the building was hauled up one piece at a time by horse in 1903 for $975. The guy put in charge of taking weather readings was given enough blank weather sheets to last 33 years, and to take the readings, he had to hike all the way to the top of the mountain without a gondola, and he did it too! It's also the spot of a 'Cosmic Radiation' station that operated for 20 years between 1963 and 1983. Apparently the top of a mountain is a good spot to study cosmic radiation.

Unfortunately standing up here didn't cause me to gain superpowers, much to my disappointment

After that we went down a crazy side mountain trail that was full of snow. We got about 2km down that until we determined we didn't have the proper gear to tackle it so we turned around. After the sweet gondola ride back down we hiked the km's back to the hotel and left Banff, it was 3:30pm.

Along the way to Lake Louise, we had a chance to see the really awesome wildlife overpasses. Basically what happened is when they twinned the highway through Banff, they had concerns about the number of potential wildlife collisions with animals trying to get over two separate highway with two lanes each. The solution was to build an overpass, but to coax animals into using it, they covered the top with organic material and let the forest do the rest. The result is this: No animals seen though...

It's like the Green party took over the Department of Transportation, but that couldn't be possible because this is a good idea.

We stopped over at Lake Louise because people kept telling me it was the most beautiful spot in all of Banff National Park. I have to say at the very least they weren't exaggerating. Although I do have to say that if I was staying at the Fairmont Lake Louise and I expected nice Alberta weather I'd be very disappointed. Suffice to say at that elevation, even in late May everything is still covered in snow, even the lake was frozen over. My goodness though the melted parts were clear, I'd love to see the place in the summer.

If you tried to swim in that water they'd be putting you in a giant glass of iced tea, and you wouldn't be the tea.

There was a really nice trail that went from the Fairmont Lake Louise all the way around the lake to the head of the whole thing. It was a few kilometres but it gave a really nice view of the surrounding mountains. We even met a few mountain climbers along the way all kitted out in gear. They were doing stuff on a level of higher intensity than us, but on a side note, the area we were in gave us nice pictures of the rest of the lake.

That little speck down there is Geoff, of course. Always doing stuff off the main trail that Geoff.

On our way back to the parking lot, we were treated to a mini-avalanche on the side mountain. I took a video of it but I can't tell if you can hear the thunder of snow falling. Unfortunately videos are too large to upload effectively through a wireless internet connection, so you'll all just have to know it exists.

Outside the park, on our way to Golden, we were intrigued by signs promising a 'natural bridge' in the area. What it turned out to be was a really neat natural formation. Many tens of thousands of years ago, there was a waterfall, over time the water eroded a tunnel under the waterfall so the water started flowing under the rock ledge it used to flow over. Over time it has started to erode the space larger and larger until eventually it will become a gorge. For right now it looks like exactly what was promised, a natural water dam that was also a natural bridge.

There was a non-natural bridge to view the rock bridge from. It was sort of like bridgeception.

Although that was a minor detour off the main trip. Unfortunately, the rest of the trip was filled with the sort of highway I dreaded about when going through the mountains. Shortly out of Yoho National Park the highway stopped being twinned and started hugging the rock wall on one side. On the other side you ask? A step valley gorge that dropped off about 500 metres if I had to guess. It was pretty well protected by a concrete barrier, but if you went through that, you'd be gone forever. That section of the drive was only about 40 minutes, and I wasn't driving, but it was still pretty scary.

Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Or in our case, a rock and a brief, terrifying death.

We finally arrived in Golden, BC, a charming little mountain town that seems to subsist on the tourist trade. We stopped at a nice local restaurant called Eleven 22, I think it's a new operation but the food is top notch. Now we've ended up at another Super 8, which seems to be the patron saint of roadtripping. We were hoping for a straight shot to Vancouver tomorrow, but I quick look at the Canada: Coast to Coast book has revealed we may have quite a distracting ride tomorrow.

In the Mountains of Madness...

Well, once again the lessons of the past were not heeded in the future. After going out for supper with Geoff's Aunt, we went and stayed overnight at his cousin's house and had a little too much of a good time. After a bit of a slow start in the morning which included losing Geoff's beloved hat (and finding it again) to having to change plans a couple times with a good friend of his. Basically we thought we could stop in and say hi, until we figured out that the brief detour was actually a four hour round trip detour, so that didn't happen.

Once we finally got on the road it was about 12pm so there was a bit of fear that we wouldn't be able to do as much in Banff. Although that was soon forgotten as soon as the vista became this:

I lost my soul staring into those peaks. Seriously, they never stop judging.

This is the single most magnificent sight I have seen yet on this roadtrip. You're driving and they just start looming larger and larger on the horizon until they are all you can see along the road. I have to say that Geoff was really excited to see these, and I was sort of skeptical at first but seeing them first hand makes you realize how breathtaking they really are.

Once we got into Banff we were really interested to try out this restaurant for lunch. It's called the "Grizzly House" and it's specialty was exotic meats. Now before the jokes start flying, it basically served non-traditional meats like buffalo, deer, wild boar. However, for the really wild at heart, they had an 'exotic tray' of meats that included frogs legs, shark and rattlesnake. It's all in fondue form, which I haven't done for a really long time so that was neat too.

When we got there it was later in the afternoon so we decided to have a late lunch/early supper. We both got the fondue dinner, which came with delicious french onion soup and a weird vegetable fondue. I got the 'hunter' tray which is buffalo, deer and wild boar. Geoff of course got the exotic tray, and loved every minute of it. We opted to use a 'granite stove' rather than a fondue pot. Basically it is a big slab of granite heated to 600C and you fry your meats on that. All in all it was very delicious.

This was right before he took a big bite of rattlesnake, which was surprisingly good.

The exotic meat tray even came with a little cheat sheet that let you know what all you were eating.

I was shocked by the ostrich section, but again apparently good.

It's all a bit on the pricey side, but the experience itself is well worth it. If you can get even one in your party to get the exotic meat tray, then you get to ogle the person eating it for the rest of the meal. I'd recommend going to this restaurant if you're in Banff for a day or a year. A funny thing about the restaurant is that it was allegedly previously a swingers club. I didn't believe the person who told me this, but then there were phones everywhere. Every table had a phone by it, apparently used to contact people at other tables in hopes of 'hooking up'.

They didn't work though, or at least no one called OUR table...

After the delicious meal (Came with soup, appetizer, meal and dessert fondue) we set off to check into the Fairmont Banff Springs. Once again the Fairmont brand shines through here, it is an excellent resort with lots of fun activities and plenty of amenities. Once we were settled in we took a hike up to tunnel mountain, which is about 1,500 metres above sea level (About 300 metres above the town of Banff) that let us get some more great pictures.

That mountain basically scoffed at the mountain we climbed up, knowing it was a far lesser challenge than itself.

Climbing that mountain was invigorating and beautiful. I have to say that I have never really seen any sight quite like the Rockies at this point in my life. I look forward to more hiking tomorrow and Lake Louise. Down in Banff you are still able to take in the sights of the mountain as it was basically nestled in a valley between all the mountains.

I have like 100 of these pictures in the camera, who knows when I'll be able to see mountains again! No judging!

Finally, from way up high in the mountains you can get a birds eye view of everything, including the hotel! If it wasn't so far away I'd come to Banff all the time, especially now that I have a Parks Canada pass.

Pretty spiffy eh? Alas this is the last Fairmont resort I'll be staying at for a while.

Tomorrow is going to bring more mountains and possibly getting as far as into BC! I can't believe we're almost there!

Cow City International

Day trip into Calgary today. Unfortunately our biggest stop was the Glenbow Museum in the centre of the city, and they weren`t big on flash photography for the majority of their exhibits, and once you`re out of the photo taking mindset, it doesn't really come up again until you're out of that area I find.

Started the trip off with a ride up the Calgary Tower. I have to say it isn't as impressive as the CN Tower, but it still gives you a great view of the city. If the weather was more cooperative, it would give you an excellent view of the Rocky Mountains, alas we didn't have such luck today.

You can't quite poke god in the eye with it, but you might be able to get his big toe with it.

Based on how the weather was, we had to settle for a dazzling view of the Calgary skyskape. Later in the afternoon we went up again before leaving as the weather started to clear up (Once you pay you get unlimited entry for the rest of the day) but we still couldn't see the mountains. We were able to see our car from the Tower thought!

Nothing like travelling 100m into the air just to keep tabs on your vehicle. Our's is the third one up from the bottom on the left side.

However, as I said, despite the weather we still got a good view of the downtown area. No option to go outside on an observation deck (Thankfully).

Not sure what the big building is, but the builders seemed to be engaged in a 'our building is bigger than yours' contest with the rest of downtown Calgary.

The next stop was the Glenbow Museum, which I didn't get any pictures of. It was a really nice museum with an excellent price ($9 for students!). Divided into four floors, they had a temporary exhibit of a photographer who took plenty of portraits of important 20th century figures, most notably Winston Churchill. They also had an exhibit showing up the sculptures of southeast Asia and a section of artwork donated by the museums founder.

The third floor was a history of Alberta, Calgary and the Native Peoples of the Region. Not much to say about this floor other than the fact that Albertans, Native of otherwise seem to be quite the grievous bunch. They have always had some level of dissatisfaction about one thing or the other over their coloured history.

Fourth floor was an exhibit on Minerals, so lots of semi-precious stones and a comprehensive collection of geodes and other minerals in their natural state. Then there was a five century history of warfare that travelled through military culture, uniform, weapons and buildings across the world. All very intriguing stuff.

After the Museum it was already four in the afternoon and we had to be getting back. We wondered around the downtown area for a little while taking in the sights. Similar to Drumheller and their dinosaurs, there were a number of horse sculptures around the downtown area.

The lady across the street had no idea she was going to be Internet famous

After a bit of wondering, the sky opened on us and we decided it was a good time to head back. Geoff's Aunt Lynn treated us to a steak dinner at the Cattle Baron and it was delicious! I have to say hospitality must run in the Sayre family, because no matter where we end up, if they're in town, we get treated like royalty.

This was our last day in Calgary, tomorrow we're off to Banff for some hiking and luxury hotel staying.

The land before time

Today after an excellent breakfast service put on by Geoff's Aunt we were on our way to Drumheller. I have to say, I thought it would be closer by than it was, however it was worth the hour and a half trip. The town has really given itself over to the whole dinosaur mantra for tourism. No matter where you went in that little town there was a statue or a sign or some sort of glorification of some dinosaur or another, but it wasn't really tacky or anything.

It started off with a trip to the tourist information centre, which happens to have the worlds largest replica dinosaur!



'A Huge Tyrannosaurus ate our lawyer/well I suppose that proves/they really aren't all bad..."

 The friendly staff there gave us a good impression of what all there was to do in the Drumheller surrounding area. The first area we hit up was the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology, given the Royal distinction when it was recognised as a world leader in Paleontological developments. The museum was as it was expected, full of really awesome dinosaur bones. However what really made the place interesting was their section that displayed fossils, said what they were, but also described where the fossil came from and how they got it to the museum, it really gave the exhibit a bit of personality. The museum also had an interesting section where you travelled through different Paleontological periods and saw fossils and recreations from those time periods.

That looked really, real, but you knew it couldn't be.

They also had a really impressive T-Rex fossil as the centrepiece of their newest exhibit that featured 'Their most treasured specimens'

Not so tough now that you're all bones eh? Well I'm pretty sure those bones could kill me if they all fell on me so you're still good in my books

Finally, they had some fossils arranged in a setting that may have been more naturally occurring in the time. Namely dinosaurs eating the living organs out of each other.

Om nom nom

After we got out of the museum we went over to Reptile World, which apparently boasted the worlds largest living collection of reptiles. I use the word apparently because like a repeating record player, Reptile World was yet another tourist attraction that was closed on stupid days, in this case Wednesday and Thursday. Today being Wednesday, they were not open, so we saved our money and went elsewhere.

Outside of town is the more famous Badlands landscape. While I thought it was more prevalent across the province, it is apparently mostly located inside the Red Deer river valley from what I can tell. However, the terrain within the valley has been eroded in such a way that it looks like a landscape from another planet. It was really interesting to see the weird shapes that the hills were in due to the geographical history of the region. The only drawback is that this landscape, and the surrounding town of Drumheller was full of Mosquito's. Now I'm not talking an annoying amount of Mosquito's like they have in Moncton or near a swamp, I'm talking about a veritable swarm of Mosquito's, there were so many you could hear their humming as they swarmed through the air, not even past your ear, there was just an overbearing whine in the general area, it was gross.

Nice picture, but not featured in it? Mosquito's so thick they'd carry you away

Then we drove all the way to the other end of the valley to check out the Hoo doo's. These are really weird terrain features because of their story. Basically there is this piece of erosion resistant rock that sits on top, as the water receded from the river valley over time, the rocks did not erode, so the water flowed around the rock, saving the dirt and sand right under the rock from erosion, resulting in a bit of a rock on this pillar of dirt in this otherwise completely flat area. Sort of like the Hopewell Rocks in New Brunswick.

It's like a scene out of some sort of Star Wars Franchise

Finally we visited the 'Ghost Town' of Wayne. I was a little disappointed because it wasn't really a ghost town in the traditional sense. Basically there was a town there at one point during the gold rush, but it was abandoned and left to ruin. It looks like it was resettled more recently, but then is slowly being abandoned again. There were lots of newer style housing, but plenty of them were abandoned. However there was a district lack of pioneer style houses, likely because they would have all turned to dust at this point. It did have an interesting sign though.

I enjoyed they they have a 'x number of days since last accident' style population counter

Tomorrow we head up to Calgary Downtown proper to see if there is anything noteworthy to do up there.  

Prairie Roadtriping

The plan today was to not spend it all driving. We weren't sure where we were going to stop, but we knew that it wasn't going to be another driving day. To but it bluntly, that only sort of worked.

We left Regina with a plan to head over to Moose Jaw and visit some murals and the system of underground tunnels they had there. However, by the time we got there the Pontiac was making a very strange noise when it was running, a sort of metal grating sound when we were driving. So we ended up taking it to a mechanic while we went and did touristy things.

Apparently Moose Jaw was a major immigrant town during the railway days and then became a booming rum running town during the twenties prohibition era. Due to both of these occurrences the town is apparently riddled with tunnels that run under most major streets. There is a tour company known as Moose Jaw Tunnels that runs tours through a section of them. Most of them have been renovated and had period recreations placed in them to give you more of a feel of what they would look like during that time. There were two tours and we went on both of them. Unfortunately, they didn't allow photographs during the tour, likely because the period pieces and tour guide acting is about 80% of draw.

One of the tours was supposed to give you an idea of what a Chinese immigrant experienced when they came to Canada. Much like the Japanese Interment in the 40's, Chinese immigration during the 1880's to finish the railway is a black mark on Canadian History. Basically they enticed Chinese workers to come work on the railway by paying their way here as long as they paid it off over the next 3-5 years. When they got here, they were abused and many promises were neglected on. When the railway was finished, they were all laid off and forced to make due with racist Canadian towns. Canadian immigration policies became more and more strict until they banned Chinese immigration entirely for almost 20 years.

The other tour was centred around the idea that Al Capone apparently had an operation running out of Moose Jaw for his bootlegging business. The tour consisted of a recreation of a saloon, underground distilleries and even a mock gunfight in the tunnels. It was very entertaining, if not historically accurate.

Moose Jaw also has 24 murals around their downtown core depicting a number of prairie settings, which I thought helped liven things up, here are a few of what we saw:

A piece from the Wheat Revival Art Period, or as Moose Jawians say, 'How we spent the first 100 years of Confederation'

There was also this one: Unlike other art pieces, this picture was really flat when looking at it in person, but when I took a picture of it, it really looked like a scene from a store. With depth and everything, I was personally impressed.

If you look hard at it, you may fall in and become one with the picture.

After that, BLLA 210 got an OK bill of health. Apparently it was something with the air condition unit that when it isn't turned on, causes a part to rub against another moving part, creating all the sound. Therefore if we just leave the air conditioning on all the time it does the trick. This is obviously only a temporary solution, but I'd rather take the car back to the garage that I got the car from and get them to fix it. Fortunately it is starting to get warm here in this part of the country so it isn't really a big deal.

Now we've managed to make it across Saskatchewan and into Alberta, but not before we got a picture of that classic prairie picture: The Grain Processing Building!

Hey Baby, do those storage towers go all the way up?

Finally we entered into Alberta. Now I don't know why people give me the perception that Saskatchewan is the flattest province, because once you get into Alberta before you get within viewing distance of the Mountains it is the flattest area I have seen yet. The land went out in a straight line all the way out to the horizon, and my mind boggled.

My mind is boggling!

Now we're taking in the hospitality of Geoff's Aunt Lynn in Calgary. This should be a few days pit stop, Wednesday and Thursday we should just be taking in the sights. Tomorrow: Drumheller and Dinosaur Provincial Park, Thursday, the city itself, Friday: Banff National Park!

Manitoba Waterworld

Today we were full of plans to tour all the sights that Southern Manitoba had to offer, but unfortunately Mother Nature had other ideas. If anyone had been following the news over the last two months, you'll know that Southern Manitoba has been struggling with flooding issues since the spring thaw started, well it turns out that they're still having issues with it. It was that and a myriad of other places just seemed to collude to screw over tourists.

We were going to go to the Mint, the one in Winnipeg is where they print all the money and coinage in circulation, and they have tours of the plant to learn how it's all made. Well, we rolled into town on Sunday so they were closed, which is fine, it's a government building and it was the weekend. Then it turns out that they are also closed on Monday, so we completely got to miss out. It was very disappointing.

Then we were going to go to the house of Louis Riel, one of the founding fathers of Manitoba and a very controversial figure. Well that plan flew as far as a lead balloon once we found out the house doesn't open until May 23rd, so that we cancelled as well. So basically we ended up going over to the forks park and looking around for the legislature yesterday evening, and today we woke up, hit up the Tim Horton's for breakfast, and then hit the road out of Winnipeg.

The plan was to visit a provincial park that contained a small patch of desert. Now this isn't the sort of pretend desert where it's really hot and sorta sandy, this is the whole sort of desert where it is legitimately a desert, with all sort of sand and the hot and the dryness. Surely if that didn't work out we could always visit and number of other attractions in Southern Manitoba. Well sure enough, as we progressed across the province we started to see pictures like this:

Any higher and we wouldn't have made it to Regina, or at least we would have had an impromptu 40,000 leagues under the sea reenactment

And this...



I don't think that road is supposed to go into the river, then again maybe it's a super aqua road! 

 So you can see where this is going. We got to Spruce Woods Provincial Park and not only was the highway going towards it closed, I have it on good authority (The district park office) that the road towards that section on the park was under 10 feet of water. In fact the whole park except for the southernmost part was under water apparently, so that was a bust.

Continuing on we decided to take a detour to Souris, Manitoba, which according to the Canada Coast to Coast book I have on loan from Sandra was the 'prettiest town on the praries'. Well I don't know about the prettiest, but it was certainly a town on the prairies. It seemed to have hit a bit of a hard time in the downtown area but the touristy part was still in tact. It was home to Canada's longest suspension pedestrian bridge, at 177m it crosses the Assiniboine river. Even though it was over 100km away from the most swollen part of the river, the water level was still high enough to close the bridge. So while we were there, and we took pictures of it, we were not allowed to go over it. Likely because it's supports were under water. The local museum was closed as well, not to open until Canada day, of course.

It's pretty long, it's also pretty not walkable, sort of defeating the purpose of a walking bridge.

Not all was lost on our trip to Souris though, the town also had a large gravel pit that was full of semi-precious stones. Once you get a permit to enter the site, you can go and dig to your hearts content. Now I have a partial interest in geology, but more on the end of already having the stones and looking at them, but Geoff is much more interested so we got the permit and went over to the pit. It was a pretty large place, and it has an active gravel operation, but it covered 12 acres so we just went where they weren't. There was loose rocks and dirt everywhere, but there was also quite a bit of semi-precious stones strewn about. We spent about an hour and a bit wondering around the site, trying to find lots of agates and other sort of gemstones.

If this picture had a tactile component, it would be gritty dirt, gritty dirt EVERYWHERE

After Souris we wrote off the rest of Manitoba and just put the petal to the metal (Figuratively, not literally after Thunder Bay's ticket incident) to get to Saskatchewan. We got the Saskatchewan to receive a warm welcome from local staff at the information bureau. Just kidding, with our luck today the information bureau was closed due to construction, the most welcome we got was from the sign letting us know we were entering Saskatchewan, and it wasn't even that inspiring.

Even the sign looks like it's being sarcastic. 'This is Saskatchewan, what more could you possibly need to know? Naturally, nothing"

However Saskatchewan did live up to it's reputation for being incredibly flat. It wasn't quite as dramatic as I thought it would be, going from tree line to flat, horizonless wasteland, but it still got pretty flat. I have a feeling that this flatness will intensify as we move through the province tomorrow.

Remove those power lines and it would feel like you'd fall straight into the sky

Although Saskatchewan was less undulated with water, I don't have much hope to see anything too exciting along the way. So I believe we're just going straight to Calgary tomorrow where we will be spending a few days there and the surrounding areas. If there is anything that is exciting to do along the Trans-Canada in Saskatchewan, let me know in the comments.

We finished up the day in Regina, where after checking in to the motel we took a trip over to Wascana park. This place is really neat because of it's history. When they were settling Regina, they damned up the Wascana river to create a reservoir of water for the city to use. However, over time the city developed around it although never into it. Eventually the whole area was classified as an urban park and buildings developed inside of it rather than through it. So in modern day Regina you have this great big park in the middle of the city. According to my travel book the whole park land is eight times the size of the downtown core, although it didn't look it, there may have been more park than we walked around it.

We went for a nice walk around the whole lake in the heart of the city, taking in the sights such as the legislature and the lake itself. As the sun was setting it made for a very memorable picture. I don't think I captured any myself with the camera, but certainly with my mind.

Imagine being able to see this on your lunch hour next time you eat lunch at your desk/breakroom

As mentioned in the previous post, I want to see the legislature of every province I visit if I have never been there before, so of course we have a picture of that too:

Apparently the founders of Saskatchewan had grand ideas for their province, based on the size of the legislature.

Like I mentioned earlier, tomorrow I believe is going to be a straight shot to Calgary where we will be settling for a few days to take in the sites around the city like Banff, Drumheller, etc. I'm armed with some travel information of places to see in Saskatchewan, but if anyone has any suggestions for locations west of Regina, I'm definitely all ears. Just email me or leave a note in the comments, I'll try to get to them while I'm on the road.

Escape from Ontario

Today we finally made it out of the great Province of Ontario. Don't get me wrong I enjoyed every minute travelling through this place, but making it into Manitoba finally gave the trip a sense of achievement. To this point I was simply travelling to new places in provinces I've already been to or lived in, in most cases it was just revisiting old haunts. However by passing over into Manitoba I have now officially travelled the furthest west I have ever been, and I'm going to be moving further every day. I have to say it is very exciting!

Before we left Thunder Bay we got a few shots of the 'sleeping giant'. Basically in the bay of the city there is a large island with a rock formation that sort of looks like a person laying on their back. As far as I know it related to a native legend that there was a giant person who lay sleeping in the harbour waiting for something to happen. What that is I don't know, there was no information about it at the park we took the pictures at. As the Old Woman rock formation, it's a little harder to see in a picture but I think if you look closely you can make it out.

When I saw this the first time, I couldn't help but imagine it rising over the bay and obliterating everything with laser beam eyes.

After we left Thunder Bay we had a long 8 hour drive ahead of us. A little less than yesterday but it was still long enough to wear on you after a while. The drive was also much of the same sort of Canadian Shield territory, lots of trees and even more rocks. The lakes spiced it up every once and a while, but as I said I was glad when we finally made it into Manitoba.

We took a break in Kenora to take a picture of 'Huskie the Muskie' a 12m tall muskellunge that celebrates the great fishing you can apparently take part in the Lake of the Woods that Kenora is the accessway to. These stops to see these statues in Canadian 'bigness' are really fun little side trips that help break up the monotony of driving. It only takes a few minutes out of the trip and you get to see a little bit of Canadiana throughout the trip. Unfortunately we missed a few along the way up that we hope to catch on the way down.

Fortunately not all muskellunge's are this big, otherwise they would create the new world order

After Kenora it was a short trip over to Manitoba from that small town in Ontario. I have to say though, the landscape sure did change. At first it was a transition over from single black spruce forests to mixed forests, but then all of a sudden all the forests disappeared, and was replaced by flatness, flatness as far as the eye can see. However, the old B&B keeper in Sydney warned us that we'll think Manitoba is flat, and then we'll get to Saskatchewan you'll be knocked flat. Well, it was quite flat in Manitoba but at least there were some trees so we'll see. We were able to see downtown Winnipeg from about 30km away.

This is the best support I can find for the flat earth society

Once we got into Winnipeg and checked into the hotel we made our way downtown to get something to eat. We ended up at the "River Forks National Historic Site", which is a great example of urban renewal. Basically what happened is that Winnipeg was a great big site for CN Rail, they had a big rail yard where they serviced all their trains. In the 80's when CN withdrew from many of these sites it was left vacant, an eyesore of industrial facilities in the middle of Winnipeg. So at some point they ripped up all the tracks that weren't in use, and converted most of the buildings into restaurants and boutiques. It was a really nice area that gave a great view where the Red and Assiniboine rivers converge, although they are very swollen right now.

This just goes to show that anything can be turned into anything else.

The park area had a plaza that went right down to the river, unfortunately right now about half of it was under water. I don't know if the water has gone down any further downstream of the assiniboine, but in Winnipeg it was still quite high. Although the locals didn't seem phased by it very much, they likely see the same thing happen every year.

That place where you see the tree branch is a handrail that goes down into the water. Another picture I have as another handrail past that which is almost completely submerged. I figure the water must be at least 15 feet past the banks.

That wasn't even the craziest part. They had a line further up the plaza that showed how high the water flooded in the great 1997 Red River Flooding. It's similar to the one in Moncton for the Saxby gale, except this one happened within the last 15 years, rather than the last 115. No offense Moncton but this was a bit more impressive.

I'm surprised there is anyone left in Winnipeg, if I was around during 1997 I would have packed my bags and left immediately.

After walking around the park grounds, we moved up the downtown area to find the Legislature. Now I haven't taken pictures of all of them, but I can say at some point I've seen the Legislative Assemblies of every Province I've been in so far, and I don't mean to let that reputation down. So here in all it's sunset glory, is the Manitoba Legislative Assembly. We tried to find the statue of Louis Riel, but it turns out it was on the side that we didn't look at, of course.

It's where the laws are born. Also it looks like we stole it from some poor American state, but I guess that was the style at the time.

The sun was setting and I don't really know what kind of place downtown Winnipeg morphs into after dark but I didn't stick around to find out. We were going to do some stuff in Winnipeg before we left but after doing some research while writing this I don't see that happening. We were going to do a tour of the Mint, but they're not open Monday for some reason, and then Louis Riel's house isn't open until May 22nd. So it looks like we'll be setting out from the city tomorrow morning without delay. Perhaps we may have time to stop on on our way back.