We have been in Toronto now for 2 days and are pouring ourselves into the house search. We have a couple of very nice leads on places and a few more viewings set up for the weekend. With any luck we will be in our new home by the middle of the month.
This post is going to be a review of sorts of our trip from my perspective. I will be talking about my favourites and least favourites, bests and worsts, and so forth. Onwards Ho!
Best Campsite:
This one is easy, the best campsite we had by far was at Caliper Lake Provincial Park in Northern Ontario. We had a large grassy site situated directly on the lakeshore, nestled amongst the trees, and away from the road. We could not see the campground road from our site. Combined with the lack of fellow campers anywhere near us and we had this beautiful lakefront site that felt like we were in the middle of the woods.
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| Campsite at Caliper Lake |
Best Campground:
We had a few very nice campgrounds - Kekuli Bay in the Okanagan and Kinbrook Island and Elkwater in Southern Alberta come to mind as quiet places with wonderful ammenities and large campsites, or as is the case with Kekuli Bay, a wonderful view. However, the best campground overall was Johnston Canyon in Banff National Park. I devoted a whole blog post to this campground and so won't go into too much detail. I do want to emphasis the quality of the washrooms - they were fully heated which helped immensely with the cold mornings and had the most powerful hand blowers I had ever seen (they even caused ripples in your hands).
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| Kekuli Bay Provincial Park |
Worst Campsite and Campground:
This one is also very easy - Bleriot Ferry campground just north of Drumheller, Alberta. On our first drive around this place it wasn't all bad, there was lots of grassy campsites and it was situated right on a river. However, it was only after paying our fee that we realized how horrible it was. There was no shade at all for most of the day, resulting in us moving our camp chairs around the tent to keep up with the tent-made shade. There were horrible neighbours who were loud and rude and a mother who berated her children from the moment they arrived until the moment they went to bed. The washrooms looked like they hadn't been cleaned in a week. The water required a 10 minute boil to get rid of bugs. The river was brown and dirty and located behind a mud pit. Worst of all were the mosquitoes; they were relentless and numerous. We awoke in the morning to find our usually white tent black with mosquitoes waiting between the tent and fly for us to leave. It was so bad that even the mosquitoes thought there were too many mosquitoes; they were chasing our car down the exit road trying to hitch a ride out of town. We were so very thankful to get out of that place and glad there was nothing even close to as bad for the rest of the trip.
Worst Driving Experiences:
I cannot differentiate between two moments, thankfully both of which were pretty short. First up we have a 5 minute drive south from Nakusp, BC back to our campsite at McDonald Creek. There had been heavy rain all day and it was only getting heavier as we headed out onto the undivided highway. Just out of town we ran into some pretty heavy fog that was the source of the stress. If we were on a city street going 50 then we would have had enough visibility, but being on a windy highway with a 100 KM/H speed limit proved to be too much. I slowed the car down to 80, but was nervous to go any slower in case someone behind us was going too fast in the fog. After about 2 minutes I began to get very close to having a panic attack, but there was no place to pull over and leave enough room for cars to get by. Haifa was great in helping me calm down and a couple of minutes after that we came down a slight hill and exited the fog, giving us a much easier final 5 minutes to the park.
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| Navigating Downtown Milwaukee Freeways |
Secondly we have a 1 mile stretch of freeway in downtown Milwaukee. We had just got back on the I43/I94 going south and were one of about 4 new lanes that had joined a 3-4 lane freeway going south. This would have been stressful in and of itself but within a mile, or even less, we had 4 of the lanes exit to various parts of downtown or other freeways. This resulted in hundreds of cars travelling in 7 lanes, and all needing a new lane within a few hundred feet. Cars from the far left were changing 6 lanes of traffic at once, trucks from the far right were doing the same. As soon as a free car length appears in a lane drivers on either side jump at the chance to change lanes into its spot. And, because this is a freeway, this was all going on at 65 MPH (or 105 KMH).Thankfully the insanity was over quickly and we were back to the relative ease of a 3 lane freeway.
Best Drive:
The best drive was short, perhaps about 20 minutes of the highway from Vernon to Fauquier in BC. This road crosses a mountain range on the way from the Okanagan to the Kootenays region. The last 20 minutes or so you plunge down this windy road from the tops of the mountains to the valley floor and a ferryboat crossing the Arrow Lakes. Rising cliff on your left and plunging cliff on your right, snippets of river below and views of mountains all around. This was fun driving in a beautiful setting and nothing before or after came close.
Best City:
While we spent a majority of the trip camping in the wilderness, we did take time for hotels in a number of big cities along the way. Perhaps city is a generous definition for some of these locations, but I am considering Kelowna, Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Duluth, and Chicago as the cities we have visited. We had an amazing time with our friend Joanne in Calgary, loved the Urban feel of Winnipeg, and were amazed by the beauty of Duluth, nestled between a hillside and Lake Superior, however there is no contest, Chicago was the best. Both Haifa and myself have written entries about our time in and enjoyment of Chicago and so little else needs to be said. Its been a week since we were in the city and we are still excited about our short visit
Worst City:
Apologies to all of our friends from Saskatchewan, but Regina is pretty crappy. The "city" is tiny and seems to be only full of non-residents. On Friday evening the 4 block downtown area was completely empty of any living soul except ourselves. Each restaurant we came across was closed, save one. Outside of downtown there is really only strip malls and big box stores. The place is really a place to avoid and we don't intend on voluntarily going back. I think an exchange with the front desk clerk at our hotel indicates the kind of city it is. When we asked for a good place to eat close by she suggested McDonalds or Chili's. Picking the lesser of two evils we asked where Chili's was and she said we would need to take our car. Preferring to walk, we were quite surprised to find it across the street from the hotel. Any place that people recommend you drive, and not walk, across the street is a place to miss.
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| Downtown Regina, Friday Night |
Best Animal Encounter:
Thinking back on all the animals we saw this has proved to be a very tough category. We saw a van hit a deer in the Okanagan (not good, but memorable), we saw a black bear crossing the highway on the Arrow Lakes, we crossed under a bridge and came across 2 Elk in the Rockies, we drove right up to a group of fighting Mountain Sheep in the Rockies, we were greeted to our campground in Whiteshell Provincial Park by a male Deer sauntering in front of the car. However, the most amazing encounter for me was at Good Spirt Lake in Saskatchewan. We had seen a mother deer with her two babies a couple of times around the park earlier, but as I set out to find the garbage I would have a close encounter. I turned the corner from the road to the washroom path, not really paying attention to where I am going. Suddenly, right in front of me, and I mean RIGHT in front of me, was the deer family. I stood still as the mother carefully and slowly, eyes always on me, sauntered a mere couple of feet from me, closely followed by her children. I could have reached out to touch her, but a combination of trepidation and respect held me back. As soon as they were clear, they bolted and ran off across the street and into the woods. It took quite a while for me to catch my breath afterwards.
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| Buck greeting us to Whiteshell Park |
Worst Animal Encounter:
This one comes from our last night of camping, in Wheatley Provincial Park just a bit southeast of Windsor, Ontario. Haifa was in the tent with Owen and I was puttering about outside. I was just crossing in front of the tent door when I saw the tail end of a snake slither into the woods right in front of me (and our tent). I stop dead in my tracks as it was easily the biggest snake I had ever seen outside of a Zoo. Unfortunately, Haifa had seen my reaction and, not wanting to lie, I had to admit to seeing a snake. This made Haifa, how has a phobia of snakes, deathly scared for the rest of the evening and kind of ruined the last night for all of us.
To add insult to our situation, a family of raccoons decided to join us for our campfire later that night. I was in the tent putting Zaid to sleep when I heard Haifa say "Go Away Raccoon" in a loud and stern voice. After Zaid was asleep the raccoon returned with 2 others and got halfway into our campsite before we noticed them. I got up with a jump and banged our fire poking stick on the ground, scaring them to the edge of our site. A few more bangs on the picnic table drove them far enough away... or at least we thought. After we went into the tent for the night we heard them come back and inspect our chairs and stove and other items left out (no food items). It made for a pretty tense night by all of us raccoon-phobes.
Best Natural Attraction
We were so blessed to have witnessed so many incredible places in this great country and continent of ours that it is so hard to pick just one. Instead, I will provide a short, and not exhaustive, list of some of our favourites.
Kalamalka Lake in the Okanangan Valley, BC
Takkakaw Falls in Yoho National Park, BC
The interplay of mountains and clouds in Banff National Park, Alberta
Lake Louise in Banff National Park, Alberta
Canola fields, Saskatchewan (and Alberta)
Lake of the Woods, Ontario
Caliper Lake, Ontario
Lake Michigan, Wisconsin (in particular)
Countryside of Southwest Ontario, Ontario
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| Banff National Park |
Best Attraction made by Humans:
We went to numerous museums, zoos, aquariums, galleries, etc. and enjoyed nearly all of them. We didn't want to go see 25 art galleries though and so made a conscious effort to visit a variety of different types of attractions. Looking back now, three of the places we visited stick out: Royal Tyrell Dinosaur Museum in Drumheller, Alberta, Soudan Underground Mine State Park, Tower, Minnesota, and The Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan.
Each of these places provided a great example of the different things we experienced at all of the places we visited. The Royal Tyrell Museum was breathtaking. Filled to capacity with numerous dinosaur fossils of full and nearly full creatures, each step of the way brought us face to face with some new amazing creature to look at. Soudan Mine was something we stumbled upon and would not have even heard of it had we not randomly picked a campground from our map book. The place fully encapsulated the sense of joy we had at stumbling across some hidden gem in some tiny town. We got to walk all around an old mine and learned a tonne about old-school Iron mining and the region of Minnesota that we were visiting. The Henry Ford was full of artifacts from history that provided a surprisingly strong sense of reverence and respect for the major events of North American history.
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| Soudan Mine |
It is late in Toronto now, and I have already filled this post with too much stuff. I will thus split this into two posts. Coming soon will be a summary of the best moments I had over our 40 day exodus.
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