Northern Trails And Tales

We’re looking over our shoulders now, folks! After the customs officers warned us that “one little thing” could get us thrown out of Canada, it was sure to happen!….. Yesterday we started the day at Woody’s RV Service in Thunder Bay with an 8:30 AM appointment. Sure enough, in less than an hour they found the electrical problem plaguing all our outlets (one faulty outlet screwing up the ground) and had us on our way. We decided not to try to make Winnipeg, our intended destination, due to our late start. (This drive, by the way, was to be the longest of the trip up.) Anyway, about 3:00 PM we decided to stay at the Anicinabe Campground in Kenora—another gorgeous town overlooking a bay. After we pulled into the parking lot, I decided to move the trailer off to one side and out of the way, forgetting about the concrete wall that was on the side of the driveway. The result was —- you got it —- a mess! The trailer hit the wall at the step to the trailer door and the side creased along to just above the wheel well. The worst damage was to the trailer steps themselves, though of course, the whole thing didn’t improve the looks of the rig.. any, either. This morning, we spent some time straightening out the steps and making things as presentable as possible. Fortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any structural damage and everything worked fine today. One side effect was that one of the kitchen drawers popped out from the force of the collision. While fixing it, I knocked a second drawer off its slides. We spent more time fixing the drawers than the trailer. Let’s hope that’s the end of the bad luck for the duration. (Picture below). Now, evenings when more careful people are sitting around washing and waxing their beautiful machines, we’ll be applying dollops of Bondo to ours. So while other folks on a great adventure are escaping avalanches or bears, we’re trying to escape ourselves. “Wherever you go, there you are.”…We drove to Portage la Prairie today. For miles and miles, the road and everything else is just flat, flat, and flatter. However, the main streets of the town are canopied under arching elms. We haven’t see those in Connecticut for a bit, and unfortunately the ones here are now also being threatened by the Dutch Elm disease. The town is a big agricultural center and you can count about two dozen crops they specialize in, but potatoes and strawberries are really big. They have festivals for both. There is a significant Mennonite population as well as First Nation people, primarily Dakotas and Assinaboines…. As smoothly as things went today we still had one little snafu. We got detoured coming into Winnipeg due to construction and missed the bypass around the city (population about 6 or 700,000) and had to drive right through the downtown business district as well as everything else. Still, it worked out okay, and we think we only lost about 20 minutes travel time…. We are now only about 100 miles behind schedule…. Two things of note. One, we are now on Central Canadian time, an hour behind you folks. Second, the sun doesn’t set until after 10:00 PM and it’s light until 11:00. It does definitely make the day longer— and morning comes damn quickly!…. Off to try to send this…. I hope all of you back home are doing well…