Mosquito Capital of Canada

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

START:  Sandbar Lake Provincial Park, Ignace, ON - 10:30 a.m.

STOP:  Birds Hill Provincial Park, Springfield, MB - 4:30 p.m. (although we arrived at our campsite an hour after that!)

WEATHER:  Beautiful the whole way with just a few cloudy moments

Woke up to a beautiful, warm, and sunny Fadder's Day morn, and presented Dad with his tree bark card and pressed leaf to show him our love and appreciation for all he's done for us.  HAHAHA. No, we had nothing for him.  But we figured it better we were out on the road livin' it up as opposed to sittin' at home and empty-handed, so our presence and constant bitching and moaning is present enough.  Love you, Dad.  And in all seriousness, we're all very appreciative of the days of tense and blustery driving he's put up with so far - and the countless "dickheads" he's encountered on the road.

We managed to avoid another morning of mailbox showering by making good use of the comfort station at the park, with no gruesome horror stories to report.  So after breakfast and cleaning up, it was time to hit the road in search of the Manitoba border.  We made a quick stop in Dryden for some Tim Hortons, since it was the first one we'd seen in roughly a day.  It also gave Mom the chance to pick up an application for Dad.  They were doing walk-in interviews right on the spot and everything!  Hahaha. He really loved that a lot.

T'was another long day of driving.  Dad came up with Beula's alter ego, Galloping Gertie, when she starts getting rambunctious going over hills and bumps.  Eventually, we crossed the border into Manitoba and realized we'd probably make it pretty close to Winnipeg today. Mom was getting a little carried away with her animal journal, writing down the location of every animal we passed, dead or alive.  After about the fifth dead deer, Dad put a stop to it.  "K, we just passed like five.  You're gonna fill that whole book with dead deer!"  We made a pit stop to grab some maps once we started nearing Winnipeg and Mom took pictures of me and Dad bent over them like a bunch of motards (see Mike for definition) trying to figure out where we were going to stop for the night - eventually deciding on Birds Hill Provincial Park in Springfield, MB, just outside Winnipeg.

We stopped at a grocery store before hitting the park to pick up some essentials, and then wasted almost an hour searching the parking lot trying to remember where we had parked.  LAWL - just kidding.  Subtle, Beuls is not.  We eventually reached the park and got lost for an hour (I sense a pattern emerging) since it's ENORMOUS and there's no one at the front gate or anyone who works anywhere that can tell you where to go.  Thank God we had reception so I could pull up a site map and discover that only a tiny portion of the whole thing is for camping.  So after yelling out "Cheez-Its Christ!" a million times (that afternoon's snack of choice) we eventually found the office and got ourselves a campsite.  We were pleasantly surprised to find it's only $15.75 for an electrical site here, as opposed to the $34.25 in Ontario.  We were not pleasantly surprised, however, to discover that Winnipeg is the actual MOSQUITO CAPITAL OF CANADA.  You can't even open your mouth without swallowing 87 of them.  Serves us right for going on about how few there were yesterday.

Mom whipped up a Father's Day din of steaks on the G. Foreman (pasta for Mike), corn on the cob, and taters and since we were held hostage by skitters all night, we didn't even attempt a fire and opted for episodes of Alf on DVD instead.

Tomorrow it's only a few minutes of driving before we reach the hotel in downtown Winnipeg and stay put for a day or two.  Ben (the bf, for anyone not in the know) gets here tomorrow and then it's the Dixie Chicks and the Eagles Tuesday night!

Letting the good times roll,