Eddy & Frances 2023 Teardrop Blog

At the end of the road, overlooking the Wind River range. We stayed in a small campground aptly named, Trail's End.  There was construction on the last 3 miles of the road, so making it in and out of Pinedale, which we didn't do very often, was a bit of a pain.  Like most of our time in Wyoming, we dodged thunderstorms.  Our campsite was in a low spot, and the host, Barb, warned us to watch out for flooding.  Fortunately, we didn't get enough rain to flood us out.   The highlight of the trip was a 9-10 mile hike to Photographers' Point in the Bridger Wilderness area in the Wind River Mountain Range.  The campsite was at 9000 feet, so it was only another 1000 feet to the view from the point.  We arrived mid day and the lighting on the Wind River range was beautiful.   As we have found almost all of Wyoming this year, the wildflowers were abundant and the mountains and high desert were unusually green.  Barb told us that long time locals were c...

Overnight stop at the Kozy Campground.  The drive from Stanley to Pinedale is a beautiful one.  Part of the drive from Alpine to Pinedale goes along the Hoback river.  This is a tiny campground along the river, one of many, and it provided a nice overnight stop for us.

My own private Idaho.  The weather has been fantastic during our time in Stanley.  In addition, the skies are mostly free of smoke from wildfires.  We've had a couple of nice hikes alond Fishhook Creek and up to Marshall Lake.  Yesterday we rafted the Salmon river.  Today we are standing in the hour long line for breakfast at the Stanley Baking Company (worth it) before I ride the bike over Galena Pass to meet Frances in Ketchum.  Ketchum is not really our kind of place, but that have a nice grocery there where we can stock up on fruits and vegetables.   We have about 10 days before we need to be in Denver.  After a couple of days there, I'll make the trip to the reunion in Arizona with my Peace Corps friends.   After the reunion, the long, hot drive across the south looks to end the trip.

We had our first rain free day in six weeks on the day we arrived.  Yeah!  The next day the temperature hit 97F.  Boo.   No real native prairie grass is in the park.  This is a long term conservation project and good for Canada for establishing its only National Park devoted to grasslands.  For now, about 75% of Wyoming looks like this place. The temperature continued to climb up each day.  We had had a nice, long hike after leaving early in the morning.  There was very little wildlife in the park.  It was nice and unexpected that there was power in the park.  The lines were buried from wherever they came which protected the scenery.  By having power, generators are kept out of the park, allowing for quiet at night.  That way we could hear the nighthawks as they hunted the skies for their dinner.

This is a small, gritty town along route 13 in Saskatchewan.  We stopped to stay in a small regional campsite that is not far from a homeless shelter.  Luckily, the local Kal tire shop was able to get to my car.  I'm about 1500 miles overdue for a tire rotation.  I've stopped at one previous Canadian Tire location and they couldn't get me in for a couple of days. We were once again visited by the rain.  Despite a forecast calling for 5 days with 0 chance of rain, we woke to light showers and drove through rain as we travel from Weyburn to Assiniboia.  It's cloudy and cool here now as Frances does laundry.  The 65F temperatures are nice.  We still are unable to get sun.  I don't think we've gone 24 hours without some rain since leaving Adirondack Park about 6 weeks ago.  We've had some sunny hours, but we've never been able to just spread out and take our eyes off the sky, watching for rain.

Saskatchewan has a unique type of park they call a regional park.  These are in addition to Provincial and National Parks.  This was a very large park, with many folks that seemed to be staying long term.  They had a pretty extensive social network including baseball teams.  The showers were pretty lousy and it was hot here.  We had a nice breakfast in town before leaving.  A local resident who was an MP was holding court around the breakfast table with his constituents.

I knew this was for us the minute it came up on Google search.  We're the only camper in the 200 site campground.  A dad with a tent showed up with 2 kids.  Huge rapeseed fields all around us.  Frances is looking forward to the museum visit tomorrow. We arrived at the museum 2 hours before it opened, but they let us tour it anyway.  Most of the exhibits were of farm machinery, and were housed outside.  We saw lots of steam powered tractors.   We saw threshers.  Like most of these museums, there was a recreation of village life, including smithy shop, general store, etc.  The main attraction was a tractor built by the Versatile Corporation, Big Roy.  This was a very large tractor with an all wheel drive set up.  It was built on specification for use in Australia, but was never used as it was deemed impractical.

This is the Canadian side of Boundary Waters and Voyageurs National Park.  Paddler's paradise. This was a nice park that I wold have liked to spend more time in.  I was told that this is a common way to  gain access to the paddling and fishing of the Boundary Waters.  The crowds are said to be much smaller. Once again we ran into the power stations that were inconveniently placed.  I had to rent an extension cord to make the runs from the outlet to the camper.  Rent not the right word, I just had to  put a deposit down, but it was fully refunded when we checked out.

 The town of St Anthony at the northern tip of the northern peninsula of the island of Newfoundland is not much to look at.  It's a winding road, full of potholes, through a small retail strip featuring the Viking mall, building supply shops, gas stations, of course a Tim Horton's, the Rebel coffee shop, Ragnarock brewery, the hospital and several nursing homes.  At the end of town is a point of land where everyone from out of town drives to to look for icebergs.  We are told that the cold and fog this year is in part due to the high number of icebergs flowing past on the Labrador current.  We wouldn't know because the fog generated by the icebergs makes them impossible to see.  I saw the base of one on our first morning here.  We saw a small one in the bay at Straitsview when we came back from L'Anse aux Meadows. Last night at Ragnarock brewery we heard Calvin play and sing.  A retired elementary principle of a school with 40 kids in ...

Beware when camping in Ontario Provincial Parks.  You can reserve an electric site and then find your connection is 30 meters from your site.  Some of the site descriptions will tell you how far it is to the outlet.  We got lucky the only time we had service, the outlet was just within reach.  Locals seem to know the drill and have long cords to reach.   There was a nice lake at this park and we walked down to watch the sunset along with many others who were camped here.  It was just an overnight stay in a typical provincial park for Ontario.  The parks in Ontario seem to be neglected, and are not nearly as nice as parks in British Columbia.  There were plenty of sites available.

This is a nicely wooded area around Lake Superior.  The campground is fine, very quiet.  The main draw here is paddling.  There is a canoe trail that promises great fishing for Brook trout.  We did the Peat Mountain hike to Foam Lake.  It was a well marked trail that gave us lots of cardio.  No great elevation is reached but there is lots of up and down. I did a 45 mile bike ride to Wawa and back.  Wawa is not very prosperous looking, but they have a nice tourist information center with a giant goose sculpture on display. We leave tomorrow for another Ontario Provincial Park.   A couple of days after leaving the park, we read a story about a cross Canada cyclist who had his bike stolen from the Tim Horton's in Wawa.  A complete stranger bought him a new bike and he was able to continue his trip.  Frances and I had breakfast at that Tim Horton's within a day of t...

An unexpected lunch stop in a gritty town that has a link to NORAD. This town has the makings of a town on the rebound.  We had a nice lunch at a place along Main Street.  There was a farmers' market going on a couple of blocks away.

We are now in the mind set to "make miles" and we put in a long day to get from Antigonish to here.  Fortunately, the roads and weather were good.   We had planned to stay in a municipal campground, but I couldn't get anyone on the phone.  On top of that, after checking the weather I saw that it was predicted to start raining that evening and all through the night.  Faces with the prospect of packing up in the rain the next morning before getting in the car for another 8-10 hours of driving, we booked a hotel. The town here reveals no charm, but we didn't go exploring.  We had a nice meal in the restaurant, did laundry and went to bed.  Of note is the demeanor of the hotel staff.  It is such a dramatic change from the buoyancy and charm of the Newfies.  The staff here is robotic and withdrawn.  Walking through the lobby, gone are the cheerful hellos and talkative encounters.  We're not in Newfoundland anymore.

We came back over on the ferry from NL and drove about 2.5 hours back to the campground in Antigonish.  It was like a different place from our first stay.  We could barely get in our spot.   The park was filled from visitors to the annual highland games.  It was quite the spectacle. Today the trip changes for a few days.  It's a long way to Portal Arizona and our Peace Corps reunion.  For the next 3-4 days we just need to put in some miles.  So we have plans to put in multiple 500 mile days to get west of the population centers of Canada.  It'll be a grind, but the hope is to allow us some time to enjoy our favorite western regions for a few days each stop once we re-enter the US.

This was just a convenient stopping point near the Port aux Basques ferry terminal.  We had learned that given the poor roads and lower speed limits, that you just can't cover as much mileage in NL as you might somewhere else.  But part of this park is a beach and we found it to be a beautiful spot to relax and enjoy an evening and a morning. We ran into eastcoastphotoguy a NL photographer.  He said he was looking at getting a winter place in the US but was scared of the gun violence in the US.  He asked us if we thought he would need to learn how to use a gun if he decided to get a place there.  So sad, but not unexpected. Anyway, here are some photos of the beach.

Speechless. The singular importance of this site taxes my ability to document what I felt here.  The site is where the eastern and West migration of humans from Africa first met.  This is what is represented by the sculpture.  I can remember that when I was being taught in grade school that Columbus had "discovered" America that there was some evidence that Vikings had visited North America long before Columbus.  It turns out that those possibilities were just being explored by work at this site.  It was in the early 1960s that a Norwegian explored, Helge Ingstad contacted a local First Nation resident asking about evidence of earlier dwellings and was taken directly to the site that we visited today. His archeologist wife, Anne Stone instead led the excavations that resulted in finding several artifacts, including a bronze fastening pin and part of a spindle used for weaving that proved this was a Norse settlement.  A staff member at the visito...

Finally, some sun. We have returned from St Anthony to near our campsite at Trout River.  On our last night we now know what the area looks like.  Up until now we had only seen dog and rain here 

At last!  We are queued up to board the ferry to Port aux Basques, Newfoundland. The weather looks fair, but we've been warned of rolling seas in the North Atlantic.  The Titanic sank near hear, so I'm paying attention. It's a seven hour crossing, which seems excessive given the distance.  Once we arrive it's a 3 hour drive to the campground.  We've been warned many times to avoid driving at night due to the potential for a moose strike.  Hitting a deer merely totals your car.  Hit a moose, you lose.  Fortunately the days are long, but we'll be cutting it close.  If necessary, we'll make an interim stop.

We departed Breton Highlands a day ahead of schedule to take some of the travel duties off the 2nd.  On the 2nd we have our 7 hour Ferry, followed by 3 hours of driving to reach Gros Morne. We stopped in Baddeck and visited an Alexander Graham Bell museum in that town.  Bell had a lavish home there.  He did hydrofoil research.  I learned of he and his father's interest in the deaf.  His grandfather invented a system of writing sounds based on how the muscles of the mouth and larynx moved to create the sound.  It was called Visible Speech and was used to aid the deaf in learning to talk.  Bell was also very devoted to the the deaf, something I never learned in elementary school.  He even married a deaf student, Mabel, and I have to wonder if that was part of the origins of Ma Bell. In nearby Glace Bay, wireless pioneer Marconi sent the first transatlantic telegraph message.  He built a huge antenna on the cliffs there to accomplish the transmi...