Rock Throwing Winnipeger, and Duct taped Video Cameras

So I have realized why I didn't start a blog much sooner, I'm terrible at keeping up. I swear I am trying!!    

 Day 3 started out butt-freezing cold in our tent at West Hawk Lake. We got up, packed our stuff, reorganized the car a little bit (which was an absolute disaster already) and then decided we had time to take a walk with Toby. After a short and sweet walk around the campground we squeezed ourselves back into the car and off we went again, destination Swift Current Saskatchewan. 

     As we were driving we listened to the radio, we kept having to find stations but that was half the fun. Just as we were about to hit Winnipeg they were talking about how it had the highest violent crime rate in Canada. Honestly we laughed when we heard it. We thought if that was true we would have heard of it before, right? Wrong. So wrong. As we drove through the city our GPS turned us down a one-way street. It was a tiny little street that looked a lot more like a back alley. We were looking for a place to pull over or turn around, driving very consciously, when a guy flagged us down. When we rolled down the window this guy started yelling at us, calling us idiots. He said at one point, and I am quoting here "Where did you get your license, a fruity pebbles box??". We desperately tried to explain the situation, and when that failed miserably we pointed out that he was being unnecessarily rude. Yes, we said, we are on a one way street going the wrong way, but we are trying to turn around and he was not doing anything but making the situation worse by being rude. Rude, he said, You haven't seen rude yet.  At this point Braden decided ( maybe not so wisely ) that being rude back was the only solution. This very quickly resulted in the guy kicking the car and then as we rolled up the windows and pulled away at a squealing speed him throwing rocks at the car as he charged after us. 

     I really didn't know if we were going to make it out of that alive, but somehow we managed. And we got back on the highway again, A little ways later Braden admitted that maybe he shouldn't have responded rudely. But we both agreed that the guy had way overstepped and was beyond rude. But on the brighter side of things, no one wet their pants in fear and it was all behind us. 

     Manitoba is bad in the sense that there is not a whole lot of touristy type of stops along the highway, but what they do have are signs with stars at them when your going to pass an "attraction". They tell you the name of the place and how many km away it is and an arrow pointing which way to turn. You just follow the stars with arrows signs until you arrive. The one we followed was for "Reptile Gardens". It was literally in the middle of nowhere, down three different unpaved, un-graveled back roads. Braden was hesitant at first, but came in with me anyways. We went into what looked like a little building, and there were lizards, bugs, and fish all over. Caged stacked. We went on the tour, which took your from the main front room down hallway after hallway, on either side of you was crocidiles, aligators, snakes bigger than I have ever seen, more fish and bugs (spiders unfortunately included), and so many cute turtles. Some of the animals were rescue animals. There was so much to see, and for only 5$ each! It was absolutely worth the detour and 10$. It is the biggest of its kind in North America. 

He seemed so happy, but really he is just fantasizing about what you taste like.

     The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. The prairies had more hills than we had expected. Tourist wise, Sask. was much more helpful. We bought some Saskatoon berry chocolates and jam at the Tourist Info stop. The end of the drive, from about Medicine Hat to Swift Current, was quite outrageously boring. It started getting rainy so instead of camping, which we had planned on doing, we decided to splurge and stay at a motel. We got chips and dip for dinner, and stayed at Thriftlodge. ThriftLodge is the same chain as TravelLodge, but as the name suggests, is a thriftier version. And old huge video camera duct taped to the wall as the security camera. Mismatched furniture  mismatch soap and shampoo. Only the best of the best for us cheapos! There was a pool and a hot tub, which we tried, but after about 5 minutes we agreed that neither struck us as very sanitary we decided to go to bed early. It is off to the Rockies in the morning! 

Braden, Naturally.

Honestly, probably one of the most exciting parts.

Big Bird Motel, Afforadable but definately not clean!

So I am going to back track a little, and come up to date slowly. I know its a lot to read, but try to hold in there, there are some pretty interesting parts. I wrote these as we drove across the country and am in the process of writing them onto the computer. :)

Day 1 started in Perth, at 5:30am. We got up, a bit begrudgingly, and got dressed and took the animals down to the car. We headed off down the number 7, about 45 minutes in we turned on the 17 and we were off. The trip was relatively peaceful, if a little boring (with the exception on some pretty cool road names [Whiskey Jack Trail]). The day took a turn after we had been on the road for a few hours. The car ahead of us (which was an intrepid, looked just like nanny’s!!) went over the middle line just as a transport truck was going by in the other direction. At first I just saw things flying at our windshield, I curled into a ball covering my face with my hands, thinking if we weren't’t hurt (oh please don’t let us be hurt) then at the very least our trip would be over. When I pulled my hands away from my face I realized I wasn't’t really breathing and I took a deep breath and thanked god. Literally. By some miracle everything had flown around the car, leaving both us and the car unharmed in anyway. I wanted too pee my pants with excitement. Then we realized that no one in the car was getting out or moving, so again panic. We got out to check on them, as did the truck behind us and the van ahead of the car that caused the mishap. Their airbags had gone off so everyone is the car was a little stunned ( and from the look of the teenagers in the car,  probably stoned too). The driver got out of the front seat, looked at his car and then all around and was like “ What just happened?!”. He nearly killed himself, his friends in the car AND A WHOLE HECK OF A LOT OF OTHER PEOPLES! What just happened. Ha! Braden informed me back in the car that their wheel skimmed the transport truck, and what was flying at us was the tire and the front part of the kids car. In short. Scary.

First stop, Sudbury!!

Sault St Marie; This was the biggest statue there, pretty awesome

Feeling it up the wooden lady. Apparently females don't even need to be real to feel them up

On our first day we learned that Sudbury is not very nice to look at, its not very nice to smell, and do not ever follow a car's GPS when it tries to take you on "shortcuts" through cities. We stopped at a few scenic lookouts but nothing too grand. We were told that driving through northern Ontario would be really boring, but we actual enjoyed it. Trees, hills, big rocks, and Braden's favourite - BRIDGES! Sault St Marie was a lot nicer than we expected, we got a cute magnet and a picture of a moose holding a shotgun in one hand and a man upside down in the other ( obviously it was fake, although if they could train a moose to do that it would be pretty frigging cool, and definitely picture worthy!).

Lake Superior. The lake was huge and the rocks we so smooth

     After Sault St Marie, we hit nothing, it was just forest and big hills. We drove along Lake Superior and stopped at a pretty little park and ended up going swimming. The water was beautiful and Toby actually swam out pretty far without being forced! Got back to the the car and onto the road and before long drove past a really cool shoreline and ended up driving down a private road, parked, and went for a walk along the water. Finding an easy route down to the actual water though turned out to be quite a  challenge. The shore of the whole lake (or at least what we saw of it) was covered in smooth rounded rocks, to make it more difficult there was an insanely steep hill of these rocks to get down to the water. After a while of walking along the top of the hill looking for an easy route ( and also through what looked to be peoples cottage yards) we decided to just make our way down the immensely dangerous hill. every time we stepped on a rock it rolled away, and over 15 minutes later (and only just about half way down the hill) we looked to the right (also the direction we had come from) and seen a staircase built into the rocks. We picked up a couple rocks for souvenirs and headed back to the car ( this time using the stairs!!). The ride after that was very up and down and up and down and up and down and we realized that the mountain part of our drive was going to be quite scary.

This is about halfway down the rock hill, it took about almost 20 minutes to get down.

At which point we look over and see this staircase we walked right past. Intelligent eh?

  
     We learned that if we meow at Moto she will meow back. Overall the animals were good. Moto sat in the front for a few hors and spent the rest of the time in her crate. Toby spent most of the day, but has had quite a bit of trouble listening.  We got to Wawa finally after driving through what seemed to be forever worth of nothingness. I really had to use the washroom and Braden and I were both feeling really goofy. There were 3 huge loons there (which is what people told us too look for). There was a motel advertised as " Beaver Motel, Clean and Affordable", and Braden laughed about it. So when, a couple minutes later, we passed "Big Bird Motel" Braden thought it was HILARIOUS. Unfortunately (maybe not so unfortunately to me) the Beaver Motel had no vacancy and Big Bird Motel was closed down ( Not clean but definitely affordable!). To our surprise and total frustration, all the motels were completely booked. One place told us that the whole town was fully booked and the next town (White River, an hour down the highway) was also fully booked. We decided to double check to just make sure and lucky for us one had a vacant room ( the last motel we got to, and we went to every one). We settled in and got some supper at Tim Horton's ( who had no bread and made us horrible wraps) and went to bed.

Water, Land, Trees & Mountains

Current location : Courtenay, B.C, Canada, North America,  Earth, Universe

I have decided to keep everyone up-to-date by writing a "blog". It's not really a blog. And I'm not really an author or a blogger, but we take some pretty epic pictures, and we see and do some pretty awesome things. I know that facebook has all pictures, but I feel like you need the real story behind things to really enjoy it like we do. Mind you, often I will just probably tell funny stories about Toby and Moto, I do not have good grammar or spelling skills. But I hope you all enjoy it just the same. Hope you enjoy!!

First stop seeing the mountains

He did this at every sign

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look off the ferry from van to naniamo