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2002 Q4 Random Vacation
(50°17.58636' N, 95°16.04416' W - Crowduck Lake, Manitoba, Canada)

Day 2 - 16 Nov 2002

00:00 UTC - 01:00 UTC (Twilight Zone Jacuzzi)

Once I got all my stuff into the cabin, I thought a little about what I wanted to to in the evening.  I could leave again and go look for a restaurant for dinner.  But it really hadn't been that long since I had lunch, and by this time it was quite dark outside, and it was a bit of a hike to the nearest town that actually had places to eat and the like.  So I decided to stay in.

I figured I'd start by trying out that jacuzzi thing in the bath room.  So I filled up the supersized tub with hot water, then set up my laptop (far enough from the water so there was no risk of it falling in.)  I grabbed one of the two DVDs I had with me, a Twilight Zone DVD Ron had given me for my birthday.  So I got into the nice comfy warm water and watched two episodes of the old Twilight Zone.

The first one was "A Passage for Trumpet" about an alcoholic trumpet player who steps out in front of a truck to kill himself, then talks to an angel, and then gets a second chance.  Then I watched "Mr. Dingle, The Strong" where a wimpy guy gets given super-human strengths by aliens, abuses the power, and gets it taken away again.

I hadn't really used the jacuzzi part of the jacuzzi, with all the jets of water and such, because it would have been too noisy to watch the DVDs.  But at this point, after having watched two of the four episodes on the DVD, I was getting all wrinkly and such.  So I decided enough was enough and got out.

01:00 UTC - 03:00 UTC (Fruitless Login)

Once I was all dry again, it was time to get logged on.  I had a cellphone signal (although just barely) and I had the right adapter cords to connect via my cellphone.  I had done it before back home, but it had been a few months since I last tried.  So I hooked everything up and tried to connect.  At first I couldn't get the computer to dial the cellphone at all.  But after a bit of tinkering, I finally got it to the dial the cellphone.  And it got connected to the Earthlink number back home.  Yea! 

And then it immediately hung up.  It said no carrier.  I called the number manually, and indeed it was a computer at the other end.  I had the right number.  The phone was dialing.  I got a connection.  It should work!!

For two hours I tried over and over again.  Changing settings here and there, rebooting the computer multiple times, everything I could think of that might make a difference.  Nothing.  I was getting frustrated and mad.

Eventually though, there was nothing to be done about it.  I wasn't going to get an internet connection again until I got back to somewhere with a landline.  That would be sometime late in Day 5.  Oh well, I can go four days without an internet connection.  I can.  I know I can!

03:00 UTC - 08:00 UTC (TV & Comp)

So then I decided to do what I could.  I opened up my trip log to write up the previous day.  But my mind and attention wandered.  I flipped channels on the TV.  Watched some Canadian news shows, watched bits and pieces of some movies and some other shows.  But never really WATCHED anything.  I also plyed games on my computer.  A little SlashEm (Nethack variant), some chess (I lost), some JewelToy (a shape matching game).  In between, I wrote my little log.  When I had finally written everything, I added the pictures.  By this time I was pretty tired. 

08:00 UTC - 15:00 UTC (Sleep)

At first I was concerned because you couldn't see the TV from the bed in the bedroom.  How would I sleep!  So I pulled out my little radio, and tried to find some suitable talk radio to fall asleep to.  I didn't find anything for the first few minutes.  But then I realized, I couldn't SEE the TV, but I could hear it just fine, which is all I needed.  So I turned up the volume on the TV, which I set on CNN, and headed to sleep.  I was asleep almost immediately.

15:00 UTC - 17:00 UTC (Arise)

I had planned to just sleep until I woke up.  But at somepoint in the morning, something started beeping loudly from my suitcase.  At first I tried to ignore it.  but it kept screaming at me.  So I rolled out of bed and tried to find it.  I had to dig around in the suitcase a bit, but I found it after a minute or two.  It was my PocketPC.  The alarm was an alarm I had set several months ago, which was apperantly going off every Saturday morning that whole time.  I turned it off. 

I tried to get back to sleep, but I failed.  So, resigning myself to the state of being awake, I got up.  It was snowing outside.

Given that, when I got readu I dressed as warmly as I could manage.  Then I packed up the stuff I wanted to take with me.

17:00 UTC - 19:00 UTC (To Pointe du Bois)

Yup, there had been some snow overnight.  There was a nice layer of it on the car.

OK, just a dusting, but hey, it had snowed!  It was time to go.  I hadn't really thought about what I wanted to do.  My initial rough thought was to circle my random spot.  Where I was staying was 14.4 miles from the random spot. 

Looking at the maps, this might actually be the closest road to where I was going.  But there were a place or two that looked roughly the same distance away, and might acutally be closer.  So I figured I'd leave where I am, and try my best to do a clockwise loop around the spot.  That was a plan.

So, out from Big Whiteshell, heading West, looking for a place to turn North.  There were a bunch of lakes in the way, so it was quite a few miles before I could turn North.  Specifically...  309 to 307 to 11.  That got be to Lac du Bonnet.  A small town that had a couple of restaurants, gas stations and the like.  It is also where the charter plane business I'd seen the website for was based.  I had emailed them a couple weeks before leaving, but had not gotten any response.  Maybe I'd call them later.  I considered stopping for lunch, but I wasn't hungry yet.  So I kept going.  From Lac du Bonnet there was a route heading east, back toward my spot.  So 313 it was.

At one point there was a divide, and a route 315 headed away from 313 on the map.  Now, my memory was that there was a 315 that was a bit North of my spot that might have a close spot.  But on the GPS, it looked like it headed North away from the spot.  So I just stayed on 313.  It headed east to a small place called Pointe du Bois.

Pointe du Bois was apperantly a hydro town, with the main attraction being a hydroelectric generating station.  I followed the road down as far as I could, ending in a residential cul de sac.  12.3 miles from my spot. 

I neglected to get any pictures in the cul-de-sac.  There really wasn't much to see.  Just a couple of small houses.  I did get this picture of the Winnipeg River which the town sat on though.

19:00 UTC - 21:00 UTC (To Lac du Bonnet for Lunch)

There didn't appear to be much to do in Pointe du Bois though.  There was a convieniance store, but no restaurant per se, or I might have eaten there.  So I decided to head back and find somewhere for lunch.  I was starting to dispair about the idea of making a circle around my spot.  Looking at the GPS maps, it looked like there was no route around the top.  315, which I had thought from looking at MapQuest from home before I left, looked like it curved North instead of heading east into Ontario.  Pointe du Bois may be the closest I would be able to get.  Oh well.

I headed back to Lac du Bonnet, where I had seen a couple places to eat.  On the way, I noticed some alien pods which had obviously just landed and were plotting to take over the world.

I decided to let someone else take care of that problem, and continued on to where the food was.  At about this time, I took off my hat.  And I realized what really bad hat head looks like.

I considered just running back to the cabin to fix my hair, but I was hungry, and it was still early.  So I did the best I I could by just  running my fingers through my hair over and over and kept going.  I passed a couple other nice lakes.

Then I got back to Lac du Bonnet and stopped at the most prominant of the restaurants I had seen, which turned out to also have a hotel. 

I had an omlette.  It was a good omlette.  And just like the place where I'd had lunch the previous day, excellent toast.  Big thick toast soaked in butter.  Yum!

On the way out, I stopped at the little booth full of brocures.  I grabbed a few of them.  They also had a snowmobile trail map.  Looking in the map, it showed 315 actually heading east to the Ontario border, with 314 being the one that curved up north.  And it also showed some snowmobile trails heading south from 315, perhaps going even closer to my spot!  It was marked as being 2$, but there was no guy at the counter to pay. I also didn't have a 2 dollar coin on me, so I ened up deciding to leave a 5 dollar bill (of US currency, not Canadian) that I had in my wallet.  It was the last US currency I had on me, and in addition I had entered it into wheresgeorge.com while I was in Winnipeg.  So I just left it on the counter under the phone.  We'll see if I ever get a wheresgeorge.com hit on it. 

21:00 UTC - 23:00 UTC (To Booster Lake and Ontario)

I was thinking about the time of day, and considered heading back to the cabin, but then ended up determining I still had a few hours of daylight left, so based on the information in the map, I would head back east again...  313 to 315, then 315 east to the Ontario border.  I suspected that, even absent any possibilities the snowmobile trail might give, 315 might at some point along its path take it closer than the 12.3 miles away I'd gotten so far. 

Going this way, took me to a different Park, Nopiming Provincial Park.

Soon after entering the park I noticed a sign that said I needed a permit to be here.

Woops.  I didn't have one.  I think there was actually a similar sign for Whiteshell Park where I was staying.  Woops again.  Oh well.  Didn't see anybody selling permits right there, so I kept going.

Before too long, I got to Bird Lake, the spot where the snowmobile trail was supposed to intersect the main road.  I saw a couple things that might have been it.  They were snowcovered paths just a little smaller than a one lane road for cars.  You certainly couldn't drive down them.  At least not in this car.  Perhaps if I'd rented an SUV.  But even then, the road was not intended for cars, and driving down it probably wouldn't be appreciated.  I wondered if any of the places around here rented snowmobiles or ATVs.  Probably.  But none of the places I passed advertized such in an obvious way.  ATV would probably have to be the way to go.  There was snow, but not much.  Not knowing anything about the subject, I figured a snowmobile would probably need more snow than was there, but what do I know.  Probably nothing.  In any case, this trail was definately going toward my point.  I knew it couldn't go all the way...  there was a river in the way...  but it could definately get me closer.  Mental note made.

Just past Bird lake, the GPS showed 315 curving a little toward my spot.  And it showed a turn off from 315 onto a network of roads near something called Booster Lake.  That little network of roads headed toward my spot.  It looked like that would be as close as I could get on real roads. 

So I turned off the main road toard Booster lake.  Now I definately wished I had rented an SUV.  The roads were unplowed and with about an inch (maybe two at some points) of snow.  It was slippery and sometimes ahrd to steer.   I never actually lost control, but four wheel drive would have been nice. 

I got down to the lake, and the the road T'd, with one branch heading left and one right.  The one on the left was more in the direction of my spot, so I headed that way.  There were cabins on either side of the road, some with cars out front indicating they were lived in, although most seemed to be empty for the winter. 

A couple minutes up the road, I saw something sitting in the middle of the road.  I thought it was somebody's dog.  How nice, somebody is home and their dog is in the road and it is going to make a fuss at bark at me. 

As I got closer though I realized it was not a dog.  It was a fox.  It was sitting right in the middle of the road watching me come.  It seemed in no hurry what so ever to get out of my way.  When I was about 15 feet away from it (I was going very slowly of course) it got up and walked to the side of the road and over to a tree.  Then it lay down, crossed its paws in front of itself, and continued to look at me completely calmly.

I decided to get out of the car and try to get a better picture.  The fox got up, but still did not run away.  I took some pictures.  I walked closer. 

The fox basically just looked at me until I was about 5 feet away, then it saw something behind me and decided it wanted to chase after it.  It walked past me, just a couple feet away, then dashed after whatever it was.  It was busy looking at whatever critter it was after the whole time. 

After it saw it, it didn't give me the time of day.  Just walked past me, then dashed. 

(Sorry for the blurryness on the last two pictures...  I rushed.  Too bad, those would have been great pics!)  Then it must have lost track of the critter, because it sat down again, now a little behind my car.  It looked back over at me and yawned.  It slowly started walking away back down the direction I had come from.

I decided to keep going on my little quest.  It was less than a mile to the end of this road according to the GPS.  At the end there was a little loop of road, and that was the end.  This was the closest I was going to get.  10.3 miles from the spot. 

The maps I had seen showed no roads that got any closer than this, either in Manitoba or right accross the border in Ontario.  And the person at the cabin had said that the area of my actual spot was not accessible except by water, which didn't really apply at this time of year.  I wasn't going to canoe up there.  So this was it.  Unless I later did something on the snowmobile trail, or chartered a plane or something, this was the closest I was going to get.  I took a couple pictures in the direction of my spot.

Then a picture of my car facing the random spot.

Then I started heading back.

And then, sure enough, there was the fox again.  Sitting by the site of the road.  When it saw me coming this time it actually got up and started running toward the car!  It ended up trotting up just to the left of my car.

then sitting down in the bushes and looking up at me.  I opened the window and took a few more pictures.  When it wasn't looking at me, I would talk to it, and it would look at me.  It was just a couple feet from me, and obviously didn't care. 

I even got a little 15 second video on the camera of when it decided to finally leave.

It trotted from the road down the driveway of a house, and then jumped up onto the porch of the cottage.  With surpise I saw that sitting on the edge of the railing of the porch, just like a cat would,

was a second fox who had been sitting there watching everything going on with me and the first fox. 

(OK, bad blurry picture...  use your imagineation.  The fox in all the pictures earlier is at the bottom of the stairs, about to head up.  The second fox is sitting on the railing of the porch, it looks like a brown blob.  It is a fox.  Really.)

Again, not that I actually know anything, but the two foxes looked like they were probably a pair.  And they looked very comfortable on the porch of the cottage.  And then I realized...  there was a truck in the driveway.  This cottage was inhabited.

Ah!  This was starting to come together now.  I would bet a lot that these two foxes were pet foxes.  The family at the cottage must feed them regularly, and perhaps otherwise take care of them.  They seemed completely comfortable with people.  Well, at least the first one did.  It didn't let me pet it, but then again, I didn't really try.  But it was certainly not concerned at all about me standing there a couple feet away taking pictures.  It even posed for me.  Undoubidly because it saw people all the time, and people often fed it.  When it got tired of playing with me, it went home.

Fun.  I decided to head off before the people inside came out wondering why I was playing with their foxes. 

I still had a little time left before sunset, and I was just a couple miles from the Ontario border, so I decided to make a little foray into Ontario before heading back to the cabin.  So after I got back to 315, I hung a right.

Just as the sun was setting, I got to what my GPS said was the Ontario border.  I saw a sign saying "No unauthorized vehicles beyond this point".

There was a lake to the right.

There was a widening of the road to allow people to turn around, and the road got smaller going

further east.  Hmmm.  My GPS said the border was only a few hundred yard past this point.  I decided I could risk just going a few hundred more yards.  All the maps showed that this road only went another 10-20 miles or so, then ended at a lake.  It wouldn't give me a route to go "around" my spot anyway.  Otherwise I might be tempted to just keep going.  I went a few hundred yards, then, exactly where my GPS said it would be, there was a big red arm thing that could be used to close the road.  It was open, you could go past, but it was obviously a gate for the road.  And it was exactly at the border.  There were no "Welcome to Ontario" signs anywhere, or "Welcome to Manitoba" signs going the other direction.  But this was the border.  Fun.

I drove a few hundred feet into Ontario to get a wider spot in the road to turn around, and just so I could say I did it.  Then I headed back.

23:00 UTC - 00:00 UTC (Heading Back in Darkness)

Darkeness quickly fell as I drove back west. 

I went a bit faster as well, because now I knew basically what was on the road and where I was going.  Just a straight shot back to the cabin was the plan.

As I was about halfway back to the cabin, Day 2 ended.

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Samuel Minter abulsme@abulsme.com http://www.abulsme.com/