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20050805 Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba 50/94 Clear, warm (hot?). Picture Link
We left Regina knowing it would be a hard day - brisk wind out of the south (crosswind) and warm to hot. It was all of that.
First, I made a blunder in deciding to take TransCanada-1 all the way east, then Manitoba-10 up to this park. I should have stuck with the plan - it would have been an hour shorter. But that's what we did.
The crosswinds beat us up and our temptation to run with the traffic (110 kph) caused us to get really low mileage on the leg as far as Virden, MB. Even when we turned north toward the park, it was hard going - maybe it had to do with the heat and running the air-conditioning for this leg.
But we got here ok, checked into the campground, and set up camp. We went into town (Wasagaming) to the Visitors Centre and learned what's happening this weekend. Lots of young people stuff, but there is a car caravan with a ranger talking by radio to the caravan that goes out in the late evening to see wildlife and to try to call up wolves; we signed up for that.
Then we took a drive out Rt 19 to the east, still inside the park. We went out the gravel road, saw a mommy whitetail deer and fawn (fawns are noticably larger compared with the spring), turned around, and came back to the little house.
We grilled steaks and nuked potatoes and made a salad for dinner. Tasted very nice. Noticed a Richardson's ground squirrel running around the site while we ate.
Then we took a drive up Route 10 some 45km and back. On the way up, we saw a female deer at roadside. Then Dolores spotted something black, so we turned around in time to see a young black bear go across the road. Dolores got a couple of pictures of it. Then we turned around again and saw it once more, but it jumped into the brush and stayed there this time. Ten km farther, I spotted a moose. We stopped quick and backed up the shoulder to it; D took several pictures of this young bull moose eating willows at roadside. The moose didn't much care that we were there; it just kept eating. We moved on when we thought it was getting spooked.
So, once again, we saw moose and squirrel on the same day. I think I've heard that before somewhere.
We came back to the little house, seeing a nice sunset over Clear Lake on the way. Then we sat down to process photos, clean up some photo names from prior days, and to write these notes. Now we'll go off to bed.
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20050806 Riding Mountain National Park (MB) 59/83 Clear, warm.
It being a Saturday, we slept in. Then we went downtown to the bakery/restaurant and had a really good breakfast, realizing we'd be doing strange stuff the rest of the day. The three-egg omelet was particularly good.
We went to the visitors center afterward and inquired about a driving tour. They showed us a route around an area southwest of Wasagaming that is heavily influenced by Ukrainian settlers and their churches. We walked around the visitors center taking pictures before we took off on our tour.
We hit gravel roads immediately and kept going to a little crossroads named Horod ("Garden" in Ukranian). A church and one-room school remain from the original; we took pictures but didn't try to enter. We went onward to Olha and took pictures of a beautiful country church (Ukranian Catholic) and its cemetery. Many of the headstones were in both Ukranian and English, some just in Ukranian, and a few newer ones just in English. Picture Link
Then we went on to Oakburn and Elphinstone, back to Horod, and back to the little house to settle for a bit. We also downloaded all the pictures we took on the trip and put them into their places.
When we got hungry, we fixed up a salad and chicken alfredo to fortify us for the evening.
We went to the visitors center and joined the chain of cars to go out onto the evening car caravan to go wolf howling. Six or seven other cars were in the group. A ranger came along (Peter) and gave a briefing on the upcoming trip. Then we moved to a location on Route 10 where wolf droppings had been observed two weeks ago. He gave another animal briefing here, even though the wolf droppings couldn't be found. He also had us crushing various plant leaves to get their smell, noting that the animals of the region found this the "salad bowl" area. Picture Link
We went on another half-hour to a spot where an animal (moose) had been caught by wolves (he pronounced it "wolfs") on a trail following a power line. He told us that the rangers leave these bones when they find them, because they provide minerals to the smaller animals that come along and nibble.
We also started howling. Peter told us of the howling patterns of the various members of the wolf pack - the alpha female and male, the others, and the young, plus the unassociated "lone wolves". Then he tried his wolf call with no response. We tried a small group wolf call with no response. Then everyone did a wolf call, intending to drive any wolf listening toward our next stop. No response.
We got into the vehicles and went to the "Central" trail head. Then we walked out for five minutes or so to an open space where our wolf voices could propagate and did it all again. Peter gave more interesting facts on animals in the park (most dense population of black bears anywhere, for instance), then we tried howling again. No response. Howl. No response. Oh, well.
Peter offered to take us all back to town on a "shortcut". So we followed each other down a terribly dusty road (in the headlights) that we had done earlier in the day (the road to Horod was a great part of it). It was like driving in a pillow. It might have saved us a mile overall but was a miserable ride. We would have been far better off to take the direct route back.
Still, it was a great trip. We had fun, looked around, saw bison as we passed thru their range, and learned something about wolves.
But, it was nearly 11:00pm when we returned to the little house. We replanned the trip to Menomonie, Wisconsin, on the fly because we're ready to leave Canada. So, tomorrow we'll drop down into North Dakota and head east from there.
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