Thursday September 27

We are now some 1850 km from Winnipeg, and for the past few days we have seen nothing but glorious colours, hills, rocks, and lakes. Many lakes, some so smooth when there is no wind in the early mornings, that the sky and the lake seem to flow into each other and merge. It has been very cold, with frost at night, but that has brought on the autumn colours early, which is a bonus. The Trans Canada is very quiet, and crossing the road is no problems, as long as one is aware of the huge trucks which come thundering down the hills. This is a very vast country, days of just forests, lakes, rocks, hills and the occasional village, called town here, however small it is. We buy coffee and sandwiches in cafes along the Trans Canada, just a two lane road in most places. Here and there old wooden sheds are falling to pieces. Nobody seems to care. We also pass many small wooden churches, some in good repair, others sagging and obviously no longer used. At Batchawana Bay we pass a small white clapboard church facing the bay. It looks idyllic. When we leave to travel on the next morning, bulldozers have taken the church down. It is really sad. Few people live here year round, but there are many cottages facing the bay which are used in summer. Some stay to do ice fishing, a sport I would not appreciate, sitting in a hut on the ice in the freezing cold trying to catch something through a hole made in the ice. I have seen those huts one year around Christmas on the Red River in Winnipeg. They looked like big lit balloons or lampions, lights shining through the canvas of the tents.

We see so many colours, so many lakes, such beautiful vistas, it s difficult to get an impression of all of them.

Here are some pictures taken in Thunder Bay, before we saw all the glorious colours.

I will try to post some more pictures if I have a good internet connection. But usually we don’t.