| Location: | Kenora Ontario |
“So the hunter lifted the dead beast’s head to show me his face and the next thing I knew was that the thing had clouted me across the head. I knew nothing more until I woke up in hospital three days later. The darn thing nearly tore my face off. The hunter put eleven more rounds into the bear before he finally croaked.”
The gas station owner smiled at our shocked faces. “This is bear country, so you never know what’s gonna happen when you go hunting in these here woods.”
We were at a remote gas station which also served as a general store, restaurant, bar, truck stop, a place to pick up hunting and a reception for lakeside camping and cabins for a night stop. This was northern Saskatchewan and the road to Flin Flon, a mining town on the Manitoba border, almost as far north as it’s possible to get in this part of Canada.
‘Bear hunting’ for us had been a fruitless exercise in drifting along mountain highways keeping an eye out for the grand beasts to no avail. Barbara and I had seen two captive Brown Bears on Grouse Mountain near Vancouver, but since then, nothing. We has begun to joke that bears in Canada was all a tourist con, with the odd animatronic ‘bear’ placed at strategic locations along the highway by Disney to perpetuate the myth. But the gas station owner’s tale was pretty conclusive evidence that we were either blind, or the bears were steering clear of our route.
Later that night in Flin Flon, I was sitting up late reading. We had all tucked into fast food and canned beer for dinner, with the remains of our feast bagged up in the motel bin in the bathroom. We had left the door ajar, with just a mosquito screen to keep the bugs at bay. It was very quiet outside. Then I heard an unmistakable grunt and deep snuffling, not a sound I’d heard before, but there was no mistaking the noise of an inquisitive bear, possibly drawn by the pungent aroma of left over fried chicken. I leapt from my chair and slammed the door shut. There was a brief commotion outside before silence returned. Bears are known to enter buildings looking for food if they’re hungry and tales of fridges with doors ripped off are not unknown. Not for nothing are motel doors covered with sheets of metal in these parts.
Eastern Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are flat. Very flat. Flat for hundreds of miles. But this is country which is not without its own beauty and ability to awe. From the endless grain prairies in the south to the lakes and woods of the north, there is enough variety and places of interest to make this part of our journey a landmark of our adventure. Our daily routine of several hundred miles at a stretch saw the terrain roll by under vast open skies, where the weather systems developing above carry as much to interest the traveller as the enormous open prairie stretching ahead of our bikes. Not for nothing is this area known as ‘the land of the living skies’.
Such a contrast to our British Columbia adventure. The ferry from Vancouver Island deposited us in Prince Rupert, a lonely northern town, spitting distance from the Alaska border, where a cool mist and low cloud shrouded the early part of our ride to Prince George. The sun soon burned the fragile clouds away to reveal serene tree covered mountains, deep primordial lakes and wide rivers. This was a long ride, which took us to the beginning of the Alaska Highway and on through rolling farm lands to Prince George. This was where we joined the GlobeBusters Trans Americas 2009 team (see www.globebusters.com) for a few days riding in the Rocky Mountains. Huge steaks and a birthday celebration for one of their team providing a fitting party atmosphere to welcome us to their five month Tierra Del Fuego-bound motorcycle adventure.
Jasper provided us with our first day off, a town that sits at the start of the Rocky Mountains Icefields Parkway. Packed with tourists and trinket shops, but with comfortable accommodation in log cabins and the excellent barbeque skills of Kevin Sanders and Jeff the ‘Van Man’. A good spot for two nights of gentle partying.
The Icefields Parkway is nothing less than awesome. The grand peaks of the Rockies march down the American continent for over a thousand miles, dividing BC from the rest of Canada before presenting what must have seemed to be an impenetrable barrier to early explorers of what is now the United States. The road weaves between high peaks and past breathtaking glaciers, ice blue lakes and roaring rivers. An excursion to the beautiful Lake Louise marked a highpoint of the day before our night stop in the tourist trap of Banff, and the delights of Elkburgers.
We are now in Kenora, Ontario, the prairies behind us. We have entered an area of the continent that is dominated by hilly densely forested country, which has literally millions of lakes, both small and vast. Kenora marks a day off to get washing done, check over the bikes and catch up with emails and essential work.
We’ve been extraordinarily lucky with the weather until now, but it seems that the rain has finally caught us up after several days of riding just ahead of brooding storm fronts that have swept from the north and west.
Kenora is also half way across the continent and a fitting place to celebrate the journey thus far and anticipate the challenges ahead. With bikes running well and sprits high, we are looking forward to once again turning our wheels eastward along the endless road.
Craig
Kenora, Ontario.
