Thunder Bay

Today we drove to a beautiful waterfalls called Kakabeka Falls, then into Thunder Bay city proper on Lake Superior. The city port is lined with huge grain silos, where grain from western Canada is trained to here to load on ships. We spent some time around the area, then went to Fort William. This is not a military fort, but a reconstruction of the inland headquarters of the NW Company (which later fused with the Hudson Bay Company). It was a huge fort with multiple buildings. We had a "period" tour guide that took us and another couple from Michigan through the fort for about 2 hours. The fort was fully supplied with furs, gardens, and furnishings from the 1800s. Tomorrow we are headed to Sault St. Marie ("Soo" they call it) which is a city between Lake Superior and Lake Heron. We will stay a couple of days there. We have some friends we met at the Charlotte NASCAR campground that we hope to visit with.
Comments on the blog are welcome!!!!

These are pictures from the legislative building in downtown Winnepeg. This building is supposedly worth the most in N. America. The large "golden boy" on top is covered with gold. The building was made of limestone. Inside was a stairway lined with huge bronze bison, a popular wedding picture site. The guard told us 8 wedding parties were scheduled that Saturday. Upstairs, besides the chambers, was an original Magna Carta on display. This particular Magna carta was brought to Canada this summer by the Queen and given to Canada. U.S. also has an orginal copy in Wash. D.C.

Sunday we went to a Nazarene Church that had about 100 people, mostly Asian. We think they were either Korean. Winnepeg (city of about 1 million) has two small Nazarene churches. We enjoyed the service a lot. We came home, watched NASCAR and then watched the replay ob the Oregon vs. BSU game on ESPN. We weren't able to get the original broadcast.

This morning we drove down to the financial district and went to the commodies exchange. There wasn't much to see as its all done on computers. We came back and drove to Thunder Bay, Ontario which is on Lake Superior. We will be here for about 2 days.

Winnepeg

We drove in to Winnepeg today. People compare Winnepeg to Chicago, both in type of city and weather. We went to "The Forks", a fork in the river, where an old railroad terminal has been converted into shops. We also went down to the Legislature building. This building was made of limestone and has a "golden boy" (as they call it) on top covered with 23 1/2 karat gold. (Picture in next post) It is said this is one of the most valuable buildings in North American. We also visited the Ukrainian Museum. Thousands of Ukranians came from E. Europe in the 1900's to post WWII and there are lots of them all over Canada, as well as many Orthodox churches. Tomorrow we plan to go to a Nazarene church, come back and watch NASCAR and then BSU game. We can't get the live BSU game but it is being repeated on ESPN tomorrow.

Across the prairie to Saskatoon

Today we drove all day across the prairie - looks so much like Nebraska or Oklahoma. We are staying the night in Saskatoon, but headed toward Winnepeg tomorrow. It may take us a day and one-half to reach Winnepeg unless we drive into the night.. We'll see. We plan to stay the weekend in Winnepeg - watch the BSU game on DirecTV. We were told our DirectV wouldn't work in Canada but it sure does. There still was hectares and hectares of unharvested grain crop. The ground is extremely wet so they are weeks from harvest - again may not make it. I'm thinking I should go buy futures in wheat!

Calgary

You might wonder why we went through Montana. Lady or Mrs. "G" as we call her (our Garmen) sent us that way so we went through Great Falls. Yesterday we drove to Calgary and we are camped about 2 miles north of the 1988 Olympic luge/sled area (picture R). It has been very cold all summer in Calgary (the people talk about never seeing the sun). On the way here we saw lots of unharvested, green wheat that likely won't make it. They've had snow already in Calgary and the Rocky Mtns. in view from here are covered with snow. Today we went to the 1988 Olympic village where they did the bobsled and luge runs as well as the ski jumping. The ski jumping towers (picture L)were unbelievably high and to think they are higher now - that is one thing NOT on my bucket list. We also drove down to the Calgary Stampede park, where there is a huge rodeo grounds (always a July rodeo) and the ice skating center for the Calgary Flames. We were a little dismayed that the grandstands for the rodeo are actually quite a few meters from the actual rodeo arena for most of the seats. Calgary also has a space needle with restaurant, very similar to the one in Seattle. Tomorrow morning we are heading easterly.

Heading toward Canada

Today we drove from McCall ID to Great Falls Montana. Tomorrow we will cross the border between Montana and Canada and head to Calgary. It was a pretty uneventful drive but beautiful. When we went to set up, we had to reteach outselves how to level the RV, get the slides to go out, etc. Our on-board computer seemed to need nudging as it didn't work for a while. Guess sleeping in the RV shed from early June til end of September, it needed a few tries to wake up. Pray for us as we cross the border - don't really want any big hassles. We will be driving east across Canada and drop down into Massachusetts. Need to be in Charlotte NC by about October 13