9-20-17 to 9-22-17 Duck Mountain Park

It's time for to move on

Wednesday 9/20/17

After three days at Greenwater Lake Park it was time to move on. The rain had stopped and the roads were starting to dry so it was time to say good-bye and start another adventure. 

After we finished breakfast Larry and I went over to the bathroom to take a shower. The showers were excellent. Each shower had a button to push to turn on the water. Usually it takes awhile to heat up but not this morning. We have used many showers that had a button to start the water and you have to push it multiple times in order to finish your shower but today I only had to push it once. The last park we stayed in the bathrooms were very cold but the bathrooms at Greenwater Lake are heated.

When we got back to the Minnie we put things away or laid them down. We were ready to leaving at 8:30. The next park were staying at was only 145 miles away. 

On the way we stopped to do laundry. We stopped in a couple of small towns at their laundromats and neither one of them had a change machine. The laundromats we have stopped at in the past have always had change machines. We were about to give up considering we only had a couple more towns to drive through. We stopped in Kamsack, SK at a hotel that had a laundromat sign. We were in luck, there was a change machine. At first we were a little confused considering if you put $5.00 dollars in the machine you got five dollars worth of Canadian quarters but if you put in a $10.00 bill you received 10 loonies, we had no idea what a loonie was so since we had plenty of five dollar bills we ended up just getting quarters. Later we found out via the internet that a loonie is a Canadian one dollar coin. While doing laundry we had lunch in the Minnie. We were at the laundromat for a couple of hours. This is the first time we had stopped to do laundry and we have been on the road for four weeks.

Doing laundry

After doing laundry we continued on towards the park, it was was only 40 more miles. The park we were headed to was Duck Mountain Provincial Park. We topped at the Visitor Center to check in. The lady gave us a couple of maps and told us to drive through the campgrounds and choose a couple of sites we wanted. The campgrounds were 6 km down the road. We found a couple of sites we liked so back to the office we went. The first site the lady said it was already reserved so we got another one. A bit funny since there was only one camper in the entire campground. We ended up getting site #25 in the Spruce Campground. Larry paid for three nights and back to the campground we went. 

Once the Minnie was setup we went for a walk to find the trailheads to the hiking trails. We found the trailhead and started walking it. We stopped considering we didn't have the right shoes on nor had we brought along any water. We ended up walking around for about a half hour. When we got home it was time for dinner.

Camping at Duck Mountain PArk

The hiking trail

Madge Lake

I baked some HEB poppers dinner. I had cooked them in the stove before and didn't have any problems. Today I cooked them at a higher temperature for 25 minutes. Well, when it was 23 minutes in the baking it started to smoke up the Minnie so I got them out of the oven. Larry opened the windows and I opened the door to clear out the smoke. The poppers weren't burnt but if I do it again I well be more careful. After dinner I walked around our loop for a half hour to get my steps in. The rest of the evening we relaxed in the Minnie.

Awesome Day 

Thursday 9/21/17

We had an awesome day!!! 

We woke up to sunshine and the temperature in the low 40's. We had breakfast and then went on a hike. We hiked for 2 and a half hours and hiked 6 miles. We hiked a couple of trails. We started from our site and walked to the Interpreter's office to start the hike. We hiked an easy trail to where we caught the Woodland Nature Trail, which is a 1.24 mile loop. We hiked half of the loop until we got to the Trans Canada Trail, which is 8.8 miles one way. We only hiked a couple miles of it to the Four Season Resort. Then we rested for a few minutes. While resting one of the park workers stopped and talked to us. We told him we had just hiked the trails from the campground. He asked how they were and we replied they were excellent. He talked about his crew cleaning up down trees and taking dead ones down during this time of the year. He was very nice to talk to. Once he left we continued our hike back to the campground. When we got to the area where the loop and The Trans Canada Trail met we finished up the loop. The trails were very easy to hike considering they're flat and didn't have any roots to worry about. The trails took us through a beautiful forest of pines, aspens and other trees.  As we were hiking by the lake we noticed there were a few trees that had been attacked by a beaver. It looked like the beaver was tasting each one to see which one he liked the best. We had a super hike.

One of the trees the beaver attacked

The Four Season Resort

After resting a little bit I heated up soup for our lunch. We relaxed for a couple of hours and then we went on another hike. This time the hike was from the other campground called Birch. We walked to the campground which was about a half mile away. There are two trail at the campground. We found the first one and walked it. The trail went along the shores of the lake but it was very short. Today there was no wind so Madge Lake was smooth. The Damselfly Trail was clear on the other side of the campground so we had to walk the road for awhile. When we got to it the sign said the trail was .8 km one way. We decided to walk it. This trail was very easy to hike, no hills and very wide. It took us through a forest and over the marsh via a boardwalk. The water didn't look to good and we joked about not falling in. When we got to the end of the trail we had a big surprise. There was a small Catholic Church stand there with a sculpture of Angel Wings. I earned my wings today. After taking pictures we checked to see if the church was open. We had another surprise, the doors opened. It was very small but beautiful. After visiting the church we went back to the Minnie. We hiked for an hour and a half and hiked another 3 miles. By the time we got back we were tired. We had another wonderful hike.

Holy Eucharist Catholic Church

Earning my Angel Wings

Interior of  the church

When it was time for dinner I cooked some poppers but this time I cooked them at a shorter time and lower temperature. I didn't smoke Larry out of the Minnie. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing with a book. We had an awesome day. LIFE IS GOOD!!!!
 

First Day of Autumn

Friday 9-22-17

Today was the first day of Autumn but here in Canada the leaves are already falling. Every day we see other leaves turning their autumn colors.

We woke to another brisk morning with the temperature at 36 degrees. We had our breakfast and then we went for a hike. We hiked the Woodland Nature Trail loop and part of the Trans Canada Trail. We did the loop going the opposite way as we did yesterday. When we got to the Trans Canada Trail we decided to take it across the road instead of going toward the resort. This section of the trail took us through the forest on wide trails designed for snow mobiles, horses, bicycles and hikers. There was a creek on one side of us and the other side was the road. The section was called route 66. We walked about a mile of the trail and decided to turn around and head back. The trail had a lot of grass and with the morning dew are boots and socks were getting soaked. We didn't want to get any blisters. The section of the Trans Canada Trail was more challenging considering we had to climb up and down steeper hills and more of them but the majority of the trail was very easy. By the time we got back to our campsite we had hiked 5 miles. We had another super hike.

We rested a little while and then I made soup for lunch. The temperature today didn't get out of the 40's. The blind in the kitchen stopped working correctly a couple of weeks ago and Larry had fixed it where it kind of worked. So today he decided to work on it. While he was working on it he saw how filthy it was so once he got it to work correctly he cleaned it. He did an excellent job. 

About 2:00 we decided to go take a shower. The bathroom across from our site had showers but it wasn't heated so we decided to walk over to the Birch campground where it has newer bathrooms. They had a small heater and they were warmer but not a lot. We decided we could put up with the cold. The actual showers were excellent. The hot water started out almost too hot and you only had to press the button once for the shower to work. After our showers we went back to the Minnie.

Once there we stayed in it for the rest of the day, we read while the heater kept things comfortable. A rain shower came in around 6:00 and stayed around all night. It may be cold but we're having a great time.