0058 8th July - Churchill to Moon Lake

Woke up fairly early, settled up with Colleen for the campsite, and headed into Thompson to fuel up and get some food supplies for the trip south – Remember I had emptied my larder and turned my fridge off while I left Troopie parked for 3 days while I had been in Churchill.  I had calculated that if I filled up with fuel in Thompson at the more expensive Canadian fuel prices ($1.30 per litre), I should be able to get to the US border before I had to fuel up again at $1.05 a litre.  Very helpful to have enough fuel capacity to be able to travel over 1200 kms without refuelling !!

 

Basically a very boring day scenery and driving wise, driving all the way down through Manitoba, past Lake Winnipeg, and down towards Winnipeg itself.  They had experienced some quite severe storms and flooding in southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan over the past few days, and there were reports of some roads being blocked, so I was trying to avoid them – Fortunately most of the bad flooding had subsided by the time I got there, although there was always plenty of water in the fields beside the road.

Highlight of the day was probably all the wild flowers beside the road.  Around lunch time there were borders of white daisies along the edges of the road – Big contrast to the mass of purple flowers I had encountered previously. Then there were orange daisies, with dark red centres, which were a sudden change !

I decided to avoid Winnipeg and the much busier border crossings on main highways, and headed a little south west.   After turning west on highway 68, we crossed on a narrow spit of land between Lake Winnipeg to the south, and some other lake to the north – Quite an impressive crossing, especially after all the recent rain.    

In the middle of all this flat farming country, there were minimal camp sites due to minimal tourists, and Canada does not have regular Rest Areas like the US does, so when I spotted a small Provincial Park at Riding Mountain, with camping, on the map, I headed towards it.  By 7 pm I had had enough, so when the Moon Lake camp site came up, I headed into the park, picked a site, had my meal, and went straight to bed.  Hard work, this travelling over these open plains. 

 

Pics are here :-  https://picasaweb.google.com/117739775480775657932/0059ThompsonToMoonLake?authkey=Gv1sRgCKCd0fPRyMKnggE#