Ken's Journal
No. 5 - Summer 2005

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
June 11-12, 2005 - Days 11-12 on the road. Part I.

I left St Ignace June 5 and headed west. As you cross the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on US2 you are pretty much in desolation. There's little more than nothing except a few small settlements of hardy souls. I spent the night in Superior MI, just short of Duluth MN. I left Superior the next morning at 10:30am. Once you climb out of Duluth on US 53, it's pretty much 150 miles of nothing between there and International Falls. This is the great North Woods and you pass through several National and State forests. There's nothing but evergreen forest and few settlements. It looks a lot like western Maine, northern New Hampshire and Vermont.

I made it to International Falls MN by 3:30pm. During the winter, this place is often noted on the Weather Channel as having the coldest temperatures in the US. The weather is pretty miserable here now - chilly, misty, rainy and windy. I take a full day here to do some shopping and wash some clothes before crossing into Canada.

On the morning of June 8 I make the crossing into Fort Frances, Ontario. Apparently the Canadian border people have little to entertain them - they searched the RV, inside and out, top to bottom. Who knows what they are looking for. I wasted an hour at the border while they rooted through my stuff. It wasn't just me either - I was kept company by a number of pick-up trucks towing fishing boats - the border people didn't give them any slack either. I think they were looking for contraband potatoes. They asked me if I had any firearms (no) or POTATOES!! I guess they just couldn't believe that in such a large motor home I had no potatoes - three different people asked if I had any - go figure.

Leaving Ft Frances, the weather was overcast, misty and with occasional light rain the rest of the day. I made it to a park in Portage, Manitoba just west of Winnipeg for the night. Apparently they've had a lot of rain up here. The park is muddy and a lot of the sites are under water. Although I'm on the Trans-Canada Hiway, I'm virtually alone on the road.

The next day I leave Portage and make it to a campground just south of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and the day after that I make it as far as Edmonton, Alberta. I decide to spend a couple full days in Edmonton - there's a lot to see here!