July 7

Trifecta!  Meet Huskie the Muskie located in a park beside Lake of the Woods in Kenora, Ontario.  (You should google Lake of the Woods, by the way.)

Here is some of the town opposite Huskie.

A delightful little town of a little over 15,000 people.  And it looked to me as though they all had boats.  There are inlets all over, so lots of mooring spots, islands dotting the water just offshore.  I may have a too happy view of the place because the sun broke out just as I reached it, but I don't think so.  Besides, anyplace that challenges the Wawa Goose and the Dryden Moose with a giant Muskie named Huskie is clearly cool.

I left Dryden this morning without putting on rain gear.  Two reasons: it was cool and the leather jacket is warmer, and I wanted to dry the boots out in the wind.  I lucked out.  It grew steadily lighter as I moved west, until, as I said, sun broke out at Kenora.  Soon after leaving Kenora, I also left Ontario and entered Manitoba.  The symbol for Manitoba is the bison, I think.  Manitoba bison are apparently better behaved than Ontario moose.  I have yet to see a sign warning people of predatory packs of bison.

Look at a map of the area between Thunder Bay and Manitoba.  The highway has to thread it's way among the lakes.  It is astonishing how many lakes there are.

One nice thing about Manitoba - the speed limit increased to 100 kph.  In Ontario, the fastest you could go legally was 90 kph.  That's about 56, 57 mph, folks.  Mighty slow, and Ontario is mighty long.

The terrain is not as interesting, however, as Manitoba is in the Canadian plains.  Flat, flat, flat, flat, flat. Still lots of trees, though, at least so far.

Got into Winnipeg and found the BMW dealer where I arranged to have my oil and filter changed.  ( I am now over 6000 miles into this trip.). Got a room at a Holiday Inn just down the street from the dealer.  Will pop in tomorrow when they open and then see when I get out of there before deciding how far I want to go.  Kind of a pedestrian necessity, oil changes, but not as pedestrian as the laundry I'm doing now.  Better go check if it's dry.