2011 CHURCHILL OR BUST DAY 17 OMAK TO HOME YEY! WE GUESS....

This moring we left the "Roadway Inn" at Omak and started our final leg of the journey home. What's really sort of funny is that, unbeknownst to either Beth or I, the Roadway Inn used to be the Omak Travel Lodge. This in itself isn't note worthy, but the fact that we stayed in the same place twenty eight years ago on the first night of our one week honeymoon trip to Banff & Jasper was a riot. We had no idea we were booking the same rat hole of a place (ok so Beth thinks it wasn't such a rat hole anymore), until we arrived and things seemed vagely familiar. Beth asked the lady at the desk who confirmed that, yes it once was a travel lodge, many years ago. I guess it was a fitting end bringing some sort of closure to our journey to see the polar bears of Churchill Manitoba, on Hudson's Bay. We did it and had great fun doing it. Oh yes we also saw a grizzly cub, black bear, foxes, lots of dear, caribou, and lots of other critters. Today we saw a hawk flying over us while riding next to the Columbia. The hawk had a huge fish in its claws.....way too cool! BTW home is great, thanks to Susie for holding down the fort while the old ones were off playing.

2011 CHURCHILL OR BUST DAY 16 RADIUM HOT SPRINGS TO OMAK

We never had been on these roads before. It sure was worth it. The lanscape is more beautiful around every corner. There are lots of nice, well kept, small towns in this are. Generally there seems to this germanic/bavarian theme, which I get. The farms are just great, smaller than before but with lots more variety. We crossed at a tiny boarder crossing with no problems and kept following the headwaters of the Columbia River all the way to Omak. Good times!

I grew up on Edelweiss Strasse #7 in Vaterstetten in Germany, just kind of fun to see the street name here in Radium Hot Springs.



The best snitzel in town was supposedly to be had here, but alas, we just stopped for some synthetic motor oil for the bike. It was only 10 AM too early for snitzel.....darn.

Back to the USA Crossed With No Problems

The Columbia River

2011 CHURCHILL OR BUST DAY 15 JASPER TO RADIUM HOT SPRINGS

Today was a short 250 mile trip from Jasper to Radium Hot Springs via the Iceline Highway through Jasper, Yoho, Banff, & Kootnay National Parks. First thing in the morning we went up the side road to Mt. Edeth Clavell Glacier. What a fantastic place. Check out the video.

2011 CHURCHILL OR BUST DAY 14 VEGREVILLE TO JASPER

The Rocky Mountains of Canada made us feel like we were almost home. Lots of green, mountain goats and cooler temperatures. It's nice to have long sweeping up and downhill curves again. Riding a bike to the horizon for hours on end is not the most intersting thing in the world. Stayed a nice little hotel downtown Jasper. Jasper is sure a well kept town, we had a pleasant evening walk and dinner outside, before hitting the sack for the night.Heading back into the Rocky Mountains of Canada is starting to make us feel like we are back

2011 CHURCHILL OR BUST DAY 13 PRINCE ALBERT TO VEGREVILLE

Back to the one point perspective driving of the plains.

We ended up in an interesting town called Vegreville. Apparently it was settled by Ukrainians. Hey a new super sized mascot, this time an egg (see below). I think we get lots of our oil and natural gas from this area along with the canola and flax which fills the scenery with deep blues and golden yellow agains the blue sky. Can't help thinking about fracking and how it has the potential to polute ground water, sorry about the downer.

A SMALL GRAIN ELEVATOR COMING OUR WAY GOOD THING WE'RE ON A BIKE




A REFINERY ON THE HORIZON

THE VEGERVILLE EGG?

IT MUST BE A UKRANIAN THING

2011 CHURCHILL OR BUST DAY 12 THE PAS TO PRINCE ALBERT

PERMAFROST ROAD CONSTRUCTION

FLIN FLON'S MASCOT

THE STORY ABOUT THE FLIN FLON GUY

Out of The Pas we headed north to Flin Flon, a mining town, en route to Prince Albert (no not the in the can one!) . This day we will be the farthest north we will go on this trip. Lots of tiaga and lots of terrible roads on permafrost. I don't see how they work on these roads without importing lots of rip rap. Looks like they just throw down some fabric and hope for the best, which isn't the best.

Flin Flon is a mining town, silver, copper, and they have a smelter. As with so many places they had this giant little mascot figure in the picture below. Let see so far: moose, swan, now the guy with backpack.

Stopped at an interesting "resort" for lunch if you can call it that. Had a Kokanee and a hamburger made from scratch by the matriarch of the place. She carried a flask of some kind of booze under her apron and took a swigg every once in a while. Her son's and there buddies were also pretty much drunk, but friendly drunk. They were pretty interested in the bike and where we came from and were generally pretty chatty. I couldn't see being a teenager stuck out here in the middle of no where. It's sad that the first nation's people have lost there home with nothing to replace it. Not unlike at home...sad situation.

The burger was good and we were off. We were going to stay in a cabin at Caribou Creek but didn't. They had a big storm there a week ago and the creek was literally flowing under our cabin and we were surrounded by broken off trees and mosquitoes the size of bats. The cabin and no running water and smelled like leaking propane plus had little or no bedding. I had a fever comming on and we decided to move on to Prince Albert where we found something a bit less rustic for the night.

WE HIT A BIT OF WEATHER BEFOR THE DAY WAS OVER

2011 CHURCHILL OR BUST DAY 11 BACK ON THE TRAIN!!

What can I say it was just like the train to Churchill except in reverse. So check out the earlier post for train details. The only thing that should be noted is that this is truely the slowest train ride in the world. I noticed a couple of times we were passes by rather large mosquitoes (the size of bees), they looked into the window as they passed us and gave us that "bring it one, ya wanna race look. We arrived in The Pas only one hour late checked into the Wescana Motel (described earlier) and crashed for what was left of the night, dreaming of sugar plumb fairies and things that go scratch in the night.

2011 CHURCHILL OR BUST DAY 10 CHURCHILL HISTORY & AREA

This evening at 7:30 PM we will be back on the train to The Pas. This gives us essentially a whole day to check out Churchill, which is what we did. The area has a lot of history going back 400 years to Dutch explorers looking for the Northwest Passage. Today Churchill has three primary industries: tourism as you would guess is one of them, but it is limited to July through November; then there is the hospital which is quite large at about 35 rooms for a small community of about 900 people because its serves the whole population to the north in the arctic which numbers about 30,000 people; finally there is the grain elevator which servesa aboput 25 to 30 ships per year.

MISS PIGGY AS IT IS CALLED, RESULTED FROM A ABORTED TAKEOFF

THAT NEVER GOT CLEANED UP

CHECK OUT THE POLAR BEAR JAIL




BETH IN AN OLD FASHIONED SNARE TRAP
CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW UNHAPPY THIS BEAR WOULD BE!

I'VE NEVER SEEN SO MANY BEAR TRAPS AT ONCE

THEY HAVE A SUB DIVISION (OF SORTS)

POINT MARY ON THE WEST SIDE

THE FORT IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CHURCHILL RIVER

BETH THINKING ABOUT GETTING ON THE TRAIN

WE HAD TO LEAVE JUST AS CHURCHILL DAYS STARTED

JUST PULL UP YOUR 4 WHEELER

2011 CHURCHILL OR BUST DAY 9 POLAR BEARS???

It looks like it isn't "Bust" after all we did make it to Churchill, so now for the bonus....POLAR BEARS!! The high season for Bears at Churchill is last two weeks of October and the first two weeks of November. Basicly the Bears are getting ravenously hungry by that time and are just passing on the shore line waiting for the water to ice over so they can get down to business and go get some seals. So here we are in the third week in July, not ideal but we are the eternal optimists.

OK SO WE SAW PTARMIGAN



AND THEN WE SAW POLAR BEAR.....LOTS OF THEM






SWANS ? YES

BETH IS THINKING OIL CHANGE

I'M THINKING BEAR (BEER) EH!

THANK YOU HUDSON'S BAY, CHURCHILL AND THE POLAR BEARS