Grandpa, Uncle, whatever!
. And hmm, I don't know Booster Lake, I guess I don't know lakes that far away from Nopiming. Oh well!
Anyway, I upload pictures:
http://www.javaop.com/~ron/ospap/show_category.php?category_id=34And, here's the story for anybody who feels like reading. I'll try to keep it brief, while explaining everything .....
We left Friday morning. We drove about 4 hours to get there in our rental car. It was just me and a friend. Our car was packed tight, and we thought we had everything. Ha. We both like the same music, sort of, so we had a good time going there. We stopped for gas half way, in a town called Lac Du Bonnet. Then we passed my friend's friend's cottage, which is on Bird River, which was pretty cool. Eventually, we saw a couple deer, and later a bunch of prairie chickens. I am convinced that Prairie Chickens are the dumbest animals ever, when I stopped right behind them and honked and they kept looking around like feathered little morons. The only other event on the way in was stopping at Shoe Lake to use the washrooms.
We got there, and set up the tent and table and everything, and that went smoothly. Eventually, we realized that we forgot to bring a can opener, which sucked because eating canned food would be tricky. When my friend asked for the camp-stove, I handed her the camp-barbecue. She asked me where the stove was. I thought that WAS the stove! Since I packed, we didn't have one. Uh oh!
After getting set up, we did a little drive to my grandparent's cottage, which is at Long Lake. They just happened to have a little stove and a spare can opener. They were happy to see we got there safely (the roads are a little treacherous at times). So we got what we needed from them, with a promise I'd visit them on Saturday or Sunday, and went back to cook dinner. On the way back we saw a fox carrying a rabbit. It ran down a road towards an old goldmine, so we followed it but it quickly lost us. We walked around some old ruins there, they were neat.
So we go to cook, and start to realize we're missing things (like milk and butter -- made it hard to make Kraft Dinner). Eventually it occurred to me that we were missing everything we'd bought at Wal-Mart, which was mostly everything we bought. For supper, I had Kraft Dinner with no milk/butter and some smokies cooked over the fire. My friend had bacon.
We were both tired, so we made a camp fire and listened to music and stuff for the evening. She turned in about 8pm or so, and I stayed up till about 10. I sat by the lake in the cold, watching the mist come up, with a full moon, reading Edger Allan Poe stories with a flashlight. That was pretty amazing. Eventually, I went for a walk around the campground (without a flashlight, the moon was so bright). There were only 2 other sites in use, and no bears.
On Saturday, my friend slept in late, till around 12:00pm (16 hours!). I got up pretty early, warmed up by the fire (I was totally frozen), then read my book for a few hours. For breakfast, I had pizza pops cooked over the fire (I don't think you have those in the US, but they're pizza fillings in a bread shell thing). For lunch, I had dry instant noodles. Eventually, we went to a drive to the nearest town, Bissett, which is about an hour away. We bought groceries (for outrageous prices -- it's a mining town of less than 1000 people with one store). The lady running the store was a total loudmouth bitch, we loved her. I backed the rental car into a giant tire outside the store, hopefully they won't notice the black mark when I take it back :-o. There's something about tiny isolated mining towns that scares me. I always feel like an outsider, and I'm always sure that they have some kind of horrible secret that they can't tell anybody about. They're all vampires or they worship Satan or they sacrifice children or something, who knows? Later, we went fishing by our campsite. After about an hour, my friend got bored and left. 5 minutes later, I caught a jackfish (see my pictures). It wasn't huge, but my friend was totally upset, having never fished before (I've fished lots). The hook was wedged really good in his mouth, so I had to use the glove thing to get a good grip on it.
Saturday night, we read a book of campfire ghost stories. Of course, we tried to scare each other in stupid ways, such as:
Her: can you get me the Oreos?
Me: how have you already eaten half of them?
Her: I haven't opened them yet!
Me: Then who did (dududu!)
Throughout the story, I could hear rustling in the forest behind me. My friend kept saying that I was trying to scare her, because she couldn't hear it, but I kept hearing it without seeing what was causing it. I figured it was a rabbit or a vole or something. It wasn't until the next night that I caught it -- it was a frog.
On Sunday, I went to my grandparents' for a couple hours, and visited their neighbours. On my way there, I saw a bear walking down the road. My friend was totally disappointed because she wanted to see a bear so badly. Apparently the Neighbours (the Andersonses) saw the bear while out for a walk, and they walked backwards back to their cottage. The rest of the day, I read some more and not much else. Our barbecue broke, so we cooked hamburgers over the fire pit. I wish I got pictures, it was a pretty huge flame.
Then today, we came back home. We stopped at Chicken Chef on the way home and had a good meal, and got home, unpacked, and here we are!
So yeah, enjoy the pictures
