Another great day. Within a couple of hours of leaving Thunder Bay, I drove through typical lake lowlands, some nice marsh complete with those archetypical (/ɑrtʃtɪpɪkəl/) marsh plants, marsh verging on forest, pure forest, forest with a mix of of evergreen and deciduous (naked, this time of year) trees, rocky areas, lakeside forests, and probably several other permutations of lake, marsh, forest, and rocks that I’ve neglected. All really, really beautiful. Many of them utterly spectacular.
And then, nearing Winnipeg, I was faced with the choice: stay on the main highway and go through a big city, or continue on backroads that would take somewhat longer. But I’ve been really enjoying the Canadian backroads, those couple of hours on Friday when I was concerned about running out of gas and freezing to death in the snow notwithstanding. And one big highway through a big city is exactly like another, and I’ve seen enough of those.
So it was the backroads again, this time heading up through Whitemouth (town motto: “Beware the zebra mussel”), Whiteshell (town motto: “There is no actual town here”), and Gimli (town motto: “Aye, Legolas”). Wonderful, scenic two lane roads that were neither too twisty nor too straight. They weren’t in great repair either, but once I settled down and stopped picking my way around the uneven bits the way I would in the Lotus, the H1 didn’t even notice the bumps.
I nearly filled up my camera’s memory card with pictures of scenic roads, scenic lakes, scenic trees, and scenic skies. But a the end of the day, one beautiful country road with artful foliage and a tranquil pond reflecting gorgeous clouds looks much like another, so I’m only uploading the canonical examples. These aren’t “this was a beautiful spot” pictures. These are “here are a few examples of what I saw for six hours straight” pictures.
After another beautiful sunset (it must be a law up here), I found myself still a couple of hours out of the next city with hotels, gas stations and all that stuff. The night drive was also beautiful, with no moon and the kind of stars that you only see in the country. However, it is somewhat nerveracking to try to enjoy stars while barreling along at 100kph (62mph) in a 3275kg (7200lb) truck, especially with all of those bright yellow “beware of moose in road (especially at night)” warning signs.
Entertainment notes: Plato & a Platypus was ok but not great; some good jokes, but only middling writing quality, and a fairly poor vocal performance on the audiobook. Zoon is still the ultimate goth metal album 10 years later. And I am constantly impressed with Dreamweb. It’s just so cool sonically, and has a great approach to narrative.
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