Daylight,, Ghost Town, and a Prison Camp--Marathon, ON June 30, 2010

The days here are really long. It gets dark about 10:30-11pm and is bright very early. How early it gets light is a guess, because we are both sleeping late as we have finally resolved to being on vacation. It took several days but we made it. My cell phone did not ring a single time today with work problems. Anyway, the weather is cold at night (4o's last night), and hot in the sun and mild in the shade. This I would classify as the Canadian weather that I know.

We went searching for an elusive ghost town called Jackfish, ON. It was a railroad town that fed coal to the steam engines and was abandoned after diesel locomotives were introduced. I hope the same thing happens to the oil producing countries after another form of cheap fuel for cars is found--bless their hearts. The dirt road that led to the former town of Jackfish was supposedly after this certain bridge and over the valley and through the woods right next to Grandma's house. Needless to say, we never found the town. We drove several miles of dirt roads and saw all kinds of railroad stuff but not the town. But guess what we did see? Go ahead guess. Ummm nope. It was a cougar. She/he was sitting in one of the dirt roads as we passed by. At first I thought it was a wolf, then it got up and moved across the road and the silhouette was clearly feline. The cougar was far enough away that we didn't want to disturb it. Yeah right. When Riley gets scared he sometimes pees a little puddle where he is standing. Between Riley and me we had a good sized puddle going. As far as I was concerned, that cougar owned that dirt road. Deb asked me why didn't we go closer because we were in The Crapper, and it couldn't hurt us. Yeah right, that cougar could be one of the cougars that carries a can opener and then where would we be. The dogs would be whining, Deb would be screaming, and I'd have to get out and go beat up on that cougar for scratching The Crapper. I would too. If it messed with me, I'd drive back to Tim Horton's and get Mama Godzilla. That would make that cougar pee in its tracks. If you don't know who Mama Godzilla is you need to read the old stuff first.

We went to Neys Provincial Park today. It is a small park near Marathon, ON. Actually it is right across the street from the lunchground. The interesting thing about this park is that it housed high security risk Nazis during the second world war. There were several prisoner of war camps along Lake Superior's Canadian side. It seems Britain was overflowing with Nazis POWs and Canada decided to take around 7000 of them. About 500 of them came to Neys. Isn't that fact interesting? I learned something new today. How many of you knew that 7000 Nazis and Japanese were billeted in this area? I'll bet none of you. It seems the POWs were treated so nicely and they liked their captors so much that some stayed after the war. The Nazis were allowed to take correspondence courses from the University of Saskatchewan (where Deb graduated from college) during their detainment. I won't go into this further because you can google it, but it was interesting to learn of the camps and the northern hospitality. I know where those Guantanamo knuckleheads can go. They come here terrorists and leave Mormons. I'm not sure which is worse. Okay, Mormons.

We had lunch at the lunchground today. Again, if you don't understand what a lunchground is you should have read the former blog entries first. If so, my rantings might make better sense; however, my rantings will never make good sense, because I am at the wheel of this sucker. Anyway, we went to the lunchground for lunch today. The Lunch Lady was in there and she did a good job of preparing lunch. What caught my eye (Yall know that I'm not going to talk about some stupid lunch don't you) was this spray bottle that she placed onto the table along with ketchup and salt. Of course I picked it up out of curiosity and found it to have vinegar in it. What you might not know is that some Canadians like vinegar on their french fries like some Brits do. What you normally see is a bottle of malt vinegar. Oh heck no, there are no bottles in the lunchground. What made this unique was the spray bottle. I picked the thing up and smelled of it, and I thought it was Windex or 409 or something she used to clean the tables. Oh no, it was intended for you to spritz your french fries instead of drowning them in malt vinegar. Deb thought that was it was a great idea using a spray bottle, and I'll bet we have a dern vinegar spritzer when we get home. I thought that was totally silly unless you wanted to wash windows or get bugs off your car's bumper. Yuck. Nasty. Deb saw me look at the spray bottle and laugh fully knowing I would talk about it here. Well she was correct.

Tomorrow is a short drive of 150 miles to Thunder Bay, ON where we will stay two nights. If I use the analogy of Lake Superior being round like a clock, we are at 12 o'clock now and will be at 10:30 tomorrow.

Manana Yall.
Al