Pics of Sioux Narrows, ON and The Wieners

Monty (left) and Riley riding under the First Mate's legs in The Love Boat. Click on the images to make them expand.


Sundown at our campsite in Sioux Narrows.


Daytime picture of our campsite in Sioux Narrows, ON.


Deb took this picture of another campsite in Sioux Narrows. This campsite looks quite ominous. I'm glad we were not parked next to them. Note there are two of those things. His and hers? Yuck. Note this is in front of the boat dock.

Mosquitos, Marjorette, Carwash, Moose Calls--July 11, 2010 Naicam, SK

Oh my where do I start? I haven't updated in a few days and boy did the topics stack up. I need to offload some of the more funny stuff, or I might break something in my head.

My routine here in Naicam is about the same, I get up, shave, bathe, and put on Saskatchewan Aftershave. Saskatchewan Aftershave is commonly called Deepwoods Off Insect Repellent. Good Lord, mosquitoes are the provincial bird here and are plentiful. If you stand still without bug spray more than five seconds, the mosquitoes will suck out your brains and turn you into a democrat (little d is intended here). We all know we don't need more liberals, so I usually spray myself twice just in case.




Naicam, had a town homecoming this weekend. The planners had all kinds of activities scheduled but the most interesting event was the parade. The majorette that headed up the parade looked about eighty years old and was all decked out in a majorette's outfit. I'm pretty sure she made her outfit, because majorette outfits don't come with underwire bras and suphose. This woman was twirling and flipping and spinning like crazy which really impressed me. Now you haven't lived until you've seen a majorette that performed on The Mayflower. She really did a good job of twirling that baton. Really, I was impressed. But what do I know? Further in the parade, there was a float from the soccer club. It was a truck pulling a large farm trailer with a fence around it similar to what you would see on a sidewalk. Inside the fence were several kids kicking around a soccer ball. Yep, I said kids standing up kicking a soccer ball as part of the parade. I just knew the trailer would lunge and junior would do a half-gainer off over the fence and get ran over by the antique tractor that followed him in the precession. What was really horrible, was I waited through the entire parade and Santa was not at the end of it. That's how Deb got me to go by promising me that Santa was at the end of it. Fibber, fibber, fibber. Next time I want to drive one of those antique tractors. I could get a megaphone and speak Southern to crowd which would be entertaining to them I'm sure.

Another activity that I attended this weekend was a homecoming church service in Naicam's school auditorium. The service was pretty much a standard service that you would find in about any church in the US or Canada. What was really notable were two things. First there was a woman that sat behind me that sang really, really loud and poorly. The Bible says "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord" not "Make a grunting and dying gorilla call unto the Lord." Deb and I got to laughing so hard that I was afraid my mother-in-law was going to smack both of us on the back of our heads. I would like to smack the person that told that woman her moose mating calls were singing. Then it dawned on me. What a great joke to play . All you have to do is convince her that she is talented and should broadcast her yelping dog voice for the entire congregation. Then the jokester could set in the back row and laugh at the people wincing in agony that are sitting in front of Moose Mating Call Woman. Somebody played a brilliant joke on The Southern Boy. I'm just glad Monty and Riley were not there. They would have been howling along with Moose Mating Call Woman which would have earned them a smack from my mother-in-law too. The second thing that was notable about the service was that this auditorium had air conditioning and a rather robust air conditioner at that. The temperature was set to the Summer in the South setting instead of Summer in Canada setting. You have never heard so much complaining about being cold in your life. The only comfortable person in the whole auditorium was The Southern Boy, deaf but comfortable. I think air conditioner reform in Canada was setback years today. Then it dawned on me, the AC was part of the joke. What a brilliant prank.

We went to the local carwash tonight. It is located in the town called Spalding, SK which is a relatively short drive away. Now, you are wondering why I would mention a carwash. Right.? And the reason is that the carwash was located on a dirt road. A really dusty dirt road too. I had to think about the situation for a minute. If I washed the car, it would be wet and attract dirt from the road on the trip out which would negate the act of washing it. So, I washed it, and it emerged from the dirt road cleaner than when it entered. Who would have guessed that? Believe me, I tried to turn this paragraph into a democrat joke but couldn't. I'll try harder in the future.

Well that is all for today. I have other stuff to talk about but not today. Monty, Riley, and myself leave Naicam on Tuesday and pick up Walter for the trip home. I'm just sorry that I didn't record Moose Mating Call Woman so I could pull the same joke on Walter. Oh well, there will be other opportunities in the next couple of weeks.

I'll write more tomorrow if my hearing returns.
Al

Grandma's House, Aardvarks, Walter--Naicam, SK July 08, 2010

The weather in Naicam, SK has been nice. The days are usually low 70s and low 60s at night. There has been a lot or rain here. This area is primarily farming and the crops are in trouble due to an overabundance of rain. But I've heard about the temperatures in Raleigh being so horrible. I saw a news report that said Toronto was having an awful time with the heat. Their temperatures were 10-12 degrees less than Raleigh's which was causing their heads to explode. Thousands upon thousands of Torono folks heads exploded. If they understood AC they would still have their heads but that is not the case. Oh well, in Raleigh we are used to the heat and sort of expect it. I don't miss the heat, but I do miss my bed.

The puppies are doing great. They have been to Grandma's house before. When we got here, the puppies remembered Grandma's house and were happy to be out of the motorhome. Grandma's house has lots of places for them to explore. The Love Boat is moored in the backyard of Deb's parent's house. They like going between The Love Boat and the house. This is puppy heaven--no heat and lots of attention.

We went to Dairy Queen yesterday during a trip to the town 35 miles from Naicam. Deb wanted to go to Dairy Queen. Good lord. I said fine and pulled in the parking lot and refused to go through the drive-thru. I saw no need to perform for the locals like I had to in Neepawa. So we went inside. Deb's Dad sat at a table and Deb and I went to the counter. Of course there were kids manning the store. So, we went up to one of the kids and order. I told the girl I wanted chocolate ice cream. The kid looks at me and said, "We can't serve chocolate. It is only allowed in aardvarks". I looked at Deb and she didn't understand the kid either and asked her to repeat herself. Again the kid said you could only get chocolate in aardvarks. Deb said she understood the kid the second time. There are several cultural differences between Raleigh and Canada. However, I know the only aardvarks in Canada are in zoos. No, there are no aardvark crossing signs like you find with moose. The puppies might like to play with an aardvark but there aren't any here even though you can only get chocolate in aardvarks at Dairy Queen. So, I just whistled and walked away. I've learned not to ask questions. But low and behold, Deb brought up the subject while we were eating the synthetic, vanilla iced product that Dairy Queen dispenses. Deb said she had a hard time understanding the kid at the counter and that the kid said you could only get chocolate in arcades. Now that is an outright fib. The kid said you could only get chocolate in aardvarks. I heard the kid say it two times. Deb likes to fabricate stuff.

The trip up here has been tough on The Love Boat. We had several things fail. Most of the failures I can attribute to rough roads. Ohio, Michigan, Ontario .... were especially rough and bumpy. We went to California in November and returned in January and had zero failures. Nada. The vibration of the rough roads has taken it toll on The Love Boat. I had to have parts flown into Raleigh that Walter is bringing up next week, because I can't get them locally. Which brings me to the next subject.

You may remember Walter from the trip home from California in January. Walter flew to Texas and Deb flew home, because Deb needed to go to work before we could get home. Walter loves this stuff so much he is flying into Regina, SK on Tuesday. Deb is staying here until the end of July, and Walter and I are bringing the motorhome back to Raleigh. The Love Boat sails on Tuesday when Walter arrives. We will arrive in Raleigh near the end of the month. The puppies are coming with us, and they like Walter a lot. I've bought some neat fishing gear for us and plan for us to fish in Sioux Narrows on the way home. That should be quite a story. We are planning to rent a boat and the puppies will go out with us.

I'm really tired today and can't seem to find funny stuff to talk about. I'll reboot and will have more to say tomorrow. Bye for now.
Al

Flooding, Dancing Southern Boy, Dairy Queen--Naicam, SK July 06, 2010

Ok, internet connections for the last two days have not been as plentiful as I would like. We left Sioux Narrows, Ontario on July 4, 2010 and drove to Neepawa, Manitoba. Then, we finished the drive to Naicam, Saskatchewan today. In total about 625 miles. We traveled 2362 miles in The Love Boat since leaving Raleigh. Well, let's get down to business.

Remember the massive rainfall that happened in Sioux Narrows, ON? Two days after that rainfall we packed up and tried to leave the campground. Notice I said "tried" to leave. The rain had turned the ground into a muddy mess, and The Love Boat got stuck. I've gotten stuff stuck many times in my life. I stopped the tire spinning before The Love Boat dug to far in, then we carried gravel and threw it under the wheels which allowed us to pull out of the mud. The Love Boat's wheels and part of the undercarriage was pretty much covered in mud, and I was a little bummed that the mud was going to harden into pottery on the wheels. About three miles after we got out on the main highway, the road was flooded with about a foot of water from the same storm. The water was 200 feet or so wide. Past readers of the blog will remember that we can't back up The Love Boat with The Crapper in tow. For those that don't know what I am referring to, let's just say the front wheels on the towed car don't respond correctly when backing. So, we approached the water, and I stopped and thought for a few seconds. There were four things goings through my mind. First, the water was deep enough for us to get stuck and do massive damage. Second, I could not back up and there was not room to turn around. Third, if we could turn around the detour was likely several hundred miles. Fourth, I wanted to wash the mud off The Love Boat. So, as we sat there, we watched a couple other idiots ford the water. So, I got brave and drove The Love Boat and Crapper into the water. The water was deep but The Love Boat was high enough to ford one foot of water with no problem--as it turned out. I've done a lot of things crazy things since we started RVing ten years ago, but I have never forded one foot of water with an RV. The Love Boat sailed through the 200 feet long, one foot deep water just fine. Might I add I knew the water did not have a current flowing over the road and would not have tried this with a current flowing. Even The Crapper made it through fine. And you betcha, the mud on The Love Boat was gone. As the saying goes, God takes care of drunks, fools, and total idiots that drive their stupid motorhomes through Lake Sioux Narrows. Good times Yall.

We stopped for the night last night in Neepawa, MB as I just mentioned. This was a nice campground in the middle of nowhere. Last year before the California trip, Walter and I installed this neat device on The Love Boat that is basically just a wifi repeater. It has a big outside antenna that I crank up and a small router style device inside that amplifies wifi signals. It is quite impressive and can pick up wifi networks from up to a mile. In some campgrounds the wifi networks are located a long distance from your campsite and the repeater is necessary. We have used the repeater several times since leaving Raleigh on this trip. Did I mention that it picks up wifi signals up to a mile? Well, I cranked up the antenna in Neepawa, turned on the amplifier, and the repeater found no networks at all. Nada. Zip. At first I thought the repeater was bad. because this campground was in town and should have picked up something. But it didn't. Then it dawned on me that Neepawa had no wifi networks. Good lord, somebody needs to bring that town into the 21 century. Which brings me to the next topic.

Since we arrived in Manitoba and Saskatchewan (yes I can spell Saskatchewan from memory) several people have walked up to me and simply stated that we were a long way from home. Actually, these folks only wanted to talk to me. Correction, they wanted to hear this Southern boy speak Southern to them. You betcha (picked that saying up in Sault Sainte Marie), I am a walking, talking, Southern dancing bear of sorts. This has happened several times mind you . But I got a little rattled today when we stopped for gas (please don't get me started on the high price of gas in Canada). I was washing the huge bug guts off the windshield, when this guy walks up to me with a paper in his hand and states, "What is your purpose for being up here so far away from home?" At home the New York Yankees all would have freaked out and their heads would have exploded or something. To be totally truthful, at home if somebody walks up to you while pumping gas, it is usually a B.O. voter wanting you to give them money. But, I checked my self-defenses long enough to think the situation through. I kid you not, I actually did not speak for an uncomfortable length of time, because I needed time to reboot my head. A system overload had occurred, and this guy upset my karma something fierce. I'll have to return to the vortexes (ggrrr) in Sedona, AZ to reset my chakra now. If you don't know what that means, go into the archives and read the Sedona, AZ posts. Anyway, after the mind reboot, I decided this guy didn't vote for B.O. and was harmless. So, I told him we were going to Deb's parent's house to which he said, "that's a good enough reason". Well I was feeling all warm and snugly that I provided this esteemed gentleman with such a worthy answer. In actuality, he didn't care about why I was sitting in Godknowswhere, Manitoba, he just wanted the Southern boy dancing bear to talk Southern to him. You betcha. So, I did and made his day. I might as well be from Mars. "Yall take me to your leaders. Beep, beep". Geez Louise.

Deb wanted to go to Neepawa's Dairy Queen. Deb loves Dairy Queen and for the life of me I can't see why. But, I went with her to Dairy Queen. Now here is where the fun starts. We pulled into the parking lot, and I had to make a decision. Should I park and let Deb run in, or do I pull up to the drive-thru? I knew that if we went through the drive-thru there was going to be some Yalling and dancing of The Southern Boy. I just knew it. Deb says that we should go through the drive-thru, and I reluctantly said fine. Did I mention that this is where the fun starts? So, we pulled up to the magic board and the kid in the store said something that I didn't understand. I asked Deb what she wanted, and she didn't know, so I told the kid, "just a moment please". Well the kid heard banjo music playing from the drive-thru lane, and he knew that a Deliverance movie character had pulled into the Neepawa Dairy Queen. He said something else really fast that I didn't catch. Regardless, while Deb decided on her poison, I told Speaker Box Boy that I wanted a small, dipped, chocolate cone. He comes back with, "You want two hot dogs?" Of course, Deb told me that Speaker Box Boy couldn't understand me. I guess I had given too many performances that day and had worn out my Yaller mechanism. I totally discounted her notion, because I had spoken to him clearly and in my normal paced voice. He just couldn't hear me over the banjo music playing in his head. Deb told me again he couldn't understand my accent and that Dairy Queen didn't have chocolate ice cream. I knew that was nonsense, so I told Speaker Box Boy that Deb wanted a medium, vanilla cone. Speaker Box Boy said something that I couldn't understand, and I drove up to the window. Guess what? In a few moments, Speaker Box Boy emerged with Deb's cone, and a small, dipped, chocolate cone. Well La De Da. He did understand me. I gave Deb the I told you so look and left.

See Yall tomorrow.
Al

Sioux Narrows, ON July 4, 2010

Yesterday, we bid Lake Superior goodbye and set sail for The Sunset Country. We arrived in Sioux Narrows which is sort of kind of next to Nestor Falls, ON. When we blew through here several years ago and decided to return and spend some time. Well, here we are. We got in last night and just had time to set up the motorhome when the rain started. Then the power went out. The storm brought thunder and lighting that made The Puppies shiver and quake each time the thunder boomed. Monty put on his combat helmet from Nam and ducked into his bomb shelter or at what you would call the dining room table. He was not a happy puppy. The rain came down at a rate of about 2-3 inches per hour which is a sizable storm. There was a small river running under The Love Boat until about midnight or later. Good times Yall.

Since the power was off and we needed some drinking water, we decided to go into Sioux Narrows. Sioux Narrows is a wide spot in the road with a few businesses, one of which was the trading post or what is better described as fleecing post. A gallon of water was $3.59 plus tax of course we stocked up at that price. The water in the campground has a sign that says to boil your water for one minute before consuming. My impression was, oh goody, nasty water. Yummy. So we bought two gallons of water and liked it. Oh baby did we like it. So we left and went to the Sioux Narrows Provincial Park on our way back to The Love Boat. We pulled up to the entrance and Deb walked up to building and came back and stated there was a sign on the door that said the office was closed. So, we decided to go in and check the campsites out for the return trip in two weeks. We pulled through the gate and a car sort of tries to ram us head on and a woman sticks here arm out of the window and asks us if she could help us. I thought about it a second and decided that she needed to go into town and whoop somebody's butt over charging us $3.59 for a gallon of water. But she didn't look very useful for that type of thing, so I told her we wanted to check out the campsites for a return trip. Then the fun started. She stated that it was not a good night for viewing the park as she was "getting the campers settled down after the park caught the tailend of a tornado". We are in the sticks and we had not checked the weather that day due to the lack of any electromagnetic waves of any sorts here. No TV, no satellite (due to the storm), and no local radio. It turns out the the "tailend of the tornado" was only a storm and the tornado occurred more that 500 miles from here. The Car Ramming Woman was all flustered about nothing. Car Ramming Woman would blow a head gasket should she come down to North Carolina where tornadoes and hurricanes are irregular bedfellows. She would be running around acting up so much that Monty would have to tell her to shut up. I can just hear Monty telling her, "Buck up woman. Put this helmet on and jump into your foxhole. You're yapper is giving away our position. Haven't you ever been in a storm before?"

We got up this morning and stepped out The Love Boat into our campsite which overlooks this huge lake. This campsite is very pretty, squishy but pretty. We heard the cry of what Deb said was a loon. It sounded more like somebody repeated sitting on a chicken but what do I know. This area is renowned for its fishing and hunting. While driving in yesterday, the GPS should as much lake space as land. This really is a beautiful place when you're not having to back stroke through the campsite.

A couple days ago in Thunder Bay, we went to a local RV dealer for a part for The Love Boat. When we walked in the guy at the counter asked us how we were, "...fairing this blistering heat?" What he was referring to was the day time temperature of 82 degrees. Good Lord, at home we see 82 degrees in the winter. Blistering Hot Boy's head would be spinning around like a Tilt-Whirl if spent time in NC during the summer. The weather forecast in Raleigh was calling for a cool streak of 85 degrees over the weekend as high ninety degree days were the norm when we left. Geez Louise.

I'll try to update more later today.
Al

Photos of the northern Lake Superior shoreline.

You can click on the image and it will expand.

This made me laugh for hours.

I normally don't photograph things in the men's restroom, but this made me laugh.Below are photographs of a handdryer that I saw in a little town south of Thunder Bay. If you look closely there is graffiti written above each symbol. Normally you would expect the typical graffiti that says something like, push button (usually butt), wipe hands on pants. The first photo is handdryer, the second is a zoomed image of the instruction plate. If you click on the images it will expand.


Above the symbols it said: Push button, receive bacon, eat bacon.