We always knew that travelling across the country in November could be fraught with potential weather delays...we just hoped it wouldn’t happen to us...but more on that soon.
We left Redden’s Camp near Kenora at 8:52am this morning. Before we pulled out, I walked down to Longbow Lake to take some pictures with the sun just rising over the trees at Golden Hour. It was so beautiful and peaceful with no other campers, or cottagers in sight and the Lake was like a mirror of glass. Longbow Lake is the next lake over from Lake of the Woods, which is the 36th largest lake in the world by area!
After an hour of driving we finally left Ontario behind and crossed into Manitoba. The roads were wet and the passing trucks left our windshield a bit of a mess to take this picture of the polar bear Manitoba border sign.
We arrived in Winnipeg around noon and decided we would stay here for the day and night instead of heading to Brandon or Portage la Prairie, just in case the storm brought freezing rain to both of those towns and we would be stuck in bad weather. We made the most of our day by filling up our diesel tank, propane tank and dumping our grey and black tank again.
Since I had never been to Winnipeg before I convinced Richard to drive Newman & Jerry downtown Winnipeg to “The Forks” where we could pick up some take out lunch and sit outside in the warm 16C day by the Assiniboine and Bow rivers, eating our lunch. Lunch today was butter chicken, rice and curried vegetables...delicious!
Unfortunately the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, established in 2008, was closed but the architecture still looked pretty cool from the outside. It was the first new museum to be created in Canada since 1967 and the first National museum ever to be located outside of the National Capital Region (Ottawa/Hull). There is some controversy to the museum as there are two permanent galleries dedicated to the Holocaust and the mistreatment of indigenous peoples in Canada. I would have liked to visit had Covid not been a factor.
We are safely hunkered down now after our short sightseeing tour of downtown Winnipeg, at a Flying J truck stop that is big rig, RV friendly, waiting for the storm that is going through Alberta, Saskatchewan and the western part of Manitoba to pass. It’s a very potent storm with snowfall as high as 30-50cm expected, northerly winds, reduced visibility and blowing snow. Nothing that we want to drive through!
We also discovered that our battery in Jerry is dead! Good thing I know the owner of the Birchwood Automotive Group in Winnipeg and the Flying J we are staying at tonight is right across the street from the Auto Mall. A new battery for Jerry will be installed tomorrow morning first thing AND we will also be able to fill our potable water tank at the dealership before we head further west for more adventures!