Dauphin, Manitoba to Ile des Chenes, Manitoba – 268 miles
The day
started clear again, with the temperature showing 39 degrees. We had a quick breakfast and were on our way
out of Dauphine by 8:00am. We made a brief
stop at the local Safeway to pick up a few groceries, then headed east toward
Lake Manitoba. We planned to cross the
lake at a place called The Narrows, then turn south toward Winnipeg. As we turned east on Highway 5 just south of
town, we saw a band of dark clouds ahead, and within a half hour we found
ourselves under solid grey cloud cover.
Just like yesterday, the fields on either side of the highway were
filled with standing water and the bar ditches on either side of the road were
half failed with water. I don’t know if
this is because of recent rains or whether the water remains from melted snow,
since it was only within the past couple of weeks that the snow cover has
melted. This country is quite flat, so
it takes a long time for the water to run off.
The
highway passes through mixed woodlands and fallow fields. The woods here are solid, white-barked trees
that look almost identical to the aspens we have in Colorado, although they may
be white birch or some other close relative.
But they go on for miles and miles, slightly reminiscent of the black
spruce tiaga (Google it) along the Alaska Highway.
The
Narrows is actually a narrow channel a couple of hundred yards wide separating
Lake Manitoba on the south and Lake Winnipegosis on the north. As we crossed the low bridge over this
channel, it was very strange to see open water on Lake Manitoba to our right,
and solid ice on Lake Winnipegosis to our left.
If the surrounding terrain is any indication, both these lakes must be
very shallow, because the land all around is so flat. I’ll have to research that when we get home.
A few
kilometers past The Narrows, we intersected Highway 6, and turned south toward
Winnipeg. We stopped to get a cup of
coffee and a cinnamon roll at a little roadside inn, and as we talked with a
couple of local farmers there, they suggested that we detour a few miles
farther to the east to see Lake Winnipeg before continuing to the city of that
same name. So, eager to see things we’ll
probably never see again, we followed their instructions and soon found
ourselves on the shore of this vast inland sea.
At its widest point, Lake Winnipeg is probably 70 miles across,
east-to-west, and is roughly 250 miles long, north to south. Just like the smaller Lake Winnipegosis to
the west, it was also still frozen, looking for all the world like the Arctic
Ocean. We followed the shoreline south
for a few miles, but the lake was mostly hidden behind the trees. As we got closer toward Winnipeg, a solid
line of vacation cottages filled in the few openings between the trees, further
obscuring the view. If this is a normal
year, those folks are lucky to get two months a year of enjoyment at the
lake. I’d wager that the water never
gets above 40 degrees, even at the height of summer. We finally found a small piece of open shoreline
where we stopped for lunch. Even at this
far southern end, in what really is a small bay, the lake was probably 15 miles
across. We could barely see the eastern
shore on the horizon, a thin dark line separating the grey sky from the equally
grey ice of the lake surface.
As we
entered Winnipeg, a booming metropolis of nearly 700,000 people, our goal was
to visit a place called the Forks, where the Assinibone and Red Rivers
meet. Aboriginal peoples met at this
site for hundreds, if not thousands of years before the Europeans arrived, so
it has great historic significance. It’s
now the site of a market and a park with numerous trails along the river
banks. However, it is also located in
the heart of downtown Winnipeg, and after maneuvering the motorhome through the
city traffic and failing to find a place to park, we gave up and continued
southward out of the city to our stopping place for the night, a Good Sam RV
park in the outlying town of Ile des Chenes.
Tomorrow we’ll be back in the US for a few days, as we pass through
northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the upper peninsula of Michigan. We’ll re-enter Canada at Sault Ste Marie and
continue down through Ontario, stopping to visit friends from last year’s trek
on the Camino de Santiago as we pass through Peterborough and Ottawa.
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| Lake Winnipeg, May 21, 2014 |
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