Friday, Saturdday, Sunday; October 3,4,5, 2008

We’re driving north up the east side of the Province of Manitoba with the destination of Thompson scheduled for Sunday night the 5th. On Friday night the 3rd we stayed at a city owned campground in Dauphine. This area of the Province is heavily settled by descendents from the Ukraine area of Europe. We toured a historic Ukraine Catholic Church in the evening and then we were hosted to dinner by ladies of the church. The evening was concluded with some audience participation in the dancing customs of the Ukraine’s. It was an educational and fun evening for all of us. Saturday the 4th we spent the night dry camping at an Indian Casino at the city named, The Pas. On our drive here we discovered Tamarack Trees for the first time since leaving home. Their colors were changing continually in various shades of yellow as you can see in the attached photo. Sunday the 5th was more of the same scenery as we passed numerous large inland lakes. Just outside of Thompson we stopped at Pisew Falls. See photos attached. Monday we leave via slow passenger train to travel to Churchill MN on Hudson Bay for our much anticipated viewing of the Polar Bears. We return to Thompson Friday the 10th. Having passed the 55th Parallel at this point in our travels, we are getting ever closer to the Arctic Circle. photos to follow

Wednesday, Thursday; October 1-2, 2008

We spent Wednesday night 10/1 in Williston, ND. Oil drilling in and near the county has created a boom in the population with workers coming in from all over the US. No signs of a weak economy here! Bob is beginning to feel like a Nomad. Today he had a haircut at The Super Wall Mart while Gail picked up a few grocery items. Driving through large grain farms and oil rigs, we arrived at our campsite in the Turtle Mountains and at The International Peace Gardens just north of Dunseith, ND and on the Canadian border. The turtle you see in the photo is constructed of discarded vehicle wheels. Here we met up with eleven other coaches and couples to form the Fantasy RV Caravan that would travel into Manitoba and on to Churchill to view the Polar Bear migration there. We closed out the day with a social gathering of the new group members and a celebration of Gail’s 5th year since her cancer surgery. Thursday the 2nd was spent touring the International peace Gardens. Our tour was conducted by the senior gardener. This was a stunning place and a tribute to the international peace keeping efforts of Americans and Canadians. We were all very impressed with the place. The following website will do a better job of describing it than I can. Please take a minute to look at it. http://www.peacegarden.com/ Photos will follow at a later date.