May 18, 2005

May 18, 2005

Lorette to West Hawk Lake, Manitoba

DAY 335

 

Today was cloudy and cool.

Sharon treated us to a French Toast brunch this morning, then we hitched up and prepared to leave. We drove northwest on Hwy. 207 a short distance back to Hwy. 1, then east on Hwy. 1 to West Hawk Lake, about 140 km. / 85 miles away. West Hawk Lake is just a few miles west of the Ontario border, just a few miles north of Hwy. 1 on Hwy. 44. As we exited off Hwy. 1 onto Hwy. 44, we entered Whiteshell Provincial Park. We met Kristen at the park gate, introduced ourselves as the West Hawk Campground Hosts, and chatted for a few minutes. We proceeded to the West Hawk Lake Campground, and met Sylvia in the Campground Registration Office. She directed us to the Campground Host campsite, no. B-8. We drove over to the trailer dump station back out on Hwy. 44 beside the fire hall, and dumped our holding tanks. It was a struggle to get Dee-Dee and Harvey into the B loop of the campground. It proved impossible to get them into site B-8. We wrestled them into site B-7 with great difficulty, had a late lunch, then walked back to the Campground Registration Office to advise Sylvia that we couldn't get into site B-8 unless if significant tree trimming took place. She sent us to the Whiteshell Provincial Park District Office, across Hwy. 44 from the campground entrance. There we met Tina, who seems to be in charge of the campground staff. We chatted with Tina briefly, and she called for a couple of maintenance staff to come to our site to trim trees. We walked back across the highway, and down to the campground boat launch and docks, to see the lake and beach. Very nice. By the time we got back to our site, a couple of young men were there with an extremely long handled chain saw to trim tree limbs in our site to enable us to get Harvey in. They trimmed a bunch of limbs very quickly, loaded them into a truck, and were off. We made another attempt to back Harvey into the site. I still couldn't get in. AND ... in this attempt, I ripped a $137 dually mud flap off the street side rear. I was furious ! ! ! Joanne and I had a brief, but heated exchange about the mud flap incident. It left both of us angry and upset for the balance of the day. When the maintenance staff came by to pick up the last of the trimmed tree limbs, I advised them that we would require more tree limbs to be trimmed, to allow me to enter site B-8 from behind, from the main campground road. There's no other way for me to get into this site, and it's the site that's designated as the Campground Host site. None of the sites in this fairly large, but fairly old campground appear to be big rig friendly. We have encountered difficulty before trying to get our big rig into provincial campgrounds that were designed and constructed 40 or more years ago, when the largest things coming into the campgrounds were folding tent trailers. It was the end of their work day, so they will return tomorrow for more tree trimming.

We tried again to squeeze into site B-7, where we had already been parked for awhile awaiting the maintenance staff. We were so upset that we couldn't even manage to get into a site that we had already been in ! We moved over to site B-5, and will stay here until B-8 becomes accessible ... hopefully ! We walked around the campground, exploring a bit. We met Billie, from the janitorial staff. We had supper, then walked down to the lake again. The evening was becoming quite cool. Bo likes West Hawk Lake !

As I was returning to the trailer from the comfort station ( showers and bathrooms ) at dusk around 9:00 P.M. I had a close encounter with 4 young deer who were munching on the buds on the low hanging tree branches. I stopped walking, and they munched their way slowly closer and closer to me, until they finally scampered away when somebody else came walking down the road making noise.

DSK