June 8, 2005

June 8, 2005

West Hawk Lake day 22 of 113

DAY 356

 

Today was cold, windy, and raining ... again !

The animals woke me at 5:30 A.M. demanding to be fed. I fed them, then decided I might as well stay up and go fishing. I was on the dock at Star Lake fishing by 6:00 A.M.. I fished for an hour, caught nothing, and decided to give up. I was freezing. There was a strong wind that wasn't as evident back in the campground, but out on the end of a dock, unsheltered by trees, it was brutal. I did, however, have the pleasure of watching a Bald Eagle soaring over head, fishing in the lake around me.

I found out from the park staff today that yesterday we had 2 noteworthy events in the park. First, a truck hit and killed a deer, and the truck went off the road. Second, a beaver dam broke up by Caddy Lake, and the resulting rush of water washed out a section of Hwy. 312 a few miles from here. Today the lower sections of this campground were closed because of how wet the ground is. The campground host's site, B-8, is the highest camp site in the campground, so no water collects in our site, and the ground dries quickly when it stops raining. Sections A and B are the only sections of the campground that aren't turning into a marsh.

This afternoon we did some planning. We needed to decide whether or not we're heading for Newfoundland in September, and where we're going from there, if we head east. After much discussion, and pondering over maps and calendars, we've decided to head west in September, and target Newfoundland for the spring of 2006, about a year from now. I drove over to the park gate, where the elevation is high enough to get a good phone signal and called my investment broker in Ottawa. We're out of money. I needed to transfer some money from investments to our bank account. I did some work on my fishing tackle. Joanne went off to Crescent Beach Cottages to do some laundry. I chatted with a couple of the Park Patrol staff for awhile about fishing. It became evident to me while we were talking that I'm not completely up to speed on fishing regulations that are specific to Whiteshell Provincial Park. I'd better pull out my fishing regulations and study them a bit closer. I went to the campground office, plugged into the fax machine phone line, retrieved e-mail, and updated my blog. Late in the afternoon, the sun began to peek out.

I decided to go fishing since the sunwas peeking out. I fished for 45 minutes, caught one walleye, watched the Bald Eagle soaring over head again, and watched a female Mallard Duck bathing and preening while her male stood proudly beside her, guarding. A Mallard Duck bathes and preens remarkably similarly to how our store budgies used to. A bird is a bird, I guess. I watched a mother Loon with a very small chick. The adult kept diving and surfacing over and over while the chick paddled nearby. Finally, the chick “got it”, and every time the adult dived, so did the chick. A thunderstorm blew in suddenly. It began to rain heavily. By the time I gathered up my fishing gear and walked back to the truck, I was as wet as if I had fallen in the lake. I returned to the trailer, and changed into dry clothes. After we had supper, the rain had stopped, so I decided to go fishing again for another hour or so. Sure enough, as soon as I started fishing on the dock at Star Lake the rain began again. I fished in the rain until I was soaked again, then headed back to West Hawk, disgusted with the ongoing bad weather and empty handed. I filleted the walleye I had caught earlier, then chatted with the evening shift Park Patrol for awhile before calling it a day.

DSK