August 18, 2005

August 18, 2005

West Hawk Lake day 93 of 113

YEAR 2 DAY 62

 

Today was cloudy, and warm, with a bit of light drizzle in the morning. It rained heavily throughout the evening.

We headed out this morning for a day trip to Moose Lake Provincial Park and nearby Buffalo Bay on Lake Of The Woods. West on TCH 1 to Hwy. 308 at East Braintree, then south on Hwy. 308 to Moose Lake, down 60 km. of gravel road. I first went to Moose Lake to camp, and Buffalo Bay to fish, with my father when I was about 6 or 7 years old. We liked it, and it became a favourite camping and fishing place for our family. I think the last time I was there was with Joanne, probably 28 years ago. I remember that outing, because we had made an offer on our first house before we left for a weekend camping trip, and were too excited awaiting the response to our offer to last the weekend out at the lake. We came home early.

Today we drove to the campground at Moose Lake, and stopped to walk around, remember, and reminisce. The campground seems unchanged, although it looks a bit shabbier than I remember. I think it suffers the same as West Hawk Lake campground. A 50 year old campground in which the Province Of Manitoba is not investing enough in infrastructure maintenance and refurbishment. There is a lot of litter around, and I'm becoming convinced that that is a reflection of local attitudes. When we moved away from Manitoba 17 years ago, it wasn't a society of litter bugs as it seems to have become. The litter, along with the terribly shabby appearance of the "seasonal" camper units, makes Moose Lake campground look like something one might find in the hillbilly areas of the Ozark Mountains in Kentucky. I'm not very impressed with Manitoba's Provincial Park campgrounds ! Maybe the shabby, littered appearance of West Hawk and Moose Lake campgrounds is just a demographics issue. When we camped at Grand Beach Provincial Park a year ago there wasn’t a litter problem.

We wandered around Moose Lake campground for awhile, then got back into the truck to drive the 11 km. to Buffalo Bay On Lake Of The Woods. Buffalo Bay is the southwest corner of Lake Of The Woods. It doesn't look quite like the idyllic, island strewn area of Lake Of The Woods around Kenora. The prevailing winds on Lake Of The Woods always blow into Buffalo Bay, so it's a rugged, rough, rocky, windy shoreline. This is where we used to fish, while camped at Moose Lake. It looks completely different than it did when I was a child. There's a small camping area that didn't exist 30 to 40 years ago. There used to be a road that ran along the bay. The road doesn't exist any longer. It looks like shore line erosion has eliminated the road. We had a picnic lunch. We walked around for awhile, allowing Bo to be off leash since there was nobody else around. He really enjoyed the freedom of running around wildly, unrestrained. We played a hide and seek game with him, and a game of fetch the stick. He has an amazing amount of energy for running around off leash.

We drove back to Moose Lake, and around one side of the lake to see the cottages. A few of the cottages are still the original shacks from 50 years ago, but most have been rebuilt. At the end of the cottage road was a disabled youth camp that didn't exist there 30 to 40 years ago. We drove back down the gravel Hwy. 308 to TCH 1, then home to West Hawk Lake. The truck, which was washed 2 days ago by the GM dealer in Landmark, is coated with mud from today's trip down the wet gravel road.

Back at West Hawk, I assisted a high maintenance camper get their fifth wheel trailer positioned in their campsite, then took a nap. When I woke up, I downloaded a couple of photos out of the camera onto the computer. We had supper, then watched a bad CBC movie, shot in Gibson's Landing on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, where we had been a few months ago.

DSK