Canada -- #1

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I'm finally getting going on a post about my trip to Canada. I went with a group of friends and we rented a houseboat! So here we go, you get a Canadian sunset at the start and finish of each post, I'm going to do a few separate posts so they are manageable. I have over 1000 photos, hard to choose which to use, so a lot of this is randomly generated, I'll do my best to explain a little bit about it........

We traveled to Duluth, then up through Minnesota to International Falls. It was a pretty long ride, maybe 8 hours, pulling boat trailers, loaded with coolers, fishing gear, kayaks, etc.......





Here is "the last building in the US", or so it says on the sign at the top. Right after this you wind around through the rail yard of a major paper mill, across the river and to the Canadian customs. No problems there and we were off to points north.






We arrived at Sioux Narrows, Ontario. You can go here to see the houseboats. The first one in the view here is not what we had... it's a double level beauty, 60' long.





Our boat was a 54' model with kitchen, bathrooms, shower, sleeping quarters, freezer and an upper deck There were 7 adults and two teenagers, which was plenty for the size of the boat. Good thing we all got along well......





We got to the Narrows late afternoon on Friday, got all of our gear stowed, the boats in the water and tied at the pier, and then we headed to Whitebirch Lodge where we spent the night. We would motor out into Lake of the Woods the next morning.




Here we are tied up in a little cove near Shore Island, a three hour (?) trip from Sioux Narrow. Mostly it's all rock up in this area of Canada. It's smack dab in the Canadian Shield, part of the area where the glaciers scraped the bedrock clean. Then there are these nice little sand beaches in a few places, where the rocks are not exposed and you can run the houseboat aground on the sand and tie it up to some trees.





We did manage to have a few problems with boats.... propellers and rocks are sworn enemies. Fortunately, there was a spare prop along for this one.








The upper deck was great, and I think if I ever do this again, I'll bring a tent to set up on top in case its really hot and miserable sleeping inside. We brought five kayaks along, and they were well used each day.





We did manage to have some fishing gear trouble. This was on my casting rod, a minor problem solved with electricians tape. This rod eventually was broken, and I managed to break another rod as well. Doh!!!





One beach area we were headed two was just being vacated by another houseboat. We saw several other houseboats out there, there are quite a few for rent on this lake. You can see some of the huge rock formations just ahead of that boat, the trees somehow manage to grow right on the rocks.




Another minor problem, this prop fell off on its own accord! There was a spare, but we had to get a washer, nut and cotter pin from town to get it back in service.



Gulls were our constant companions during our stay on the lake. This one waited until dark before it headed for wherever gulls head for at dark......





On the way back to base on the last day, we ended up batting marshmallows with kayak paddles from the upper deck. If you enlarge this photo, you will see one flying way just above Kyle's head.





I got to do a little Musky fishing with Lee Fisher and a friend of his from the Madison area, Pat Kelley. It was nice to have these smaller boats with us for fishing areas around the house boat beaching point.

Tune in again for Chapter II, the food......










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