005 – Are We There Yet? – 17th April 2019

No is the answer, not by a long way!

After driving between 200 to 300 miles per day for the last 9 days we have arrived in the Province of Manitoba and are only now halfway to our destination of Prince Rupert in British Columbia.

What have you seen, what have you learnt, are you enjoying it? I hear you say (I didn’t hear you say that really, I just made it up to make writing this blog a bit easier!).

Well, I’m so very glad you asked – I can let you know that we have learnt the following;

• We have learnt hat Canada is enormous – did you know, for example, that it is further from the east coast of Canada to the west coast of Canada than it is from England to the east coast of Canada.

• We have learnt that there is less snow the further west we travel

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• We have learnt that the vast majority of lakes and rivers we have seen (and we have seen hundreds) are still frozen over following, what we have been told, was a particularly hard winter. We recently stayed in a town called Thunder Bay that looked out on to Lake Superior which, despite its size and name, remained frozen for mile after mile.

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• We have learnt that it is fun to drive through time zones (2 down, 2 to go) – I suggested to Chrissie that it would be great to live near the edge of a time zone so you could wake up at 9.00 a.m., get up, have breakfast, drive to work on the other side of the time zone and be at work by 9.00 a.m.). When we left Halifax we were 4 hours behind the UK, here in Manitoba we are 6 hours behind the UK and when we arrive in British Columbia we will be 8 hours behind the UK. I don’t know where the time goes!

• We have learnt that Tim Hortons, a fast food restaurant chain specialising in coffee and donuts, makes great coffee (we have yet to try the donuts – honest!). We have also learnt that Canadians spell donuts differently to us!

• We have learnt that the car keeps getting dirty very quickly, especially with the salt on the roads, and needs washing regularly

• We learnt that Canadian monuments can sometimes be a bit disappointing – a little boy once asked his father where poo comes from. His father is taken aback by the question but decides to give his son the facts straight up. “Well son,” he says, “food passes down the esophagus by peristalsis. It enters the stomach, where digestive enzymes induce a probiotic reaction in the alimentary canal. This contracts the protein before waste enters the colon. Water is absorbed, whereupon it enters the rectum finally to emerge as poo.”

“Wow,” says the boy. “So where does Tigger come from?”

Well, we now know where Pooh really does come from – a small logging town called White River which lays claim to being the home of Winnie the Pooh (extract below is from the Lonely Planet guidebook)

We were expecting a much better monument than this!

• We learnt about the Atlantic / Arctic watershed in Canada

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• We learnt that the USA is never far away. In the picture below Chrissie is stood in Fort Frances, Canada and the houses in the background are in the USA. One of the locals told us that Fort Frances doesn’t have a cinema and that if they want to watch the latest film they just cross the bridge over the river, pass through border control, watch the film and then return home. Fancy having to go abroad just to watch a film!

• We have learnt that sometimes we see things which we don’t really understand

And to answer the question “are you enjoying it?” – you bet ya cotton socks we are!