{"id":1910,"date":"2011-09-26T21:26:11","date_gmt":"2011-09-27T04:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/?p=1910"},"modified":"2011-09-26T21:26:11","modified_gmt":"2011-09-27T04:26:11","slug":"wasagaming-and-clear-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/?p=1910","title":{"rendered":"Wasagaming and Clear Lake"},"content":{"rendered":"

2011\/09\/25<\/p>\n

Today was a mini-vacation – a break from driving, at one of my favorite places, Riding Mountain National Park – specifically the town of Wasagaming, which is on Clear Lake.<\/p>\n

Had breakfast at the aforementioned<\/a> restaurant that turned me off milk for two years – decided to give them a second change, decades later – and it was not bad.\u00a0 I didn’t have any milk though.<\/p>\n

After that, I went and walked around the campground for a bit.\u00a0 We used to camp here frequently in our Manitoba days.\u00a0 I don’t have many specific memories of it, but still a general feeling of happy nostalgia washed over me while I was walking around.\u00a0 Plus it’s beautiful.\u00a0 Here’s what a typical campsite looks like:<\/p>\n

\"d20110925_0010\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lots of room, a picnic table and fireplace, and enough trees between sites to give a bit of privacy.\u00a0 The sites are all open at both ends onto roads that look like these:<\/p>\n

\"d20110925_0008\"<\/a>\"d20110925_0046\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you’re camping here, the preferred way to get around and go into town is by bicycle, but it’s an easy walk too.<\/p>\n

I walked around town a bit. Here’s the old firehall:<\/p>\n

\"d20110925_0050\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And I went back to the favorite ice cream parlour and bought the favorite ice cream – two scoops on a double cone:<\/p>\n

\"d20110925_0063\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As a kid I was amazed by these weird mutant double-headed ice cream cones, and wondered how they made them.\u00a0 Seldom saw them anywhere else so I still associate them with Riding Mountain.<\/p>\n

By accident I discovered an old memory.\u00a0 This purple martin birdhouse:<\/p>\n

\"d20110925_0058\"<\/a><\/p>\n

inspired me as a child – I wanted to make birdhouses all fancy like that.\u00a0 When we got back to the farm I did build some birdhouses, some of them multi-story, but they didn’t turn out quite as fancy as this. :)<\/p>\n

My main mission for to day was to sit around near the beach contemplating my cross-Canada road trip, what it means to me, and what I want out of life.<\/p>\n

To that end, I spent some time lying down on a picnic table, watching the breeze rustle the leaves on these trees:<\/p>\n

\"d20110925_0059\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Which is a really relaxing thing to do – I can’t recommend staring up at trees enough.\u00a0 Might want to wear glasses though to keep falling things out of your eyes.<\/p>\n

I also went out onto the jetty next to the beach, and sat here for a while, thinking:<\/p>\n

\"d20110925_0065\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Watching the wind raise ripples in the water, and the jetty shape interference patterns in the ripples, was also relaxing.<\/p>\n

I was finally starting to get into this whole thinking thing seriously when a hornet crawled up my shirt and bit me on the chest. OUCH!\u00a0 I haven’t been bitten by a mandibled insect since I was a kid and I forgot how much it hurt.\u00a0 I rushed back to my room to disinfect it and see if there was a stinger present – no, but it swelled up a fair bit.\u00a0 By the end of the afternoon the swelling was gone but the bite still stung.<\/p>\n

That kind of interrupted my chain of thought.\u00a0 I went and sat near the beach again, but kept getting interrupted by more bugs crawling on me, so eventually I gave up on trying to get any serious thinking done today.<\/p>\n

Still, it was a nice day off from driving and I definitely did get some good relaxing in.\u00a0 From here it’s the home stretch back to Vancouver, with a brief stopover in Calgary, and then my road trip will be done.<\/p>\n

More fall color photos:<\/p>\n

\"d20110925_0030\"<\/a>\"d20110925_0037\"<\/a>\"d20110925_0051\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At the end of the day, I went back out to get some sunset photos – nothing spectacular due to lack of clouds, but it was nice.<\/p>\n

\"d20110925_0103\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[gmap file=”__UPLOAD__\/2011\/09\/20110925.kml” visible=”true” type=”satellite” center=”files” zoom=”auto”]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2011\/09\/25 Today was a mini-vacation – a break from driving, at one of my favorite places, Riding Mountain National Park – specifically the town of Wasagaming, which is on Clear Lake. Had breakfast at the aforementioned restaurant that turned me off milk for two years – decided to give them a second change, decades later […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}