We left at 4:30 AM. As expected, I had a hard time to transfer James from his bed to the car, but eventually, I succeded. He lay cuddled up under an old sleeping bag in the passenger seat while I headed NW on I94. As expected, there was little traffic, the few construction sites with single-lane traffic hardly slowed us down at all. We made Fargo by 8:10, Pembina, for a last refueling stop in the US, and the Canadian border by 11:10. The Canadian customs/immigrationagent agent greeted me in English and French to which I responded in French. Since he saw my Belgian passport, all formalities were done in French. It felt definitely like crossing into a different country and took just a couple of minutes.
By 12:30 we were done with getting currency from a teller machine and lunch at Burger King I did not see a Tim Horton's, sorry), we were on the road again, for the first time in real traffic. It delayed us by 15 minutes at most and the open road greeted us onece again. Hwy 59 turned from four-lanes divided to two lanes and we took Stead Road as a variation on the regular 304. Before the dam across Winnipeg River at Powerview, MB, 304 traverses a vast plain. After that point, and a last refueling stop, the landscape changed to scrubland, with the granite outcropings typical of the Canadian Shield. Water in evidence everywhere, in the ditches, in swamps, creeks and rivers, even among the low treestands.
We got to the bridge across the Manigotagan River by 14:30. We got out of the car and looked in awe at the masses of water thundering down Wood Falls before the last 2 km to Lake Winnipeg.
At a business (or what seemed like one) at the intersectionof 304 and the road leading to the town of Manigotagan, we asked for directions to the Simards. People were busy cooking and baking and we learned later that this was no longer the general store it had onece been but was now a catering business. Directions were given and within two minutes we were face to face with Marilyn Simard. We were two hours early, the entire trip had taken us just over 10 hours. Charles Simard had arranged to meet us at 17:00. No problem said Marilyn, either I'll find you another driver or I'll come along. Within 10 minutes she sat next to me and we were heading E towards the mining town of Bisset, 304 now a well-maintained gravel road.
The 40 or so km to the turn-off to Quesnel Lake and Caribou Landing and Jackson's Lodge took just about as much time as the last 10 km. Now I understand why both Charles and Marilyn had emphatically recommended the bigger vehicle when I asked Pontiac Vibe or Honda Odyssey. Especially the second half of the trail to Quesnel Lake was very bumpy and we scraped the bottom several times. At 16:30 we got to the lake and our adventure was about to begin.
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