The good news is that I feel better today. Woke up this morning having slept a full night and kept down my McDonald's. Had a light breakfast and we hit the road, ready to take on the Ice Dragon. Not long out of town we were clearly out of civilization and snow and ice began to cover the edges of the roads. Also not long out of town my phone decided to go nuts and continually reboot. Yeah, that required a factory reset, wiping all my info. Hoping Google's back up system works!
We started to come upon the Manic dams. If you have power, you get it
from here. They are a series of increasingly large dams that build up to
the powerhouse that is the Manic 5. I finally had the pleasure of driving the land-yatch that is the Range Rover. It actually was surprisingly stable and didn't roll as much as I thought it would. It took a little bit but I adjusted and kept up with the pack. It felt good to finally pitch in with the driving. I felt bad I couldn't help Blaine yesterday.
 |
| Our route for the day |
 |
| The cars look like toys against this thing |
One of the attractions for me was a return to the Manicougan crater. This was created by a meteor impact and appears as the giant ring in eastern Canada when you look at a map. Last time we went by, I tried to walk to a gate and didn't make it far before sinking in to my waist in snow. This year we found an access road and had a fairly easy walk to the reservoir. About 3/4 of the way down, I noticed something sticking out of the snow. What's that? Oh, a lovely hoof!
 |
| Is there a body to go with that? As we found out, no. |
The trail opened up into a remarkable view of the reservoir. It was a blue sky day, no wind, and just perfect. I couldn't believe how massive that body of water was, and to think of what created it made it all the more impressive. In the picture below, you can see the inner island of the crater. I believe Ross said it's 16 miles to the other side of the island. That's crazy!
 |
| Yes, it does say "You are here" |
After a long walk to a frozen tree way out on the water, and then an even longer walk back to the cars, we continued on. There was a lunch stop at a gas station with a limited restaurant, but they actually had some tasty alphabet chicken soup. At this point, I handed the keys back to Blaine as I didn't trust handling the yatch on the Ice Dragon. Light was fading fast, and we picked up the pace so as to avoid driving in the dark on it as much as possible.
 |
| Notice the little symbol? Kind of looks like a dragon ;) |
Some people claimed it wasn't as much fun as the real Dragon, but we still had a blast. The train tracks certainly added an element of excitement. Blaine did an excellent job of handling the Landy and keeping it straight. The sun clung until almost the end, creating some great vistas. We even had to wait for a freight train to pass before continuing on.
Finally, we pulled into Fremont. As far as I can tell, it's just a massive building that has housing for the workers of the nearby iron mine and a mall for all of their needs. Upon walking in, I gave serious consideration to just sleeping in the car. For one night I think I can tough it. Smoking is still very much embraced here, and a thick haze hangs over the building. Blaine and I got our room, unpacked and headed down to dinner. While sitting there the guy from the front desk appeared looking for some people. Apparently, they had given us a room that was already assigned to someone else. Yeah, we're in a top-notch establishment. After dinner, we came back to the new room to find that we were placed next to a chimney. Good lord it's dingy in here. The smell is overpowering, the rooms are less than clean, and I'm pretty sure I'll just be sleeping on top of the sheets in my clothes. It's the kind of place where taking a shower could actually make you dirtier. I don't have high expectations on these trips, and we've certainly stayed in our share of shady places, but this one takes the cake by far. I think it's the proliferation of scary mine workers that makes it seem unsafe. Maybe I'll sleep with my pocket knife handy.....
No comments:
Post a Comment