After 3 nights in a very nice but mosquito infested campground, Winnipeg is in our rearview mirror. About 15 kms down the road is the longitudinal center of Canada. From here it’s as far back to the West Coast as it is to Cape Spear in NFLD. Too bad we are not going all that way. It would be comforting to know that we would be halfway there. But we are not going all that way; only as far as Kenora today, another 190 kms from here.

I am really looking forward to seeing Lake of the Woods. I rode up through here on my cross Canada motorcycle trip in 2010. Kenora is at the north end of the Lake and it stretches about 110 kms to the south and is about 95 kms wide. The lake also boasts of an estimated 40,000 kms of shoreline which grows to over 105,000 kms when you include the shorelines of the 14,552 islands that dot the lake. Kenora was originally called Rat Portage. Not very inviting from a civic pride perspective so it was changed in 1905. The name “Kenora” is a combination of the first two letters of three of the surrounding communities; Keewatin, Norman and Rat Portage. Good thing the name changed happened when it did as the 1907 Stanley Cup champions, the Kenora Thistles would not have looked pleasing on Lord Stanley’s mug as the Rat Portage Thistles. Yes, The Kenora Thistles won the Cup in a two-game, total goal championship series over the Montreal Wanderers in January of 1907. That year there were two Stanley Cup champions as the Wanderers won the Cup back two months later. Kenora is the smallest town to have ever won the Stanley Cup.

Another popular attraction in Kenora is the large statue of Husky the Muskie which stands overlooking the lake it inhabits at the west end of Town. Known as a ”muskellunge” from the Ojibwe word “maashkinoozhe” , meaning “ugly pike”, it is very elusive and difficult to catch and even more difficult to land. It is often called “the fish of 10,000 casts” due to the difficulty in bringing one in.

We have camped in a beautiful campground right on the lake, right in Kenora. As the temperature is a nice balmy 26 degrees we take the dog down to Bow Wow Beach for a dip. Nicely sloped, sandy beach and the water temp is just right after a long day on the road. Both Vicki and I and the dog enjoy splashing around in the refreshing water. The next day dawns a bit overcast so we head towards downtown for some errands; laundry, groceries, Walmart etc. Back at the trailer we notice the sky to the west start to darken. More rain coming I’m afraid. Next thing that happens is that we receive an emergency warning on our phones. A big storm is headed our way including a “marine tornado”. I guess that means big winds out over the lake. As we are on the shores of the lake I take some preventative measures by putting the lawn chairs away and rolling up the awing on the trailer. Good thing too as not 5 minutes later the wind started blowing and the skies opened up. It poured buckets. Rivers of water poured past the trailer. Later I saw on my weather app that there was 24 mm’s in 1.5 hours. Quite the deluge. Didn’t see any funnel clouds, (not that I was out looking) but the trees were whipped around quite violently. The volume of water was so great that the runoff cut channels in the gravel roadway in front of our site. Nature at it’s finest.

So now it’s off to bed. The rain has cooled things off to a comfortable level so it should be a sleepable night. I am now off into the arms of Morpheus.