The Great Hikes - Jan 6

Jan/6

Hello folks. I am slowly developing this style of writing emails where I am working backwards (as in I am writing the most recent entry and then going backwards) because I am losing details of the days very quickly. If that's the case then I may as well write about the most recent happenings because the email will probably be more interesting that way, and maybe by then details of the last days will come back to me. Hopefully....so let's start.

Yesterday as per usual, I woke up early (around 7:30-8?) to the idea of either writing some emails or work on the Sault Ste. Marie excursion. I ended up doing the Sault Ste. Marie excursion, because a) it's more important than the emails at the moment and b) Rebecca actually woke up early like me to work on the Sault Ste. Marie excursion (which reminds me of a slightly funny story where I took a morning shower right after I woke up, and when I enter into the room I walked right into Rebecca because I couldn't see her but she was pretty much just standing by the door waiting for me. Because I couldn't see her yet I could feel her presence the surprise there just stunned me...and then I screamed. Rebecca was just like "SHHHHHH" and trying to cover my mouth at the same time....

....ok maybe the story isn't so funny anymore).

So where was I? Oh yes we both ended up working on the excursion, me on the trashy computer (which I don't know whether I mentioned it, but it crashed again and luckily it got fixed Friday night) and Rebecca on Stephen's laptop. It was nice, just me and her in the office area in the quiet house with our Jack Johnson music and cups of lemon and green tea (mine with lots of honey), and this happened until around 10ish, because everyone started waking up so Stephen (who was up by then) and Rebecca made pancakes for breakfast, while I showed Emilie how our plan is looking. Then we had our pancake breakfast (I ended up eating 5 pancakes plus the leftover pizza that we had for dinner the night before), cleanup/dishes, and then people did a bit of their own thing before we headed off to Paul and Baryl's place for the scavenger hunt that they planned for us on their lovely property. We left the house around 12:40 pm ish.

After almost 30 minutes of car ride, we got to their house and after a tad more of fidgeting around (going to washroom, water break), Paul and Baryl finally split us up into teams of 3 (well there is a team of 2, because there is only 11 people) for the scavenger hunt. Here are the teams:

Emilie and Zach
Stephanie/Charles/Cheryl
Cynthia/Mike/Me
Rebecca/Stephen/Maxime

So anyways Paul gave us a map of their property and trails, a list of what we are supposed to look for, and off we went. Our group were the last to leave (just because everyone rushed out of the house) and because of that, we found absolutely nothing on the list. It's kind of funny to see groups in front of us (Zach, Stephen, etc.) easily pluck off stuff from the tree and then staring at us and laughing about it, despite the fact that we are probably the group that walked the most out of everyone and still did not find one single item on the list. Even funnier was that after an hour later, Emilie spoke to us over the radio and told us to count our items and report back to her because she thinks everyone got everything on the list. Imagine how it was like when we told her "we got nothing..." But anyways after a bit of calculation, Emilie concluded that we are missing one item - a red bulb ornament, and off we went hunting for that item again. So for the next 20 minutes, Cynthia/Mike/me walked another "thousand miles" hoping to at least find that thing so we wouldn't look so stupid. But after 20 minutes, no luck happened, and the weather kept changing on us (during that single 1.5 hour it was cloudy/slight snow/cloudy/traces of sun) so I decided to radio message the rest of the crew and ask them how they are doing. Well goddamn them, they all went back to the house because they didn't find that item and were in the house drinking hot chocolate, while the 3 of us are very far away from the house (around 15 minute walk). So we decided to head back, but really it wasn't such a big deal to me (and Cynthia) because once we started heading back, the sun came out after the rain and made everything all glowy and sparkling...it was quite a sight, and we just slowly absorbed everything in (well Cynthia was more practical and took pictures along the way). Because of that we took almost 30 minutes to head back to the house, where people made fun of us :P

Anyways we chillaxed a bit, and then we decided to choose between playing Killer (this fun card game) and Scategories. We chose Scategories and for the next 45 minutes, that's what we did...and then finally Emilie asked if we want to go with Paul to saw more of his property and trails. Finally it ended up being me/Cynthia/Mike/Stephen/Cheryl/Emilie going out for more walks, while the rest stayed behind in the house.

The walk was really nice, since I saw some pretty cool things and Paul explained to us about them. Some stuff we saw:
- a clearing not far away from the house where there used to be another house but it was cleared out by a lumber company that used to occupy the area (before Paul bought the property). We can still see the cellar.
- two fur piles (apparently it was the fur of two deers which the wolves ate up and that was the stuff that was leftover)
- one hind leg of a deer, which Shadow found and was gnawing on (there was still fur and hoof on, ewwwww)
- a beaver pile (not sure of the actual name, but that's where the beavers live at)
- Old Homestead (a pile of broken down wood which used to be a rough shack from the 30s...people would live there in the Depression times because it's much cheaper to live out in the bush)
- Paul's hunting house (which was pretty much destroyed on the inside because his neighbour used his hunting shack but forgot to take out his bait...the bear smelled it and went into the house to get food, but because the bear was so big he trapped himself inside and freaked out and broke out and escaped through the roof...of course his neighbour wouldn't admit it's his fault...i would have been so pissed off).
- Paul's lake where we watched the sun setting on the lake. The whole lake froze over and Cheryl and I really wanted to walk on the lake, but Emilie wouldn't let anyone do it. Cheryl and I gave each other a look that said "once Emilie is in the house we are doing this together ;) ".

Unfortunately right after we went back to the house, Emilie decided to go home (because it was 4:45 - 5, and we needed to go back and prepare for supper), so we left with Cheryl and I disappointedly staring at the lake as we were driven away from it....

We got home/Rebecca and Stephen made dinner/everyone chillaxed/had dinner...

Dinner was kind of interesting, because previously when Rebecca and Stephen made lunch,
they also gave people house forks which not everyone brought back. Because there wasn't enough forks for everyone, Emilie decided that no one shall use a fork for dinner and use spoons instead to eat. I commented to her that it's such a military-like punishment (the whole idea that if one person messed up, everyone pays) and then I washed my hands and chose to eat with my hands that night (something that Cheryl did also and Rebecca too, although she only did it with the green beans).

Dishes/cleanup

After that I contemplated what I should do in this quiet Saturday evening (this was the first Saturday evening we had since arriving to Blind River). Either I can work on emails/replies/SSM excursion, or I could take the walk that I have always wanted to do - calculate how long it takes to walk from one end of the town to another. I opted for the second option, although I asked Cheryl (only because she was sitting next to me during dinner) if I should do that. She immediately jumped to the opportunity and offered to go with me. So with one cd player (with my special mix of MP3 cd inside), one flashlight, one map of Blind River, plus my wallet, we headed off into the darkness of Blind River...

So here's what we did. We walked out into Highway 17, turned left (West) and walked to the end of the town (where Northern Lights Motel Inn was located) and 10 minutes beyond that (there's nothing there except the river on the right side and cars/trucks zooming back and forth...pretty creepy, and I am glad Cheryl was with me there). After that we turned back and walked all the way to the Hospital, and then a bit more (5 minutes, to a green sign that says "Woodward (not sure) Dr. 1 km"). Then we turned back and headed back into town, to the hippest, most happening place of the town - Tim Hortons.

So I would say that not including the walk towards Northern Lights Motel and beyond, walking from one end of the end to other took us a little bit over an hour, which is quite short
for a town, wouldn't you say? So calculation of our walk - left at 8:30 pm ish, walked beyond Northern Lights, turned back and got back to Northern Lights (9:00 pm ish)...got to the hospital at 10:00 pm ish, walked to the green sign and turned back, and got to Tim Hortons at 10:20 ish (which meant Cheryl won the bet between us because Cheryl said it would take us around 10 minutes to get Timmys, while I doubled the time).

Because of that, I ended up buying her a XL cafe mocha (thank god for Tim Horton coupons from Christmas) and myself one also, but she bought us 20 timbits to share. So for the next 2.5 hours, we just sat down and chatted and chatted and chatted. We talked about a lot of different things, but we focused 70% of our conversation on people in our group (particularly Zach/Stephen/Maxime - I shall dedicate one email on the drama/scandal/dynamics of the Blind River crew), as well as her piercings, her thoughts and my thoughts, etc. Through this conversation, I realized that Cheryl and I have pretty similar ways of seeing things, mentality, etc, despite the fact that we both come from such different backgrounds. As well, it was so odd that in our 4 to 5 hours of being alone, we probably only spent half an hour max talking about ourselves. It is always a bit aweing (not sure if that's a word) to find someone who thinks like you, especially if your thoughts are very unique (I am constantly reminded of that, haha)

So overall Cheryl and I had an excellent night together, and we got home at 1:30 am (Timmys in Blind River is 24/7)...by then I decided to go to bed. Good night!

So things I "owe" to you guys:
- one email of drama/scandal/dynamics of the group
- one email of Blind River quirks
- something about blogs (very short)
- (maybe) photos of people and sceneries
- emails from Jan 2/3/4/5/7
- (maybe) summaries of December holidays
- email replies
- postcards

Since Mike and I (hahahahahaha) will be house managers on Monday, I should have time to deal with these matters. We shall see...