July 9th, 2017, Day 49,  Levincourt to halfway through La Reserve Faunique, Verendrye,  pres du Lac Rapide. 127km

I’m in bed, it’s 2:37 and I’m massaging the side of my head, near my temple. There’s a new contour to my face; something must have bitten me and I must be swollen. Oh good. And I use that term, “in bed” rather loosely. We’re actually camped outside, in a tent, in a sleeping bag,  on a thermarest pad that I’ve positioned as close to Charlie as possible without actually being on top of him. The campground is situated almost halfway through the park so that means that tomorrow we should be able to get out of it!

On our way out of Levincourt yesterday, we passed the restaurant we’d eaten in the night before. We’d had ……………. listen…..!!!!

Those aren’t coyotes howling,….. They must be wolves…..    

Oh, where was I…..

Anyway, even though we’d just had our own morning concoction of raw oatmeal, fake maple yogurt, skim milk powder mixed with water, chopped apple and a dollop of espresso powder,  I was pretty sure I could put away a farmers breakfast of eggs, bacon, hash browns, cheese, toast, jam, coffee and just about anything else they might have. Ah well, off we went. I’ll get a Cliff bar in 70 km.

We were about 3 km down the road when we realized we’d forgotten to retrieve the food items from the fridge. Charlie sped back, returning about 15 minutes later with our salad dressing, half an English cucumber and a brand new block of cheese. Important, as we will have no access to groceries through the park.

It was overcast and only 9 degrees Celcius with an expected high of 18. It was hard getting the layers right. One layer too many and you’re too hot, one layer less and you’re shivering. I went for the one layer less.

We rode until we came across the information centre for the park. No, even though the printed information notes 2 different places where we can replace supplies, neither is operational this summer. Good thing we went back for the food.

The park is beautiful. Every conceivable variation of green vegetation,    the water marine blue on one side, mirror black on the other. Loons! I tried to photo one but it dove and I never saw it again. And bears! We saw 3 today.

Charlie rides behind me, allowing me to set the pace. As we were nearing the top of a hill, I saw a large black shape moving up the slope. There are a lot of strawberries, itsy bitsy ones, but as sweet as candy, along the sides of the roads.  This bear was noshing on something along the roadside and retreated when it saw us. It went up a bit, then turned  around and sat looking at us. I figure it planned on going right back and finishing up as soon as we passed. I was yelling, “Charlie , look right, look right!) He missed it. Then, about 10 minutes later I saw a bear ahead of us crossing the road. When we passed it had disappeared into the bush, but there was a much smaller one that we startled on the roadside and it took off.

This park and beyond, has a multitude of lakes, rivers and streams, and they are all teeming with fish. Everyone here, everyone, loves to, lives to hunt and fish. People come out with their RVs and boats and pretty well make a summer of it. If they’re working, many will leave their equipment right at their sites and come up every weekend. The catch of the day is dore, (pronounced dooray), otherwise known as Walleye. I’ve never tried it but all we’ve talked with assure us that it is the best tasting fish there is. This man was cleaning his fish    and he explained that they could not be less than 37cm or bigger than 53cm, and he showed us how he did them. The limit is 6 fish per person. Now if you fish your quota today and eat all 6 tonight, tomorrow you can fish for 6 more. Apparently the natural resources wardens are authorized to go to a persons home and check their freezers to make sure they haven’t stockpiled fish.

The middle of the park is at about 90 km and we had already done about 24km before that so when we got to the first campground at Lac Rapide, I was pretty done. The next one was about 40km away and I didn’t have it in me. Our little tent with our two bikes looked so small compared with all our neighbors. We set up, then decided to eat dinner out on the dock because there were fewer insects there.  So that’s what we did!    Dinner on the dock!  Our neighbors took our food bags into their RV to keep it from bears and then invited us for tea. There haven’t been any problem bears around lately but it’s best not to send them an invitation. There are special buildings to store garbage so that bears can’t get at it at all. The stairs lead up to a large suspended box. Garbage goes in the box through a lid you have to raise at the top. The garbage truck drives underneath it, the driver releases a latch and all the garbage spills down into the truck.      Ingenius , no?!!