Colours of Thompson

As we were slowly and painfully making our way through Alberta, we have received an invitation from our friends up in Thompson, MB, to visit. Why not? said we and decided to make the little detour and hang out in the self-proclaimed "Hub of the North". The road from the prairies to the northern wilderness was smooth. In Alberta, we met a fellow hitch-hiker, a prospector, as his business-card states, who was on his way to the East coast. We rode in two vehicles with him, and camped two nights together! A highly unlikely coincidence on the road, you know. This is him, playing his guitar to oncoming traffic:

We read a lot on our way to Thompson:

When we arrived, the table was set, and a most delicious roast was waiting for us in the oven: vegetarianism aside, we could not decline such a treat! Tolik and Lusine had a whole schedule worked out for our visit: on the first day, we took the grand tour of Thompson and had a huge pike for lunch. Our friends own a pair of elegant fishing rods, which they put to a good use - their freezer is literally stuffed with fillets of pike and wall eye. Next, we went for a two-night walk-in-the-woods to see the tallest falls in all of Manitoba - a lot of true northern beauty!




For the last day, our hosts saved the best: a tour of the mining operations around the town. First, we went to pound out some tunes out of the rock. The holes are filled with water to different levels. Some of them sound pretty cool!

The holes are test drills of this beastly machine

I tried to run it, but it wouldn't work, estie!



We also visited a closed-down mine which boasts a tallest tower in North America (too bad that it only operated for a WEEK),

a pit that turned into a lake,

a working nickel mine, the main employer in town,

a nearby tailings pond
(notice the intense indigo - no photo editing here! Just a high concentration of copper arsenic)and some other equally impressive features.





Tomorrow we sail off - a day before Tolik's birthday! It was a great pleasure for us to stay at their place. Thank you for all your hospitality, amazing food and good times, we'll see you at your next location, wherever that may be!

Nelson

As a great finale to our tour of the province, we came to Nelson. The town is unlike any other, the atmosphere is very relaxed, but something is in the air. We arrived just in time for the oneday street festival, with artisans lining the main street and dancing gypsies. Having decided that Nelson is not our type of town, we went out to a hitching spot, heading south. Had a bath is the nearby creek and were feeling good. Then a white Subaru pulled over. The couple, Meg and Ryan, were friendly and we had a good chat. They dropped us off at their turn-off to Ymir (pronounced why-murr). After about 20 minutes, we see the same car stopped, and Megan waives us over. We are invited to stay at their place and have a beer or two, if we want. We sure do!!!
Our new friends have two great friendly bull terriers, and we all go for a walk with the dogs to the near-by river. When they heard that we were not impressed by Nelson, they could not believe, and they changed our opinion about it in the next few days that we stayed with them.
The next day Meg and Ryan took us to a few trails around town, one that climbs the hill, overlooking Nelson, and the other to the old growth forest, where we saw a lot of ancient trees, and the one in particular was HUGE, it took a while to walk around it.
Megan and Ryan are amazing people, really intelligent and with a great sense of humour. We found that we had a lot of similiar views on life. Thank you once again, guys, we are really happy that we met you!
The whole time we were in the area, taking out a camera and taking pictures just did not seem like the thing to do, so we apologize for the lack of photo material, we'll try to represent in the future, we promise!
The road seems to be taking us east now, but how far or for how long is not clear.

Clearwater

A quick update from a complimentary internet station at a gas bar in Clearwater.
After a long time spent thinking and pondering the decision was made not to go further north than Hyder - not an easy call, but a note is made to make a full-scale dedicated journey to the North at a later point.
On the positive side, we had the longest hitching day/distance covered in the last 24 hours: Stewart - Clearwater: 1186 km, in 5 rides.

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The last and the longest ride was with a bearded frenchman with whom we conversed in french half the time, he took us from Houston all the way through the night and dropped us at Clearwater at 6 in the morning.
In comparison, it took us three days to get to Stewart from Smithers.
We are tired, hungry and buzzed out from the hideous amounts of the nastiest roadside coffee we had to consume to stay awake.
All in all, feeling great, as we embark on a search of a family to whom we have a letter from Wayne at Round Lake. Longing for breakfast, showers, laundry, you know, the usual stuff.

Peace!