onderroad: August 26, 2003 - Athabasca, Alberta to Moonshine Lake Provincial Park, Alberta (299 miles)

Saturday, September 06, 2003

August 26, 2003 - Athabasca, Alberta to Moonshine Lake Provincial Park, Alberta (299 miles)

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Wheat Field; Northern, Saskatchewan

Got an early start today. Well, early for is before noon. It was cold in the tent last night. I woke up in the middle of the night and zipped up my windows. When I got up at 8:00am, the thermometer read 38 degrees. It was probably mid-30's, plus I was camped along the river, and the river valleys tend to get cool.

My cup of coffee felt good on my hands (even better than in my stomach).

I headed north east towards Slave Lake (the lesser). There were clouds on the horizon and I was sure I would hit rain, but one way or another, it never did rain. I ate lunch in Slave Lake at Boston Pizza and had a pretty good Stromboli. I drive through town and look for an authentic, non-chain café with a lot of cars (or pickup trucks) outside - few RV's. I couldn't find an authentic café but I found a Boston Piizza, which was okay for a chain.

The day warmed up nicely as it went along. I was quite chilled in the morning, the temps were in the 40's and 50's but by afternoon, they were in the 60's and up to the mid 70'd. The threat of rain dissipated, and I had a nice ride through the northern fields of Alberta. It was mostly wheat and hay fields, intermixed with spruce forest, mostly flat. I passed Slave Lake (the lesser), still quite a body of water from my few glimpses of it, over 75 miles. Very little traffic, quite a bit of time with my throttlemeister locked down to about 70 mph.

I was driving through the town of High Prairie and I was a little bored of driving, so I hoped for a coffee shop to appear. I made it through town, and at the last street, sure enough, was a coffee shop and I had my first latte in 10 days. I also ran into a couple driving a brand new Victory motorcycle on their way back home to Fort McMurray.

I stopped for the day about 30 miles past Spirit River, about 150 miles north east of Edmonton, Alberta at the Moonshine Lake Provincial Park. It's a nice park and except for a stretch of sites by the lake, practically deserted. I have a nice grass site for my tent, and I have seen only 1 person since I set up camp.

Little Church on the Prarie; Northern Saskatchewan

It's amazing the amount of agriculture that is grown this far north. I was reading that mid to northern Canadian producers have about 10-15 extra growing season days, plus the days are longer this far north. I am sitting by my tent writing and it is 9:30pm and I can still read without artificial light

Posted on Saturday, September 06, 2003 at 02:06 AM in Alaska Trip | Permalink

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October 2005

Reading

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Octavio Paz: The Labyrinth of Solitude: The Other Mexico, Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude, Mexico and the United States, the Philanthropic Ogre
"First published in 1950, The Labyrinth of Solitude addresses issues that are both seemingly eternal and resoundingly contemporary: the nature of political power in post-conquest Mexico, the relation of Native Americans to Europeans, the ubiquity of official corruption. Noting these matters earned Paz no small amount of trouble from the Mexican leadership, but it also brought him renown as a social critic. Paz, who went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, later voiced his disillusionment with all political systems--as the Mexican proverb has it, "all revolutions degenerate into governments"--but his call for democracy in this book has lately been reverberating throughout Mexico, making it timely once again."
PATRICK SYMMES: Chasing Che : A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend
"A motorcycle trip in 1952 marked a turning point for Ernesto Guevara Lynch de la Serna, a medical student returning from a journey into poverty and oppression with a vision of guerilla-style change and a new name, Che Guevara. Going on to help overthrow the Cuban government, align himself with Castro, and become elevated to martyred hero status when he was executed in Bolivia in 1967, Guevara's likeness is now commercialized and captured on T-shirts, castanets, and watches. New York writer Patrick Symmes embarks on motorcycle tracing Guevara's route through Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, and Cuba, seeking insight into what Guevara experienced and what his political movement wrought. Meeting with those who knew the young Che--among them a lover, a leper, and his motorcycle traveling cohort--proves interesting enough, though rarely insightful since some were children at the time, some are confused, and others refuse to talk openly. More revealing are Symmes's travels on his bike, nicknamed La Cucaracha. He winds through both Buenos Aires' high society and Peruvian poverty, finding a fragmented country where revolutions have brought mountain peasants fleeing to shanty towns, and where blind idealism coexists with blatant denouncement of the violent tactics used by Cuban Communists, even by Che's most respected soldiers. Beautifully written, the stories that unfold here reflect the complex contradiction that endures in Latin America three long decades after Ernesto "Che" Guevara's death. --Melissa Rossi"
Ernesto Che Guevara: The Motorcycle Diaries : A Latin American Journey
"Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara became Fidel Castro's chief lieutenant in the Cuban revolution, Cuba's minister for industry and later a guerrilla in Bolivia, where he was captured and executed in 1967. This high-spirited travel diary of Guevara's eight-month motorcycle journey across Argentina, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela as a 23-year-old medical student in 1951-52 mixes lyrical observation, youthful adventure and anti-imperialist political analysis. With a doctor friend as traveling companion, Guevara stows away on a cargo ship, explores Inca ruins, volunteers as a fireman, visits a leper colony and displays solidarity with miners and farm workers. Guevara's snide passing remarks targeting blacks, homosexuals and Jews reveal an unpleasant side of the countercultural icon. On balance, this candid journal, part self-discovery, part fieldwork, glimmers with portents of the future revolutionary. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc."
John Steinbeck: Cannery Row
I'm on a little Steinbeck jag, and I enjoyed this book, his descriptions of the characters that inhabited the waterfront in Monterrey, his compassionate and understanding view of the have-nots (at least the have not's regarding material wealth).
John Steinbeck: Log from the Sea of Cortez, The (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
John Steinbeck: America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction (Penguin Classics)
When I was in California, I visited the Steinbeck Center in Salinas. It is about 15 miles from Monterrey and Carmel and they have a lot of interesting exhibits on Steinbeck, including his camper from his trip he wrote about in Travels with Charley. Since then, I have read a couple of Steinbeck books, and I really enjoyed his point of view and personality which is apparent in his non-fiction works, particularly The Sea of Cortez and this work, America and Americans.
Loren Eiseley: The Immense Journey : An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature
I read this book about 20 years ago and the lyrical mood of this naturalist struck a cord in me. I picked it up recently on an urge and am enjoying it again.
John Bakeless: The Journals of Lewis and Clark
I bought this version at Fort Clatsop in Oregon on the 200th anniversary of the date the Corps of Discovery Left their encampment in Illinois at the mouth of the Missouri. This version cleans up the spelling and references, but that's half the beauty of it, but the size fits in my bag for my motorcycle journey.
John A. Crow: The Epic of Latin America
Good overview of the native cultures of Central and South America, Spanish colonization, and the eventual independence.