Canada Part I: Goin' up nort, eh?

Life changes and self preservation strategies are sometimes ugly business.  So as to not let retirement stresses and the pressures of learning new ways to spend our days build up into a powder keg, Miki and I had the opportunity to spend twelve days in a little slice of heaven and let said pressures vent out safely in a controlled environment.  This was all monitored by Dr. Greg Goodman... Life Coach, Stress Psychoanalyst to Retired Educators and newly retired teacher himself.  To get to heaven from Blue Springs, you have to go through Grundy Center, Iowa.  Not only do they have the first presidential caucuses in Iowa, but they also guard the pearly gates to one Fiart Island, Donald Lake, Woodland Caribou Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada.

From Missouri, we traveled straight nort or "north" for you non-Canadians.

Traveling to heaven's gate takes you to Grundy Center and before
passing through we picked up other angels headed for the Canadian border.

Greg's dad and some college buddies went in together to purchase a small island, back in the 60's, had a cabin built on it, and it is now being passed down to the next generation of family members and friends to carry on the tradition of traveling to Canada to relax, have some fun, and FISH.  The original group all hailed from this area around Grundy Center, Iowa.  Their cabin, including 4 others on the lake, are now included in Woodland Caribou Provincial Park.  

When the road ended in Red Lake, Ontario, we flew west to
Donald Lake or heaven as it is referred to by some.

After driving a relatively short 5 hours to GC, we followed it up the next day by an 8 hour  marathon to the US/Canadian border, which was followed up by a 5 hour slog to Red Lake, Ontario.  The closer you get to Red Lake, the higher your chances of running into a moose... literally... especially at night, which is when we happened to be closing in on our destination... heaven, remember?  I happened to have pulled the graveyard shift of driving this last section, of which the area cut back to the trees from the road was not much and gave moose good cover before darting out in front of an unsuspecting vehicle...like one traveling from a small town in Iowa.  Accidents between cars or trucks and moose are recorded every day in Ontario.  We rounded a particularly tight curve and my headlights had not yet caught up to the road ahead and . . . naw, it never happened, but we did see a couple of them .

We arrived in Red Lake the next morning just before 6 a.m. as planned, and prepared for our 25 min. flight to heaven.

To be continued...

My Zen from up nort, eh:  When you see a sign, my guess it was put there for a reason.  It may not impact you, but chances are it has someone else.  One of the groups that goes up earlier in the summer to this cabin did hit a moose a couple of years ago.  Be aware, no matter the sign.