10/03/2026 – 10/05/2026 – The Exotic Locale of Canada, eh!
So, we left home on October 3rd and drove to Toronto, Ontario. We had reserved a parking spot at the airport garage a couple of weeks ago. The drive went smoothly, the border crossing was a breeze, and traffic was not too bad – probably because it was a Saturday morning. First issue? Where is the parking garage?? We drove around and around before we finally found a sign pointing us to a è. We were looking for “parking”. So, we found the garage and went to the entrance which was just a couple of machines, neither of which seemed to want to see our pre-paid parking code. We pressed the button and got a ticket. That’s when we figured out we needed to pay that ticket when we exited, even though we had a pre-paid reservation. Oh, well, we’ll get it figured out on the way back!
Getting our luggage checked in was fairly easy, except that, of course, no humans were involved and the machine had a difficult time reading our tags until we found just the right angle to set out bags onto the belt. Going through the carry-on scanners and x-ray machine was a breeze (once we took our watches off!) We had plenty of time to spare.
The flight to Winnipeg, Manitoba, was uneventful. It was our first time to Manitoba and we have now been to all Canadian provinces except for Saskatchewan. We picked up our rental car and zoomed to Selkirk, a small town about an hour drive away. Why Selkirk, many locals asked us? Why, to visit Dave’s old friend Rusty Jensen and his wife Tauni of course! Dave and Rusty first met in 1990 as Park Rangers at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. They then worked together again at Redwood National Park in California in the early 2000’s. They hadn’t seen each other since 2002 when Dave left Redwood to take a job at Glen Canyon National Recreational Area in Utah and Arizona. Rusty had since found and married Tauni and moved to Canada, while Dave had found and married Kathy and moved to North Carolina, then Saranac Lake, then Lockport, NY. We had so much fun catching up on our lives, telling old war stories, and hiking in the autumn forests of central Canada.
Tomorrow, we head back to Winnipeg, drop off the rental car back at the airport, and then ride with Rusty and Tauni to the train station. We are headed to Churchill, Manitoba on a 48-hour train ride!
