Monday, July 21, 2008

Gone Fishin' (or rather, back from)

It's been a while since I've posted, and that's because I've been deep in the woods of Canada, where the Walleye and Pike are huge and the mosquitos are even bigger. I'm not necessarily a big "fishing guy," but the trip is one that my brothers and I have been talking about for more than a decade, so when the planets and stars finally aligned, I was all in.

We headed up to an area that my mom's side of the family has been going to for more than half a century. About two and a half hours past Sault Ste. Marie up the Royal Canadian Highway 17 (The Trans Canada Highway), there's a logging town called Dubreuilville (surprisingly, they've got a pretty snazzy website for such a small town). The town sign says "900," but I'd be surprised, especially since the lumber mill shut down about two weeks before we got there. I guess the lack of housing demand in the US has really taken its toll on the lumber industry. I'd say nearly 40% of the houses in Dubreuilville were for sale. It was pretty sad. I can't imagine that the town will exist if the mill doesn't open back up. They were just finishing up a HUGE addition to the town school (easily as big as many High Schools here in the states). It looked really pricey. So weird that it will simply be an empty building in the middle of nowhere if that one business (the mill) shuts down.

But on the bright side (eh?), I guess it was nice that the mill wasn't running as far as fishing goes (it was much quieter than normal, I'm told).

Here are some highlights from the trip:

Hey, look! I'm actually catchin' fish!


Bear!


This is the old campground where my grandfather, et al, used to stay. Somebody burned down the original cabin, but this one's pretty old as well. It's beautiful, but what you can't see are the swarms of mosquitos. At one point Drew and I looked over at uncle Petie, and he had at least 14 hunkered down and sucking blood just on his one upper arm. Seriously crazy.


Sunset on the lake.


Drewbie with his Pike whopper
(it took second place to Mikey's slightly larger Pike).


That's Mikey getting ready to put the smack down on some fish. He's a bad-ass with a filet knife. Even the y-bone on a Pike poses no problem for this mighty ichthyobutcher.


Moose! I've never seen one with black body like this. Very cool.


That's my fish there, but he just looked so happy holding it.


More bears... but not quite as spectacular when they're at the dump. At one point, there were eight, and one was a HUGE mama bear. They get mad when you poke them with a stick.


The view from the breakfast table (ever been someplace really beautiful?).

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