Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Oh, Canada! In Search of Moose Kebabs!

In Search of Moose Kebabs!
 
 Joe, calling moose...
 
Day Two: No Más (No Moose)
Up and out by 6:30a.m. in the drizzle, my Hello Kitty Rifle pendant on for luck...  but no moose. L

At noon, after a fruitless morning of moose pursuit in the rain (which made hunting seem pointless), Dan and I drove into Vanderhoof, for what turned out to be 4 stupid hours, to try to find an internet connection, and at least Facebook message with our inn-sitter long enough to give him an emergency contact number- our guide's wife's home number, Far, Far Away in Quesnel. Being totally "off the grid" sounds just grand- so relaxing!- unless you have a business to run (or try to run), from afar, and can't get in touch with anyone! That's when being "off the grid" becomes an angst-filled, nerve-wracking mess! After a miserable experience with the clueless, lip-pierced, kiddie nitwits at Tim Hortons, the Canadian version of Dunkin’ Donuts which has Really Bad Food, but which “everyone” in the rural "off the grid" area surrounding Vanderhoof supposedly uses as their office, we finally got our Nexus7 connected at A&W (which, sadly, also has Really Bad Food), and feverishly tried to respond to our inn-sitter's many issues. We gave him Joe's wife's phone number for emergencies, but we also prayed he wouldn't have to use it, as we had no idea if we’d ever actually get the message; Joe basically talked to his wife once a day IF we found ourselves up on a hill somewhere and his phone rang! We had heard a number of stories about the local Indians from Joe, but had no idea if any of them were true, as several ugly comments had already proved to us that he was definitely a racist- and spending 13+ hours a day in a vehicle with a racist (who won't shut up about it, even when politely and repeatedly asked to change the subject...) isn't the most amusing thing in the world... While we saw many obviously prosperous, upscale, and middle-income Indian families shopping in Vanderhoof, over our coffee at A&W we also saw a drunk, middle aged Indian woman (in other words, she was my age…), with stringy hair and rotten and missing teeth, yelling in loud and incoherent bursts, sitting with a staggeringly drunk man who kept swiveling around and grinning at us and into space... It was truly way Beyond sad… Joe also told us that Canadian mining companies are legally bound to have at least a 10% Indian workforce, but since many of the Indians have figured out how to effectively milk the system (as many people have figured out how to do in the USA...), they don’t turn up for work after two days, knowing the companies will keep them on the books and pay them anyway- and just write it off as a “business expense” the way you’d write off Mafia protection money payments as “security”... No clue if it's true on any level or not...
I got a couple of odd looks at Tim Horton’s, probably due to my totally matching camo outfit: my Real Tree hunting bibs & matching jacket, set off by my Real Tree/Pink rhinestone/Hello Kitty-encrusted handbag, and dark green, embroidered-logo Cabela’s ball cap, augmented by Dan’s skinning knife in its hand-tooled sheath, hanging off my silver Michael Kors belt. LOL We bought cigarettes (finally finding some almost normal sized and tasting USA Pall Mall Blues instead of the super-strong and ridiculously short Canadian cigarettes that are often the only thing you can buy-  apparently because Canadian cigarettes are priced by the nicotine content, making Lights cheaper, so no one wants to sell them!), and a bottle of tonic for our AbFab Saskatoon Lucky Bastard Gin; we couldn’t get wine or Yukon Jack (which actually has its own Wikipedia listing, LOL, and is the 100-proof whisky-honey "Black Sheep of Canadian Liquors" of which Dan has extolled the virtues of to me...), as it was Sunday and the liquor stores were closed and we couldn’t find Vanderhoof's “wine and beer store”...
And then it was back to moose hunting. It had thankfully stopped raining, and Joe drove us up and down the logging roads until dark yet again, but to no avail. L
 Dan, listening for moose...
 
"Who's gonna decorate all the Christmas trees?" :-)

 A lake missing it's moose...

We got back at camp at dark and enjoyed a couple of delightful Lucky Bastard gin and tonics in the warmth of the wood stove, and then Celine’s lasagna dinner, followed by chocolate cake. Dinner conversation was Mike telling urinal and fart jokes, followed by an odd and long-winded (pun intended) explanation of how intimidated men (or at least he) get in public restrooms, how they try to stand far away from each other (seriously- women do NOT have this problem!), and how much he HATES public restrooms. The other hunter wife was as mystified as I; neither of us knew Any of these Serious Testosterone Issues- that, to the best of our knowledge, our husbands don't have. LOL. My, how travel does broaden one's horizons!
I managed to make everyone laugh wandering around the cabin in my 6” spike camo heels- (thank you, eBay!)- which was basically their purpose! J
And then to bed in our zip-together sleeping bags… But sex? With those Literally paper-thin walls? Not happening. L

Day Three: Moose Tracks and Moose Bedrooms

Today we saw tracks- lots and lots of fresh tracks. Big hoof prints, little hoof prints, older tracks full of last night’s rain, and newer tracks in the mud. Lots and lots of moose shoes, up and down the roads, over hill and dale, but no moose in them thar shoes... Celine gave us a thermos of coffee to go along with the packed lunch, candy bars, and baggies of trail-mix, so at least we had something to do to kill time... 

My feeling (based on everything I’d learned about moose hunting in the previous 36 hours) was that it was Way too warm for the moose to go into rut, and that’s what we needed them to do to get them out where we might be able to shoot them in daylight. And that moose move at night, so dawn’s early light or late dusk is probably the only time you’ll see them, if they're not actively rutting. And that, unlike elk, moose have no method to their madness, so moose hunting is basically a giant, haphazard crap shoot, in which you drive or walk around for hours, day after day, hoping to stumble upon them, if calling them out doesn’t work. We need them rutting, head-butting in a frenzy in the middle of the road, oblivious to all around them, and when it’s 80-degrees and up in the sun, that’s just not gonna happen. There’s been nothing even Close to a frost so far, the trees have only just begun to turn yellow, and if I can stand outside in a cotton shirt at 6:30a.m., it is obviously Way too warm for the rut... L

I start out our hunting days dressed Really warm, and for sitting in the truck with the windows open I am perfectly attired. But after a nice, long walk in the woods carrying my rifle, I am Way over-dressed and sweating, and start to peel off layers the minute we return to the truck(right after I pee, bracing myself on the fender of the truck, as Dan & Joe stare off into space LOL); at one point I joke that I need to write a song called Hunting Makes Her Clothes Fall Off…
Had our lunch of yummy salmon sandwiches at a beautiful spot on Frasier River, at someone’s fishing camp that not only has a cute outhouse with a crescent moon carved into the door, but a sauna, too! I Heartily Approve of the Canadian penchant for building a Finnish-style sauna everywhere they go!  
A river, badly in need of its moose...

We also had One Helluva Hike (wherein I actually, and embarrassingly, let Dan carry my rifle, so I could literally crawl up the hill, hand over hand, using a tree branch to brace myself, like an old German lady in the alps with her walking stick- all I needed to complete the picture was my Trachten Dress…), and walked a marshy swamp (also not the easiest thing to do, even a flat swamp), discovering a two-room moose bedroom in the tall grass. I found a lovely salmon-colored stone which made me dream of my home in Jerusalem, Israel, and I tucked it into my pocket hoping it would bring us luck… But we found no moose. L
 A marsh, missing its moose...


  Hubby Dan, wearing his lucky Army hat...

 Elisse, doing Glamo Camo...

Moose calling in the marsh! ("Here, moosey, moosey, moosey..." LOL)
 
We did see a small bear, and I got some photos of it frolicking up on the mountain; we even discussed adding on a bear tag (which is the only one that makes sense, as elk or deer aren’t happening right now, either), but the truth is that bear meat thrills neither one of us, and we are hunting for meat, not for pelts or taxidermy trophies.
 

 
Joe could have probably sold us two nice, expensive bear tags that evening had he offered them, but he didn’t seem the least bit interested in doing so- which frankly struck us as odd. We came back at dark, enjoyed our Lucky Bastard G&Ts (offering them again to Joe and Celine, but getting no takers), and then we four enjoyed Celine's nice, chicken dinner; the other couple and Mike are spending the night at the "Spike Camp". I took another wonderfully hot bath before Celine shut off the generator, and finally booted up the computer and started to write…


Day Four: Moosinations
Moosinations are when you are convinced, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that that rotted tree stump on the hill not only has horns, but it’s moving, too. I had been having Serious Moosinations for 4 days now, and I wasn't the only one: Dan was “willing” tree stumps to grow horns, and Joe was “willing” them to move! We woke up to a Real Frost, and I was over the moon: today was the day for the rut to begin, thought I! After hot coffee, sausage, and home fries, I painted my face with 4 colors of camo war paint according to Dan’s expert directions (“You forgot the smear of brown on your cheekbones and the grey stripe across your forehead”), and off we set!



The grasses were white with frost as we drove past the lake I’ve taken to calling “the photo-op lake missing its moose”, and I was Sure we were going to find that all the females had gone into heat and all the males were rutting deliriously in the middle of the roads. Not happening. We saw but a few fresh tracks late into the day, but they seemed to be mostly elk tracks- it’s almost impossible to tell them apart.
Joe called for elk (bull and female) with his elk bulb squeaker and Real Tree “shofar” (he has an elk tag…), and he called for boy and girl moose, too, pinching his nose with his hands, but still no response... L
We hiked out to a beautiful marshy area on Blue Mountain Lake, which has water lilies, mushy marsh, and tall grasses- basically all the things moose love- and saw some relatively recent moose poo (and coyote & wolf poo, filled with rose hip seeds- it apparently gives them the runs, too LOL), but still no moose. L
A gazillion things go through your head when you’re driving around for 13 hours looking for moose: I doze off and on in
the hot sun, or when Joe turns on the heater full blast, I pray silently, I listen to Dan and Joe’s stories of their hunts and adventures, chiming in occasionally with mine (which are lame by comparison), and I let my mind wander, and wander it does- from childhood, all the way through my 54 years, like a card-flipping Rolodex… 54 years?! AAAUGH!
The funniest idea I’ve come up with so far is a YouTube instructional makeup video of how to do Glamo Camo: a REAL “smoky eye” and “nude lip”, as it were- with SFC Dan doing the voice-over...
Moose Poo! They're here- somewhere!


Joe, using the birch bark moose call he fashioned then and there... 

We wound up the day trolling the logging roads again until dark in our fruitless search for Lucky Bullwinkle. Not fond of ham and cheese, I ate candy, fruit, and trail mix again (love those wasabi peas!), alternating with Pall Malls and coffee, so Celine’s dinner of meal-in-a-bag Fettuccini Alfredo (she shoved the bag at me after I complimented her on how good it was LOL) and sausage was Most welcome- I happily stuffed my fat, camo-painted face. J (Speaking of which, my face broke out today from my war paint application. (Dan told me that in the Army it made his face break out, too. LOL) Thank goodness I brought my Mario Badescu pimple drying lotion on the hunt. (!) Somehow I don’t think “Hunting Makes Her Face Breaks Out” is gonna make it into the Top 10. LOL Stood outside the cabin in the dark, looking up at a magnificent night sky ringed with black pine trees, a sky literally light with a gazillion stars… I could see my breath, which I took as a happy sign of another frost, and, hopefully, deliriously rutting moose come morning. The other couple and Mike are not back from "Spike Camp", so we all assume that the hunting is not good there, either… Our plan is to get up at 5a.m. and be back at Blue Mountain Lake before sun-up; Dan has unzipped the sleeping bags so he can actually get a decent night’s sleep; my legs hurt, and I wake up in pain and thrash about, unknowingly kick him, and keep him awake…L
Next: Moose Madness!

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Oh, Canada! British Columbia: Prince George & Day One of our Moose Hunt!

Leaving Jasper, Alberta we headed for British Columbia, stopping at Mount Robson for coffee and to enjoy the beautiful view:
Doesn't it look fake? Like a plastic set for a production of "Heidi"? LOL

and funny things, too...















We made it to Prince George in the late afternoon- just minutes too late, sadly, to be able to tour the Prince George Railway and Forestry Museum, so we strolled around outside the fence, looking at the trains & shooting pix on my Nexus7...









We then killed a few hours until North 54, the restaurant we wanted to have dinner at, opened, getting our first cash machine batch of Canadian money and stopping at a pharmacy, where we got what is undoubtedly one of Canada's great inventions: Life Brand "Analgesic & Muscle Relaxant" (Ibuprofen + Methocarbamol). :-) We then had a yummy "foodie" dinner of Sambuca Tiger Prawns in a garlic Sambuca butter broth, handmade tagliolini pasta with  prawns, scallops, mussels, and garlic confit in a saffron chardonnay butter broth, and filet mignon, accompanied by several glasses of good British Columbia wine, at North 54:
The funny part was that our server, an extremely debonair and sour man, was quite obviously both the owner of The Fine Restaurant of Prince George, and a snob of the first rank! His demeanor was SO incredibly snarky that I finally asked him, (with a big, sweet smile), if he was mad at us- which got an instant denial and a wan smile as he literally ran from our table! My gut feeling was that he felt that we- in our baseball caps and jeans- were tres déclassé for his fine establishment… I was able to log onto Facebook and FourSquare from the restaurant, which was nice, as we had no idea if we’d be able to do so from the hunting camp...

By now it was early evening, and we set out for the hunting camp, supposedly "only" 45 minutes from Vanderhoof... according to the little hand-drawn map the outfitter had emailed us.
We arrived at the hunting camp at 8pm, in the dark, after a merry drive through Extremely Rural BC in pitch-blackness. Everything was Swell until we got on “Old 27” out of Vanderhoof, and missed the turn onto Sturgeon Road… which sent us into The Great Unlit Canadian Wilderness. We finally managed to flag down a passing car and ask directions, and thus found the Vanderhoof airport and the turn onto Sturgeon Road, and yes, the road Did turn to gravel as the map stated it would, but the comment “camp is about 45 minutes from town” had us questioning Everything, as it seemed to be The Longest 45 Minutes In The Known Universe! But find it we finally did- Dan fortunately remembering the “watch for Private Drive sign” notation on the map, which led us from Millard Road onto The Pitted Driveway From Hell. We got to camp in time for Dinner No. 2, camp cook Celine’s rather tasteless spaghetti, and at least a pleasant, if not ecstatic, welcome. And BOY was I glad we travel with booze… LOL We met our Guide, Joe L. (the husband of the lady I'd been corresponding with for months about how we would process and transport (hopefully) a lot of moose meat), Mike H, the owner of the outfitting company, Tom, the “go-fer”, who seemed a sweet and funny guy, Lorne, their young trainee guide, and the other couple hunting this week: a young, proudly blue-collar husband and wife from Washington State. The wife joyfully regaled us all with a gleefully bloodthirsty description of her most recent dream- which she supposedly had twice- a “happy dream” (her words) in which she slit the throat of a moose stuck in a creek by its deformed horn, while her husband admonished her not to “blow the whole, expensive hunting trip on the first day”. :-O I have to admit I was at first surprised and disappointed by the roughness of the accommodations; I guess I was expecting a warmer welcome, somewhat finer food, finished walls that were thicker than paper, and better beds than two lumpy and uneven camping cots for $8500… Dan wasn’t surprised at all- this being par for the course at hunting camps... But as he always hunted rough (sometimes VERY rough...), and he'd never done a fully-guided hunt, he had much lower expectations than I. But as he was happy with the accommodations and people, so was I… 

Hunt Day One: Miss(ed) Moose
We were up at 4:30a.m. and having a hearty breakfast of eggs and bacon at 5...

Although the other couple got on the road early (they were hunting several hours north of the camp), as we were to hunt in this area, we supposedly couldn’t start our hunting until light (6:30a.m.). We basically spent the day having Joe drive us around the countryside in his pick-up truck very, very slowly, looking and calling for moose, hoping they’d come out of the dense forest and cross the logging roads. The scenery was totally gorgeous, with the sad exception of all the dead pine trees, which must be (and were being) cut down by loggers- except in the Park area, where the loggers are not permitted to log, and so the trees there fall on top of each other, creating not only an impassably dense area of downed trees, but an insane fire hazard... Thank you China, for yet another invasive insect that is destroying entire forests… But, as you'll see, we were definitely in Moose Country- and Elk and Bear and Grouse and Mule Deer and Wolf and Coyote Country, too!


Love those Waldorf Astoria slippers! LOL







 Bullwinkle- at least 500 yards away...

 Close-up of Bullwinkle...

THE Big Thing Of The Day was having a gorgeous Bull Moose park itself in the middle of the road in front of our car- way up a hill- over 500 yards away- and having Dan miss the shot. L (And then having Joe miss- twice. LOL He wasn't supposed to shoot once, much less twice.) Like idiots, neither Dan nor I sighted our guns when we arrived, and both were off- and Dan’s was Way off. L After three rifle blasts Bullwinkle took off like a moose out of hell, and then we proceeded on a merry moose chase through the woods, trying in vain to find a blood trail. We finally drove back to the place where Mr. Moose had made his stand, saw his tracks, and discovered there Was no blood trail. The good news was we hadn’t lost a wounded moose, but the bad news was Dan had totally missed the shot. And I think Joe was (and remains) even madder than Dan, because he was “helping” Dan by firing- illegally- and missed twice… He then (smartly) said "don't say anything about this to anyone", as what he had done was patently illegal... We took to calling this particular Mr. Moose “Bullwinkle” or “Lucky”, depending on our mood- for obvious reasons. I became convinced that big and old as he is, Bullwinkle was certainly no idiot, and knew by then that hunts last about a week, and that if he hung out in the trees for a week until the 3 schmucks in a truck were gone, he’d probably be good to go. I could actually picture the Hanna-Barbera cartoon celebration, in which Bullwinkle and his buds celebrated his cheating death at the hands of Three Schmucks In A Truck Who Couldn’t Hit The Broad Side Of A Barn With A Pole-Axe...


We did find Lots of different kinds of poo: moose and/or elk, bear, coyote, and wolf. I got The definitive answer to the age old question of whether or not bears shit in the woods (yes), and kept thinking how I really should shoot The Definitive Wilderness Poo Album while we were in Wild Poo World...

We did one long (5 mile) walk (which made my legs feel much better J), and came upon a female moose and her calf- which we’re not allowed to shoot. I didn’t know that, however, and as Dan shouldered his rifle (just to look through the scope), I just stood there like an idiot staring at him and then at Joe, trying to figure out why Dan wasn’t firing away, afraid to even take a picture, lest the click throw him off… We were upwind from her and she didn’t smell us at all, even when she poked her nose in the air and sniffed around…




 
Elisse, wearing the noisiest rain gear in the universe: Frogg Toggs...

 Joe, calling for moose...

We got to munch yummy little wild blueberries that Joe found for us, and sample rose hips, which I found mealy and oddly tasteless- I guess I was expecting those Vitamin C-packed little doobers to be tangy or sour… 

Rose Hips...

After the fiasco of missing Bullwinkle, we all went to the gravel pit and sighted our guns doing some target shooting, and Dan corrected our scopes. Then we drove around playing Find That Damn Bull Moose until dark… to no avail. Joe kept calling them- which was both eerie and fascinating to watch and listen to- but they were not answering... L
Dinner was nice and warming: Celine’s “Russian Chicken” (made with Russian Dressing LOL). The other couple hadn’t shot anything either, and also seemed a tad disappointed; she had a moose tag and he had a bear tag. They were hunting with Mike north of the camp, on the river, which was extremely cold, in a boat that apparently had a bit of a leaking issue… While we were game for that, too, we were game only if there was a point- in other words, if the hunting there was excellent- or at least better than it was where we were. Just to be cold and wet and miserable in a leaking boat and a freezing tent for the sake of being cold and wet and miserable wasn't something we had any need or desire to do: been there, done that! After dinner I took a wonderfully hot bath; blisteringly hot water- even brown water-  is a glorious thing- as are OTC muscle relaxants with an added pain killer: one of Canada’s great contributions to the universe as I know it...
Next: Moose Hunt, Day 2!

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Oh, Canada! FINE dining in Edmonton, trains, geese, the Icefields Parkway, & Jasper!

Our first stop in Alberta was Edmonton,  where we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express Downtown (on our hotel points :-), and thanks again to our GREAT AAA book, had a truly excellent "foodie" dinner of New Canadian Cuisine just a block away at the elegant Wildflower Restaurant: Peppercorn-Herb-Crusted Bison Tenderloin, with a fig and chanterelle bread pudding, butternut squash puree, and a blackberry sage reduction... Canadian Prime Beef Carpaccio and truffle parmesan frites, with shallot chipotle jam, arugula and BBQ aioli... Smokey Alberta Venison Loin w/Saskatoon Berry Reduction Sauce, Prairie Succotash, and Chipotle Polenta... and all beautifully matched with excellent BC wines! It was SO good I shot "Instagram" photos with my Nexus7:





A WONDERFUL dinner of New Canadian
cuisine at the Wildflower Restaurant in Edmonton
 
Our breakfast stop the next morning was at a sweet little café in Wildwood, which Wikepedia describes as a "hamlet"on the Yellowhead Highway (Highway 16). I think this is the first time I've ever been to a hamlet! The owners were charming, and helped me get online (hence the FourSquare photos from my Nexus7), and while I was getting coffee and FourSquaring, crafty Dan managed to snag us a bottle of Canadian wine!

 
Our road trip across Canada took us through some truly beautiful places, and we stopped to enjoy a field of white Canadian Geese:

 
 
We took the time to chase trains, and to stop and enjoy the beautiful landscapes and the quirky and interesting things along the way...
 




The Mounties! (I can't help it- I always think of Dudley Do-Right!)

 
We headed for Jasper, Alberta, which is within Jasper National Park, and our first stop was for a yummy lunch of Canadian Beef Carpaccio and Duck salad with a local beer sampler (and buying some local beer jelly!) at the Jasper Brewing Company!
 
 
 


 
The Jasper Brewing  Company is right across from the
Jasper Train Station, which is a working depot, as well as an historic one:
 







 
We stayed at the Sunwapta Falls Rocky Mountain Lodge, a truly lovely place to stay, where we had a cute cabins, great service, and excellent food at their Restaurant (elk and bison tenderloin!) 
 
 
 
 
 
That evening at the bar, we were drinking some more great BC wine and talking with the owner, the chef, and the staff, and when the owner found out that I was an Official Artist for the US Coast Guard and had been a military illustrator in the Israeli Defense Forces, he gave me the book "A Terrible Beauty- the Art of Canada at War" by Heather Robertson-  a most extraordinary gift!
 
The Sunwapta Falls Rocky Mountain Lodge is 30 minutes from Jasper on the "Icefields Parkway", which is so incredibly gorgeous that you truly have to see it to believe it! I found the Lodge on TripAdvisor, called and learned they had a special that included a bottle of bubbly and a credit at their restaurant, and decided that this was The place for us to enjoy our one night on the Icefields Parkway!
  



 
 After we checked in, we drove a few minutes up the road to Sunwapta Falls and hiked both to the Upper and Lower Falls- me in heels, of course! LOL We did about 5 kms total, which is more walking than we've done since our last vacation ages ago LOL, but we were really surprised to find out how good it felt! :-)
  
At one point I looked down and spotted a twig so unusual that I had to pick it up- I thought it was a carving of a bird that someone had made and accidentally dropped on the path! I took my pinecone "bird stick" with us as a lucky charm for our trip and a wonderful natural souvenir of a beautiful, romantic place...
 



 
 
 


 I love this man!

 
Elisse and her "bird stick"!





 
  

 
Frisbee: A traffic jam on the Icefields Parkway. LOL

 Chasing trains down the Icefields Parkway...



 
 Next: British Columbia!