Jun 29 Th

---

Birch R iver We headed towards Manitoba, happy to leave Ontario which is long,long,long. Mainly a driving day. Along the road we managed to spot a bear. To bad, this fellow was living on a garbage dump,feeding on the leftovers. We headed towards the local provincial park. The local provincial park was sold out. We ended up at a privately owned campground, run by an old German couple, Peter and Ulrike. Peter was so fat that he could hardly make it to the camp office without getting a heartattac (we never saw Ulrike),wearing a filthy undershirt and matching shorts. The campsites weren't that nice, but OK situated by Birch River. It was extremely hot and muggy, and we spent an hour before starting dinner, sitting on rocks by the river with our feet in the water. During dinner, the number of mosquitos grew to the point where we had to escape to the laundry facilities in order to finish our meal in relative peace. We went back to clean up and go to sleep in our roof tent. But when we got there, the tent was full of mosquitos despite our mosquito nets. We got pretty much all of them with our newly purchased fly swatter and went to sleep. Bettina woke up about 2.30 PM having to go to the bathroom. But when she shone the flashlight outside, not only the netting, but the entire rooftent was filled with mosquitos. She couldn't go outside !!!. At this point we had gotten soo many mosquito bites that one could hardly find space for more. Finally, an hour later, Bettina shone the flashlight inside the rooftent and there was almost as many inside as on the outside. Somehow, the had gotten trough the netting, by the million.. We ended up spending the rest of the night at the same laundrey room where we had to finish our dinner. Not to bad actually, it even had air conditioning. If it hadn't been for the reall hard floors.........

---