Post Script

 Quick little note, a P.S to the last post:

When Dirk and I first met I told him I was planning a trip to NWT. It was originally a fly-in. When I asked him if he'd be interested in coming along, I estimated the cost to be approximately $2, 500 for three days, four nights, at a hunting/fishing lodge. By comparison, our road trip gave us way more bang for the buck. We'd do it again in a heartbeat.

The Costs, Broken Down

For years now, whenever I travel, I log my expenses. And I mean EACH and EVERY little thing I purchase, I write into my log. Every coffee, stick of gum, bag of ice, is written down. It's always interesting to me seeing where my money goes. When Dirk and I went to Maryland, same thing -- we kept meticulous records of our spending, saving all our receipts, entering them into our logbook at the end of the day.

I generally have four categories, and one personal spending column (souveniers, etc.):

• Fuel
• Lodging
• Food
• Misc. Sundries (for example laundry, worms, firewood, tarp) or unexpected things (like an air mattress or extra sleeping bag, LOL)

My initial estimate in our planning stages was $2,200.00. I finally got around to doing all the totals. Here are the costs of our NWT trip, broken down (sorry about the manual formatting -- Blogger doesn't have the column/indent feature):

Fuel                   $850.85
Lodging             $683.53
Food                  $426.26
Misc. Sundries  $347.76
                          _______
TOTAL:           $2,308.40

As a couple, that worked out to $121.50/day; individually, $60.75. We ate well, had lots of fun, didn't want for anything. I'd say that's a pretty well-budgeted vacay. Take away the cost of the extra sleeping bag purchase (it got pretty cold a few nights in those mountains) and  new air mattress, we hover around the $2,220 mark. The money we have left over is being rolled over into next year. Therefore, if anyone out there knows of anyone who has a low-mileage Grand Caravan or something that they're trading in on a new vehicle, let us know -- we're throwing around the idea of converting one into a camper. For real. I figure we could do it up for around $1000. Complete with spray-bombed paint finish. LOL

Sorry, here's the link again:

Having issues uploading video. Ughhh. hopefully this works. Comment below!

Pike Fishing Prosperous Lake and Great Slave Lake

Sequel to blog post "Mayhem in the Rejuvenator!"

Finally, the "footage" of Dirk's Great Slave catch.

https://youtu.be/cEBoHdHcT8c

Word of the Day: exonerated

The accused was exonerated of all charges due to insufficient evidence.

Home again. Sigh.

After a terrific 19-day journey, our trip came to an end.
After 11, 070 kms, five provinces, one territory and many memories, we have a new appreciation of the beauty of our country.
Thanks for following our trek - we will have more uploads as we (Liz) works on the videos.

Fished Hammer and Rabbit Blanket Lake

Cold and fog last night into this morning made the drive a bit dicey this a.m.

Nothing in hammer, but hot and sunny. Nothing but fog to there and after there, along Superior. Caught a few splake and perch in Rabbit Blanket, just got finished dinner and it's raining -- again. Ughhh.

More rain . . . should've stayed in NWT!

Nipigon bridge

Coming home

Still after the elusive walleye . . .

After a night of heavy rain and several loud claps of thunder, the skies cleared this morning and we set out onto French Lake, at Quetico.

Catching several small pike, we set our sights on a steep rock cliff and set anchor at about 30 feet. Rigging up a few shad jigs, I did get a few soft hits, but no takers. We were on barbless and no live or dead bait regulations. No bass or walleye. The pike seem to have taken over the lakes!

The lake kicked up whitecaps pretty quick, so we headed for shore and tore down camp. On our way to bass country hopefully and set up camp before next thunderstorm rolls in.

Let's go Walleye!