Murray's Lodge

So Saturday morning we met up with another teacher from the highschool named Galina who would show us how to find our way to Murray's Lodge which is about 10km out of town. We had decided to do the walk over the lake rather than using the road because it is supposed to be a couple kilometres less. But it had snowed the night before and we don't have snowshoes (yet! I really want to get a pair soon...), so we were sinking in with every step! Galina was on cross country skis, so she was soon way ahead of us and we were just following her tracks and snowmobile trails. It was only about -20, so soon I was sweating in my big coat. It's a lot more work walking in snow!! But it was beautiful and we stopped often to take photos along the way.

One really nice thing about Mistissini is that there are these big friendly dogs EVERYWHERE and they'll run up to you to be pet and beg for food. Whenever I walk to work there are just random dogs roaming the streets, following kids around, frolicking. Many of them are outside dogs from the looks of it as well, so these are some tough animals since tonight for example it's supposed to go down to around -40. Anyhow, as we were walking we were joined by a pack of dogs who ran out to us to check out what we were doing.




I have many pictures like this of him waiting for me to catch up! This walk made me realize that I'm very out of shape! But I love the picture because you can get an idea of how big the lake is; and we were only on a tiny little portion of it. We left our house at about 9am and over 7km later arrived at the Lodge in time for lunch. Every Saturday they serve a free meal to whoever cares to show up, consisting of traditional Cree dishes. We ate Ptarmigan (a partridge-like bird), Caribou stew, and bannock. It was all really good! Although I was starving by the time we got there, so I would have been loving whatever they chose to serve! I'm looking forward to trying goose though, my students tell me it's very delicious.



The lodge itself is a pretty simple building. There is a giant stove in the centre of it that was quite a contrast to the temperature outside. There was a bit of a crowd there, along with quite a few teachers from the highschool which was nice. I'm pretty isolated working where I am, so it was nice to get out and talk to people. After lunch we walked back along the road, so in all we walked around 17km, give or take. The walk back was longer but much easier because we were walking along the paved shoulder so the snow was packed down and infinitely easier in the walking department.

Then in the evening we went to a teachers house for a "guitar night" which was fun. I was the only novice there though, so I was just a spectator, but it was still lovely. I need to practice!