From there to here

Well it’s just a few weeks since my last post. We have done a lot of travelling! But, what's new?

We arrived in Manitoba a few weeks ago now and spent four nights in Winnipeg and another four nights at Riding Mountain National Park. After that we headed to Saskatchewan. Since we will be driving back through Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba; we will be seeing more of these provinces then.

Manitoba was the start of the second half of our trip. We’d been gone for two months when we arrived and felt as though we were beginning a whole new trip. It was refreshing! We drove into Manitoba from Kenora, Ontario. It was just a couple hour drive. We stopped at a KOA campground outside of Winnipeg, trying to set up our place to stay during our time in there. We arrived at the KOA and found the entire campsite in water. As you probably know, Manitoba has had a lot of flooding this year. It was a sad sight to see. We also saw the flooding around the different rivers flowing around Winnipeg; the Assiniboine and the Red River.

The man who ran the campsite directed us to another we could stay at. It was on the other side of town. We could have taken the highway that bypasses Winnipeg to get there but we (stupidly) drove through town. This took us a long time; the traffic was horrible, but we made it through.

Winnipeg was great! We spent Canada Day in Assiniboine Park, which was fun. There is a zoo on site, a conservatory, food, museum, etc. Assiniboine Park has a lot of neat things. We looked through the zoo but found it a bit depressing. There were some beautiful animals, but they lived in such small homes. We topped the day off with a very impressive fireworks display then drove back to our campsite.

Other things we did in Winnipeg was hang out at the forks, which is also a National Historic Site. The ‘forks’ is known as being a meeting place for the last few hundred years. Part of the Forks is the National Historic Site, which has art and history posts to commemorate its history. The other part of it is just as impressive –if not more. Winnipeg has done something so special to bring its past purpose into modern day. The second half has an amazing skate park, stage, grounds –all to continue bringing people to that spot. They use that space to keep the legacy of that spot alive. They are also in the process of building a Human Rights Museum there. We spent an evening there and watched some skateboarders. Dave loved it and wished that he had brought his skateboard along.

Our favourite place we visited was a nature sanctuary called Fortwhyte Alive. It was amazing! It was just outside the heart of Winnipeg. They had a lot of trails there, some were set up as boardwalks through marshes. We walked along the trails, which also led us to traditional tipis, an amazing tree house, a bison conservatory, a museum, little lakes for canoeing, fishing etc, and a bistro. It was a great place to spend an entire day. There was also a prairie dog town!

They had BEAUTIFUL gardens!

They had a huge aquarium which was a natural wetland ecosystem. This fish was staring at us for a long time, maybe it was sleeping?

Cute little owls in the prairie dog town. This are burrowing owls so they sleep underground, so cute!

Beautiful little lakes.

Many marshes!

Love this birdhouse! My dad's dream!

They had a pioneer time sod house.

The bison!

Tree house!

All in all, Winnipeg was great. It’s always neat to be in a big city, but we always love going back into Nature. After four nights in Winnipeg we went to Riding Mountain National Park, which is near the border to Saskatchewan.

Riding Mountain was absolutely beautiful. We first stayed in the Wasagaming campground. It is in a small village of people. We took full advantage of our bikes while we were there. We went to the beach, rented an aluminum motor boat for an hour –which was great, hiked, etc.

To get to our trail to get to the back country site, we had to travel through a bison enclosure.

This is a neat trail they offer.

This deer chased Dave, it was hilarious.

On the aluminum boat!

Dave said, "Take a picture of me wearing my gear  for my parents!"

Wild lilies!

View from our back country campsite! If you see the line at the base of the trees -that's the creek.

Dave's shelter.

Our site, nice, eh?

We did one night of back country camping. The day before we left the site we did a hike through traditional prairie grasslands to a back country camp that was about 8 km in.

It was a really neat hike. There were open meadows with forests of burnt trees from a forest fire. We were told that we could maybe see cougars, lynx, wolves, coyotes, black bear, elk, moose, and white tailed deer. We only saw the deer –boring. But it was a great time. The sun was beating down on us during our hike in, which took 2.5 hours, our stay, and our walk home. We were badly burnt after. Dave made a little shade using a small tarp for us. We didn’t go into the trees to hide from the shade because the bugs were insane. We took a can of bug spray with us and it was almost empty next morning.

It was so peaceful and relaxing. It was quiet and we could hear the creek run beside our campsite.

After our stay in the National Park, we spent one day in Dauphin, Manitoba, then headed to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. We only stayed two nights in Saskatoon, and from there we headed to Elrose, Saskatchewan to stay with my family.

We stayed at an RV Park in Saskatoon, so we were a short drive away from downtown. Our full day there was luckily on a Saturday so we were there for the festival downtown. It had different vendors, food, live band etc. Dave and I stopped at a restaurant for lunch and the meal was terrible. But all-in-all it was a good day.

The next day we headed down to Elrose. Elrose is 35 km south of Rosetown. Elrose’s population is 500 and is a small farming town. It was a whole other world. The prairies are so neat!

Prairies?

Abandoned homestead #1

My great Aunt Audrey and Uncle Leo

Abandoned homestead #2

We spent three nights there and are going to stop there on our way back too.  It was great to see some family I haven’t seen in years, and meet some that I’ve never met. We were able to go to my dad cousin’s Lisa’s house for dinner. They have cattle farm with many pastures where they grow durum, wheat and canary seed. They took us around their farm and pastures. It was really neat. Since we were in the Prairies, we could see for miles, so we could see a huge black storm coming toward us. It was spooky, but really cool. The next morning my dad’s other cousin showed us a picture he had taken of a huge funnel cloud that happened not too far away –spooky.

We drove from Elrose to Maidstone, Saskatchewan and from there to Edmonton. We are still here and loving it. Edmonton is a great place and we’ll probably be here for another week. We are lucky enough to be staying with two great people –Dianne and Tom, who are Dave’s mom’s friends.

We have loved the West so far. One more province to go until we’ve seen them all. Too bad we cannot see the Territories this trip, but that just leaves it for our next one! We are so excited for British Columbia! Until next time!