MeAnd’Er-ing into Manitoba

 

Anyone who has motored across the prairies of Canada knows the sense of surprise when coming upon a wooded grove or dip in the land.

- Ivan Eyre

Day 14 - 16 

Trip planning for us is fun - map laid out on the table, places circled that we would like to see (thanks everyone for your suggestions, almost got ‘em all so far), Roger on the EV app, and away we go!  It helps having a local like Sylvia there, “you gotta go there” or “why would you want to go there?” is really helpful, trust me.  

We were going to do some backtracking and head to Val Maria and stay in “The Convent” built in 1939, some say was a church, some say was a residential school.  BUT - we didn’t make it!  Mark phoned the day before departure to say they were digging up the pipes trying to find a problem with the sewer line.  Urch - take out the eraser and re-map our route.

We had 3 nature encounters today - deer eating Sylvia’s rose bush in her front yard, a flock of pelicans fly over Buena Vista today on their way to Pelican Point on Last Mountain Lake, and ticks!!  We had a whole bunch of them,(ticks that is) nasty little things Roger about 6 and about 4 for me.  Yuk!!  Left them all behind in the freezer at Sylvia’s.  Lots of people fishing off the pier at Regina Beach, and Roger held quite an audience at the Community Trash and Treasure fundraiser sale talking about electric cars, charging, range, and cold weather.  A guy on the dock caught an 8lb walleye - dinner’s at 5! 

A visit to Buena Vista wouldn’t be complete without fish and chips from the Blue Bird Cafe, it’s been around for 90 years!!  And it’s like Sue’s Copy Place - hang around there long enough and you run into pretty much everyone you haven’t seen in ages :) 

We visited an amazing couple who are raising 7 foster children!  Sadly, same as back home, a lot of children are “aging out” of care, so Devonie and Loris are working on changing their level of care status to community care home so they can keep some of the young adults with them.  Biggest hearts ever.  

Took in a Tom Hanks movie, A Man Called Otto at the Memorial Hall - $2.00 each including popcorn provided by Sylvia!  Some brought their own snacks, some brought wine, and we brought Roger - the only guy!  They do this every month - I love it!  I think we’ll try this at The Mews.

Little side note: Sylvia has some lawn damage called Snow Mold - who has snow that sticks around long enough to get moldy! 

Day 17 - 

Regina  - in all its glory!  We toured the Legislature, drove around some of the old parts of town - lots of murals and had lunch at the Mercury Cafe and Grill on 13th - an old diner out of a time machine.  The Indian Taco had at least a pound of meat on it!  Yesterday we had lunch at Houston Pizza, family owned and been around since 1970.  They keep everything!  

I had no idea that people have been coming to Canada from places like Serbia, Ukraine and Russia for so many years - some of these buildings like the Serbian Centre and the Ukrainian Co-Op Association were probably here before BC was discovered!!  This place is old!

The rotunda of the Legislature was interesting - it has space for 4 busts of famous people and only 3 are filled and the 4th is open to someone notable , maybe the 1st Aboriginal Premier?  Who knows.  

The RCMP are celebrating 150 years and we happened on the day of celebration!  It’s a fantastic exhibit, a definite must see.  Sylvia tells us there is a move underfoot to move the training Depot to Ottawa!  “Not going to happen” says she.  Been here since 1885 - It belongs in Regina, always has been, always will be.  I am embarrassed to admit that I missed the Place of Reflection, I will add that to our Return Home journey,

That’s a wrap for Saskatchewan!  

  17 days on the road and 3403 km

Day 18 - 

The drive from Buena Vista to Brandon was fun and eventful.  We stopped in at Indian Head, home of the Little House on the Prairie, hello all my CBC friends.  Only no-one we talked to knew where the mosque is, although someone at the information booth did say that it might have been vandalized.  Better info than we got from people who didn’t even know what we were talking about.  They should read their sign!

Here’s the eventful part - 

We pulled out of Indian Head with 63km in “the tank”, and the app is telling us 84km to the next charging station!!  What?  How did that happen?  We can’t be 21km short!!

We think the app gets updated periodically vs live, so it wasn’t accurate - just panic inducing!

Wait - it gets better.  We rolled into Whitewood Co-op station with 15% charge left, and the charging station isn’t working!  Whitewood is 175km east of Regina and 403km west of Winnipeg (there’s a few stations in between, but at this point we weren’t exactly calm!).  The station would only charge for 1 to 4 minutes at a time, then had to unplug, restart the station, and then 2 mins later do it and again and again and again. It took longer to unplug and restart the station, plug in the car again than the charge lasted, so the tent Jody lent us was beginning to look pretty good.  We phoned customer support, they confirmed that the station wasn’t working, very helpful, but told us there was a Petro-Can charger nearby, like one block over!  Almost 2x the price but worth 10x as far as we were concerned.  

Manitoba - 

Clocks clicked another hour ahead so now we are 2 hours ahead of home and I don’t like it.  I’m sure none of my 5am people really want to hear from me at 3am!  

The Welcome to Manitoba sign is horrible, I’ll write to someone when we get there!

We are staying in a hotel in Brandon attached to the hughest parking lot I have ever seen! and there is some sort of domed temple that people are pouring into, and what appears to be an area that could be an arena..  Time to check things out! 

 - the arena is home to the Brandon Wheat Kings, although there is a polo match in there this weekend?  

 - the domed temple? - the only surviving building from the Dominion Exhibition (1879-1914) and was the Agriculture building.  Tonight it is a church. 

 - the parking lot? - the Fair Grounds of course!

Day 19 & 20 - 

4000km into our journey 👍 

Our drive through the Pembina Hills in the Central Plains Region to our destination in Carman was out of this world, certainly not what we expected Manitoba to look like.  Rolling hills, lots of trees on a meandering road through a lot of French communities like Norte Dame De Lourdes, some settled in the 1890’s by people of French and Swiss origin.  Can’t wait to see this on our way home when the fields are in bloom.

We stopped at Glenboro along the way for 2 reasons - it has a charging station, and it has Sara.  I promised pictures posing with landmarks, and here she is!

Why, you may ask, is there a camel in southern Manitoba?  Good question.  Sara is there to do exactly what she did - make us stop and take a picture!  A local businessman and the Chamber of Commerce embraced the idea of an emblematic figure to draw attention to their community, and to Spirit Sands, so they brought in Sara - all 17’ tall and 2000 pounds of her!  

Appealing to most, but Roger preferred this roadside attraction - Deutz tractors… 

Glenboro - It’s lovely here and the townsfolk are really friendly.  We met Russ who was hanging out at the new thrift store.  He is a jack of all trades, and at 86 is looking to getting a bigger place to hold all his stuff!  Downsizing doesn’t seem to be in the cards for Russ.  The lady down the street when we asked for directions to somewhere to eat said ‘hop in the car and I’ll take you there’, the lady at the post office told us that when we go to Quebec to immediately identify as an English speaking tourist and we’ll do just fine, and Bob told us to ignore the plaque in the park  that says ‘Here stands the town’s wooden water tower which marks where the train stopped to fill the steam engine’ because the water tower fell down over 20 years ago.!

Carman - 

Carman is in the Pembina Valley Region of Southern Manitoba on the Boyle River.  At one point the community moved the river around a bit to make a pool for a swimming competition that attracted about 2000 people!!  For a town of just over 3,000 that’s pretty impressive!  

Our b & b. the Bell Aura is a historical old church built in 1898.  Each room has a literary theme, We were in Britannia room (Agatha Christie Poirot story), there’s Zhivago, Limberlost (Gene Stratton-Porter) and Gable (W.O. Mitchell) to name a few.  Our host, Barbara, is an amazing cook, and we sure needed that!  Downtown Carman we met a group of Communities in Bloom ladies painting a mural in an alley.  This is a really old town (with a free level 2 charger!) along the settler route of the Missouri Trail in 1870, traditional lands of waters of Anishinaabe, Ininiwak, Anshiniwak, Dakota and Dene Peoples and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.  Tomorrow we’re heading out to explore, so we’ll leave you here.