Day 120 - It’s September 3rd and we have travelled 24,000km and 375 hours. Yesterday the Kona hit 60,000km and she’s still purring along.
Last night we checked into the Howard Johnson in Winnipeg, right across the street from the Hyundai dealer. So we walked on over, asked Crystal if we could plug in for the night, she asked Doug and Revel and they were more than happy to have us plug in, and also to hear our story about travelling across Canada in an electric Hyundai Kona and take a picture!
Excitement all around.
Then off to visit with Rob and Fran at The Leaf in Assiniboine Park for a wonderful time discovering and exploring the Tropical and Mediterranean biomes, the Butterfly Garden and the Display Home area filled with topiaries and an amazing living wall. We spent the night with Rob and Fran in St. Boniface and had a great time catching up on what each of us are doing, how are families are, and what’s what in Mission.
Day 121 - It is Labour Day and quite fitting that we should come across this mural on our way out of Winnipeg. The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 was one of the most famous and influential strikes in Canadian history. The main goal was to improve working conditions and continued for 6 weeks. More than 30,000 strikers brought economic activity to a standstill in Winnipeg and the federal government believed the strikers wanted to start a communist revolution and called in the Royal North-West Mounted Police to stop it! 94 strikers were arrested, there were 2 deaths and 30 injuries.
We headed out the Yellowhead West, again through back country and there is no traffic! Seriously, it’s a long weekend, don’t people have homes to get back to? They must all be in the malls!
We went by Simplot Canada, a potatoe processing plant near Portage La Prairie that has an annual capacity of more than 300 million pounds! (135 million kilos) of frozen fries and packaged potatoe products. So that’s what’s in all them thar fields!
We took a pass on Gladstone because it was out of our way, although I really wanted to have my picture taken with Happy (Glad) Rock (stone), reminds me of Bill’s (Williams) Puddle (Lake) !
It’s pouring rain again! But we drove 558km today, a long day for us, averaging 14.3kWh/100km should be using less than that but the speed is keeping it high even with back roads. We pretty much drove straight through from Winnipeg, through Moosomin into Saskatchewan, and when the rain stopped the fields were beautiful, but in some places the smoke from the N.T. and B.C. fires was pretty bad. We stopped at Whitewood for the night - both charging stations were down (PetroCan and Co-Op), the restaurant in the hotel was closed and the toilet in our room was plugged - and it’s raining again! 😖
EV charging has become somewhat of a problem with so many of the chargers being down, and the cost is all over the map (pardon the pun). .37¢/minute, Ivy. 22¢/minute Hydro, and .50¢/minute at Petro Can. It’s a rip for sure - we’re paying Premium prices and getting Regular product at some of these places. We expect there will be an uprising as more EV people get on board.
Day 122 - Back to school for a lot of our family. From Whitewood we travelled north of Hwy 1 along Hwy 11 - Louis Riel Trail, through Dubuc, Grayson, Abernethy- most places like the Motherwell Homestead are closed for the season, but the towns and fields still showed us their bounty. The fields are being harvested, wheat merged for bailing and some were ploughed already. Lots of fields of what appear to be soy beans, and some of the areas killed off to make for easier harvesting.
The drive through the Qu’Appelle Valley was breathtaking and took us through Fort Qu’Appelle where we stopped for coffee and a long visit to Becky’s Place Arts, Crafts & Creations where I picked up a few things, including a couple of Mother Earth sprays that I hope liven up the car, which is beginning to feel a bit like an albatross. Fort Qu’Appelle has a lovely post office -
We stayed with Sylvia in Buena Vista and caught up on travel, her trip to the UK, and the fires in Hay River. We were here on our way east back in May - Mileage was 3,402km and this time was 24,666km - that’s 4 months and almost 21,000km ago!
Still minimal traffic, not even a school bus. And almost no motorcycles.
This whole area is in the Palliser Triangle, a semi-arid steppe occupying a substantial portion of the Western Canadian Prairie provinces and the agriculture suffered from frequent droughts. Before European settlers the area was inhabited by Aboriginal people such as Cree, Sioux and The Blackfoot Confederacy and lifestyle was centred around the buffalo hunt. Writing on Stone and Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump and the Cypress Sand Dunes are in the this triangle - pictures of which we posted May 12, 16 and 20th. Parts of Alberta we went through benefit from the Taber, St. Mary’s and Bow River Irrigation networks, through a system of canals to enable them to grow crops.
Day 123 - That’s it for Saskatchewan, we’re on our way to Alberta through dirt roads north of Hwy 1 again. We stopped in Moose Jaw for an EV charge then south to Route 363 through coulees and valleys -
Did you know that Canada has a Coyote Capital? It’s Hodgeville, Saskatchewan.
We’re deep in the Badlands here, no charging stations but Roger made sure we have lots of juice to ward off any Range Anxiety and get us from Moose Jaw to Swift Current no matter how Bad the Lands are. Stopped at Starbucks in Swift Current and I had to text Lori and ask what the floating things are in my drink. Turns out it’s dried pineapple chunks!!
Burst into Alberta at 4:45pm through Walsh and headed straight to Medicine Hat. We had stayed at the Villa downtown in May and were quite happy to be back.
At this point Roger pipes up with the idea of getting a camper and doing a trip like this through BC. Are you kidding me? Please don’t even suggest that to someone who has been sitting in a car for 400 hours and hasn’t slept in her own bed for 124 days!!
Day 124 - Today was a lot of fun. Before we left Medicine Hat I wanted some Kombucha for the road, and a Google search (is it still called Google?) sent us to Your Preference in the industrial area where they brew Kombucha, Water Kefir and Shrub. Ken (owner/operator) and Bruce (general manager) greeted me and I was given the tour and learned that they use organic and locally sourced whenever possible - no powdered starters here!
And most exciting is that they now are contracted by Co-Op to produce kombucha under the Co-Op label, so keep your eyes open for Kombucha and Kefir Water brewed in Medicine Hat, Alberta!
6 pack in hand we headed south of Hwy. 1 on Hwy. 3 to Seven Persons to visit the post office there for our friend Neil, who passed through here in 2010 when he cycled across Canada! Sadly, Seven Persons no longer has a post office, it’s been swallowed up by Medicine Hat and this is all that’s left.
Now my alter-ego Don Quixote has another windmill to tilt: Bookstores, Coffee Shops, Bakeries, and now rural Post Offices!
Then we were welcomed to Bow Island, 100km north of Montana, by Pinto MacBean, in the town known for the Dry Edible Bean Industry. Bow River also has the longest summers in Alberta with an average of 2500 hours of sunlight. Population 2,036.
We’ve gone from lighthouses to silos, and throw in a few oil derricks pumping away in a wheat field - it’s beautiful!
And then you come upon Lomond and they’re selling live bait! (Lake McGregor) and anti-wind turbine signs.
And it keeps getting better when we re-visit Vulcan, site of the Starfish Enterprise, the Vulcan Tourism & Trek Centre, and hometown of Sharon C.! We plugged into the EV charger and wrote postcards to the grandkids so they could get the Vulcan postmark. Very cool. We wrote about this in one of our blogs in May.
There was an interesting cemetery in a field that is the Reid Hill Cemetery for the pioneers of the area. They appear to plant and harvest around the site.
We keep talking about how little traffic there is - and then we hit Calgary!!!!
Day 127 - Leaving Calgary on Hwy 11 & 1A Crowsnest Trail to Cochrane. Drove past the Ski Jump from the 1988 Winter Olympic Games - it’s still there, but leads into a shopping mall, guess that’s the “end” of that thing - Sure can see how the city has grown!
We picked up the Bow Valley Parkway at Castle Junction; the eastern part is closed to vehicles May 1-June 25 and all of September to allow for an enhanced cycling experience. It’s a 3 year experiment and I hope it continues, it’s beautiful along the Bow Valley and is nice that cyclists can enjoy it. The Parkway winds between Banff and Lake Louise and is a quieter alternative to the TCH, which is what we do best.
From Castle Junction we travelled west and re-visited the site of the WWI Internment Camp for 600 German & Austrian men. A total of 8,579 men became prisoners of war in 24 camps across Canada. More details in blog posted 5/12/23.
Before we leave, we have some Prairie Questions:
- what were all the small wood sheds on the farms used for? They’re all together in one area.
- where does the oil go from the derricks in the wheat fields?
- what were all those orange yurt type huts near Dubuc, Saskatchewan?
- and in Ontario - what are the quilt design patterns on the side of barns?
No comments:
Post a Comment