Day 13 - Wednesday May 31/17

(Written and posted May 31/17)

Today we travelled from mountain-to-mountain (Riding Mountain National Park, MB - to - Moose Mountain Provincial Park, SK), while still staying on the prairies!

Some surprises for Nancy on this sunny warm day.  The day started with a trip into the village of Wasagaming located in the national park. Our purpose was to buy a post card. It is still early in the season here so most of the shops haven’t opened yet. In trying the door of a shop that looked like it might be open, Nancy pulled with some force on the door. Nothing happened so she tried again even harder. Having no success she walked away. When she was halfway down the walkway she thought she heard an alarm, but thought nothing of it. A few doors down we located a suitable shop and made our $.80 purchase. Just before leaving the store the clerk was overheard talking to an alarm company saying she had no idea what might have caused the alarm. Rather shamefacedly Nancy fessed up to being the culprit. Everyone had a laugh and the clerk was even nice enough to offer a tour of the log-built theatre attached to the store both of which are owned by her grandparents. (photo) 

What a lovely building with seating for 500 - the largest log cabin theatre in North America!It is in terrific repair and operates daily during the tourist season. The building was constructed as another part of the make-work projects of the 1930’s depression.  

We enjoyed spectacular views of farms, forests, rivers as we headed south down the escarpment. Over the course of the day we did notice lots of evidence of abandoned family farms. A gas station owner in Wasagaming told us he had had to abandon his 25 years as a small farmer and run a business in town because he couldn’t compete with agribusiness.

We arrived in Brandon just in time for lunch at McDonalds, gas at Husky and grocery shopping at Safeway. Back on the road we quickly exited the TransCanada Highway #1 and took a less travelled route to Souris. 

Intrigued by signs for a ‘swinging bridge’ we located the structure - a 184 metre pedestrian plank bridge. It is Canada’s longest suspension pedestrian bridge. We tried it out. (photo) 

As we were driving away we were amazed to see four peacocks walking noisily down the road. 

At this point we headed west through what appeared to be poorer farm land with some scrub areas, but overall quite flat. We encountered our first oil rigs pumping away in fields past Reston MB on Hwy #2. (photo) We expect to see many more.

Nancy was driving as we were about to leave Manitoba when she unexpectedly pulled the rig onto the shoulder and stopped saying “I’ve got to get a picture.” There was a road sign indicating the name of the nearest community. It said ‘TILSTON’. This is Nancy’s maiden/birth name. Here she is proudly posing. (photo) Her second surprise of the day!

We entered Saskatchewan around 4:30 but there was no sign indicating the change of province, hence no photo.

Given the strong winds we have experienced since leaving Ontario we are wondering why we haven’t seen any wind turbines. A quick Google search told us that there are less than 200 wind turbines in Saskatchewan as compared to over 2000 in Ontario. A commitment has been made to significantly increase this province’s commitment to wind power by 2030 however.

We arrived at Moose Mountain Provincial Park at 5:45. Well, we thought it was 5:45. It turns out Saskatchewan doesn’t observe daylight savings time. Our phones told us 4:45 and we thought they had misfunctioned. We should know better and learn to trust our devices! 

The wildlife report for today (over and above the peacocks in Souris) include: a magpie (photo), a hummingbird that visited our campsite tonight, many herds of cattle - Charolais and Black Angus. At the park there are tent caterpillars everywhere, all over the roadway, the picnic table and occasionally us.

Although our campsite is not on the lakeshore, we did watch the sun set while we enjoyed a campfire, and walked around to the lake when we went to check to the shower building (photo)