Canada — Manitoba and Saskatchewan

Manitoba

We went over the border into Manitoba, our second province, directly north of North Dakota. Here the landscape changed from mountainous dense forest to agricultural plains and deciduous trees, and my GPS told me that we are at latitude 50 degrees north, which is five degrees north of the Twin Cities.

There's a crop being grown here that mystifies me. It looks for all the world like a weed, yet it's grown in huge fields for miles and miles. It's green, short — maybe eighteen inches high — and is topped with small yellow flowers. What's disconcerting about it is the sickly greenish-yellow color that fills your field of view — that and the smell is enough to give you a headache. The stuff smells like the intersection of agriculture, pesticide, and oil refinery. It definitely isn't wheat, but what is it? A Visitor Information Center provided the answer: It's canola, that cooking oil that's good for you, and you can tell from its very name (can + ola) that it comes from Canada.

We sailed through Winnipeg, verified its existence as a city, and kept going north of town to spend the night at Bird Hill Provincial Park, the huge park that hosts the Winnipeg Folk Festival. (Why, you might ask, didn't I plan to be here during the festival? Because it took place two weeks ago, and getting here for it would have required planning and reservations and rushing... in other words, not in the spirit of this adventure.)

I really wanted to find that accessory for my PC, so next day I turned on my GPS and asked it to find "Best Buy." It found two of them in Winnipeg, so I told it to plan the route to one of them. I easily followed the route from the park, but when the GPS announced that the destination was on the right, I saw only a Wendy's. Thinking I must have missed something, I drove a bit further and around a corner and asked it to route me there again. And it took me right back to the same Wendy's! (Humph! Thanks a lot, Garmin!) I turned the GPS off and headed for a Staples office supply I'd spotted visually and easily bought the accessory there for $20. One of the advantages of a city: stores with stuff you want in stock.

At a stoplight, I glanced at the lane to my left and was astonished to see a Yamaha Vino motor scooter, the very same model I had considered buying last month. Impulsively I smiled and said "Hi there, how do you like your Vino?" The rider turned to me and rattled off all the things she liked about it, and as the light turned green, sped off with "Love it! Highly recommended!" Sigh. I still want one.

Feeling hungry, I stopped at a McDonald's for lunch. In the men's washroom I discovered there was no soap. I looked for the little sign, and there it was, "...please tell the manager immediately." I found the manager standing talking with a customer. "Excuse me," I said politely. "There's no soap in the men's room." To my surprise, the manager, a short, dark-haired fellow, shot me a withering look and sneered, "I'm on my lunch break." Hmmm. Not the level of customer service I'd expected, and I seriously doubt that any management training seminars will change his surly character.. Then too, the campground's staff had seemed stressed and anxious. Am I just noticing the difference that a city makes? In any case, it was time to exit Winnipeg, and we headed west.

Manitoba's terrain is remarkably similar to Minnesota's: agricultural prairies in the south, wooded hills in the north. By driving northward, and gaining altitude, I hoped for cooler weather, but unfortunately that was not what we found. A heat wave extended far and wide, and we were unable to escape it. The weather was grimly similar to the Twin Cities, hot and humid. The best we were able to do is find a forested campground in a provincial park and relax until nightfall — say, around nine PM — when a cooling breeze brought us around.

Next day we continued northward to a village with the lovely name of Swan River, and stayed at a private campground. Did some shopping in the morning, including a visit to a Manitoba liquor store. It was a lot like any other liquor store, apart from its minuscule size, tiny selection, and high prices — eight dollars for a six-pack of Labatt's, nine dollars for the cheapest bottle of wine. The library offered Wi-Fi Internet access, but for some reason I couldn't get the access to work with my laptop — why is it that technology installed to help the public can be so temperamental?

Saskatchewan

Next day we drove yet farther north, turned west, and crossed into Saskatchewan, our third province, due north of Montana. The terrain was still agriculturally cultivated prairie dominated by that sickening mystery crop, and the weather still hot and muggy. I had originally suspected that driving across the prairie might be boring, but little had I realized how far north it extended, or how obnoxious it would be. We finally stopped for the night in Tisdale, a lovely name (doesn't it evoke tea and crumpets, or maybe a semi-soft cheese?) for a small prairie town with a municipal campground. Although Internet access was available at the library and an Internet cafe, both were closed on a Saturday morning. (The Internet never sleeps, but apparently access does.)

Next day we passed through Prince Albert, a city only slightly larger than Moose Jaw, and continued fleeing northward to Prince Albert National Park, the northernmost in the province. We spent a quiet night in one of the campgrounds, although the mosquitoes there were the most numerous we'd encountered. In bed, I fought off several attacks, and as I fell asleep, I heard an actual humming chorus of mosquitoes coming, thankfully, from the other side of the window screen. In the morning we discovered the lakeside village of Waskesiu, a tourist destination of lodges, cabins, restaurants and Wi-Fi hotspots — Saskatchewan's equivalent of Minnesota's Grand Marais.

We continued northward and westward but the heat continued — one afternoon it hit 33 Canadian degrees (that's 90 US degrees) and we really felt it. Sat in the shade in a provincial park campsite and waited for nightfall, when a little rain fell and the temperature came down — the heat wave had broken at last..

Menominee has been a remarkably good traveler, considering that she never naturally took to rides in cars or RVs. She seems to understand that this time it's different — We're on an adventure together, and the RV is her home. So she has learned to relax when we're on the road, even napping sometimes. When we stop, she's curious to look out the window and see what's there, and of course if it's our camp site for the night, she's ready to go out the door and explore it. She really loves the outdoors, and especially the forested outdoors, with its trees, shrubs, grass, insects, and small furry creatures. When she caught a small mouse-like animal one evening and played with it, she was one happy cat, and the next day she had a noticeably improved attitude about the adventure.