THE PRAIRIE DRIVE

22nd – 25th September 2008 THE PRAIRIE DRIVE

On the sunny, chilly Monday morning Eric and I were at our posts preparing for take off; Eric outside hitching trusty van to trailer, getting torsion and sway bars into position, and me inside ensuring that the fridge doesn’t fly open and off-load its goods along the way, and that dishes and glasses stay put in the cupboards.
It was time to leave Alberta, a province, which I have to say I absolutely loved. The landscape is stunningly varied, with high mountain ranges on its western border, rolling green hills along its mid section, flat prairie farmland and pockets of badlands in the south. The badlands were so-named by the early French immigrants who found it to be no good for farming. Northern Alberta, which we didn’t get to, is a vast expanse of wilderness, much of it inaccessible by vehicle, as is true of all the Canadian provinces.

By the way…

Hoodoos are the “oddly shaped pedestals of earth or pillars of rock that develop through erosion by wind and water, especially in the areas where sedimentary layers alternate between hard and soft material.”
Coulees (in Western Canada and US) are “deep ravines, usually dry, that were formed by running water.”

Our return trip through Saskatchewan took us through the prairie towns of Swift Current and Moose Jaw.
This is the land of the long straight trains and the wide-open skies. Flat lands transform into humpy grass covered hills then flatten out again. Pastel colours extend far out to the horizon, textured by patches of sunlight illuminating golden fields, and bales of hay as far as the eye can see.
Our stop at the end of the day was at a campground, Buffalo Lookout RV Park, just east of Regina.
We spent one day looking around Regina, which, though it is the capital city of Saskatchewan, is smaller than Saskatoon and has a population on about 200,00 people.
It is not easy to tap into the unique jewels of a city when it is completely unknown and we’ve had no recommendations. So my feelings about Regina were mixed.
We headed into town with the morning traffic, and made our way to Wascana Centre, an urban park in the heart of Regina. This area surrounds the Wascana Lake, which is fed by the Wascana Creek, and within its boundaries are the Legislative building and the University of Regina.
A network of walking and biking trails wind through the park. There are picnic spots, a ball diamond, a cricket pitch, canoe and kayak rentals and the like, a busy place in the summer I’m sure. But all was quiet the day we were there, in late September.
From this parkland we walked several downtown blocks, no different from other small city downtown blocks, and found ourselves a mediocre lunch. Actually mine was a bad salad.

Saskatchewan is a narrow province from west to east and by the next day we’d traveled the populated southern corridor and crossed the border into Manitoba.
We by-passed Brandon, which was where the trailer had suffered from a severe dose of disintegrating tires, three months prior. At that time we were moving north to intersect the Yellowhead Highway, this time we were heading due east.
We arrived at Portage La Prairie by evening and found a spot at the almost empty town campground, on the banks of the Assiniboine River. As evening came, a beautiful sunset provided a backdrop for hundreds of noisily honking geese landing and taking off from the gently flowing river. They come here in droves at this time of year to rest and feed, all part of their migration south.
Janet and Mike Bell had recommended to us Bill’s Sticky Fingers restaurant, so we sought it out and this time had a very satisfactory and tasty meal. Eric enjoyed their famous ribs and I the chicken souvlaki.

We skirted north of Winnipeg, stopping for a couple of hours at the Hammock Oak Marsh. I had hoped that perhaps we’d see something of the thousands of migrating shore birds and snow geese that travel this way in the fall. However for the most part they take off early in the morning to feeding grounds, returning to the marshes in the evening to rest.
Nevertheless we did enjoy lunch and a peaceful walk through prairie grass and marshland before continuing our trip, back onto the Canadian Shield and towards Kenora in Northern Ontario.