Day 15 - Red Deer to Brooks.
"Shall we play Eye-Spy?" asks Abi.
"Okay," I answer. "I spy with my little eye, something beginning with 'N'".
"Nothing," says Dan.
"Yep."
Kilometre after kilometre after kilometre of nothing more exciting than fields of bright yellow canola and some other green crop. Occasionally some trees. Houses dotted around. Sometimes a silo. And every so often, just to spice things up a bit, a bend in the road.
We stayed the night in Brooks, a smallish town on the main highway. It was simply a stopping point; a place to do our laundry and sleep for the night.
Another microwave dinner, where my meals (steamed chicken and veges in a sauce, with rice or noodles) are now two for two of 'enjoyable'. Dan, Alex, and Abi are now at one for two, with none of them liking their dinner tonight.
Dan and Alex had meat and vege pies, which didn't seem to cook right. Turns out, they shouldn't be cooked in anything less than a 1100 watt microwave "or else it won't cook properly". The motel room microwave was 700 watt, and their pastry was either undercooked or soggy. But the filling apparently tasted nice!
Washing up has taken on a whole new level of "I can't believe I'm doing this..."
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, I'm washing up dishes, in the bathroom sink, using shampoo, and my fingers," I laughed, while Dan dried them...with a facecloth.
Tell you what though, microwave meals sure make it easy to do the dishes!
Day 16 - Brooks to Swift Current.
More fields. More nothing. Then...
"Look at all those power lines!"
Depeche Mode came on the radio and it soon got changed to "I just can't get enough (of those power lines), I just can't get enough (of those power lines)".
And Eye-Spy suddenly had a new letter...'p' for power lines. It was a very short game.
After an hour we reached Medicine Hat, which is an abbreviation of a translated name of Medicine Man's Hat. We got out at the Saamis Teepee, a MASSIVE metal teepee with fantastic paintings of local historic events and people.
Shortly after leaving Medicine Hat, we said goodbye to Alberta and hello to Saskatchewan. We carried on the long, endless drive through brown fields and thickening haze, until we reached our destination for the night, Swift Current.
The museum and information centre was closed, and nobody but me wanted to go to the Mennonite Heritage Village (would have been fascinating, I'm sure!), so off to a playground we went. This particular playground had an icecream shop with 24 different flavours; my pina colada soft serve icecream was divine!
Our motel raised some eyebrows and doubts as we pulled up to it, but one should never judge a book by it's cover, and despite it's extremely rundown exterior and dubious location, the room was the biggest we'd been in yet, and the beds the comfiest. Which was a relief, as the last couple of beds we've slept on had been dreadful; way too soft, our spines curved and necks bent.
Day 17 - Swift Current to Regina. What an exciting morning for Eye-Spy! We had 'c' for car and clouds and cow, 't' for truck and trailer and then a slightly-harder-to-guess tyre.
"It isn't for tree, that's for sure." There weren't even any bushes you could pretend were trees.
Then, out of the blue...
"I spy with my little eye, something beginning with T, T, T!!!"
A massive, and I mean MASSIVE train (117 carriages)! This was shortly followed by 'l' for llama (just the one) and 'h' for horse (also just the one). The thrills didn't stop...
We got out the car at Moose Jaw, and visited the world's largest moose, Mac. Moose Jaw is famous for its notoriety, with Al Capone supposedly hiding his bootlegging here.
After Moose Jaw we carried on to Regina, past a place called Castle Butte. You can imagine the hilarity with two juveniles, sorry, three juveniles, going through "butt" to...well...
In RE-gina we went to the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, and looked at some truly amazing dioramas of local flora and fauna. I take my hat off to the taxidermist, as they did a phenomal job; from a moose and an elk, to a pair of golden eagles and their eaglet, right down to a hummingbird and some mice. And credit should also be given to the person who has the unenviable job of dusting everything, as not a speck was to be seen on anything!
Day 18 - Regina to Brandon. In the morning we went to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police heritage site. It was interesting to read about their 150 year history, from their early days on horseback to the modernisation of the unit and only using the horses for ceremonial and historical reasons. Unfortunately, we were a week too early to see the Musical Ride, which is their main display. We did, however, go on a tour of the police cadet training grounds (but weren't allowed to take photos), and watched their Sergeant Major training parade. The paradees (?) ranged from five weeks off graduation to new recruits, and their different marching abilities were clear to see. We learned they have to earn the various items of their uniform at different stages, so that by the time they graduate, they are in the full Mounty kit. The marching band treated us to the Imperial Death March, but they could do with some practice, as there were a lot of missed notes and timings, which made the whole thing amusingly cringeworthy. Lord Vader would not have been impressed!
After a late lunch, we carried on the drive to Brandon, leaving Saskatchewan for Manitoba, and losing another hour (we'd lost the previous one when we left B.C.). Once again the motel had a pool, but their hydro slide wasn't running; the kids still had fun, playing Marco Polo with two other children who were also there.
Day 19 - Brandon to Winnipeg. On the way, we made a compulsory stop at the world's biggest coke can (I've made it my mission to be photographed with as many 'biggest' things we come across).
When we arrived at Winnipeg, we went straight to the Canadian Museum of Human Rights. What a fantastic place!
The architecture alone was so beautiful and has so much imagery with the light and dark contrasts; the content of all the displays was fascinating, with a lot of information to take in. It covered both Canadian and international human rights (and the abuses thereof), and we learned a lot about local issues as well as events we shamefully never knew existed, such as the enforced Armenian exodus to the desert.
Day 20 - Assiniboine Zoo. Today was a more exciting day for the kids, following the more serious content of yesterday. It's always fun going to a zoo with children (once you subtract the sore feet and the near constant demands for an icecream!). It's even more fun going to a zoo where there are animals you've never seen before. Arctic foxes, grey wolves, snowy owls, bison, snow leopards, and polar bears, to name a few.
We were extremely lucky to see the polar bears swimming above a viewing tunnel while they were getting some fruit and vegetable treats. They are MASSIVE animals, and remarkably agile in the water for their size.
This zoo runs a polar bear recovery program, in conjunction with Manitoba conservation, where orphaned polar bears from subarctic Canada are assessed for captivity and brought back here for care.
Back at our accommodation for the night, Alex and Abi moaned and complained and even cried (yes, real tears from Alex) about having to do a single hour of schoolwork. That's one single hour over this whole week. Apparently it's too much to ask...
Making dinner in different kitchens all the time is interesting, as no two kitchens are the same in supplies. The microwave and oven setups are also really strange in Canada; the ovens all seem to be 80cm wide, and the microwaves sit above them, also 80cm wide but only as deep as a regular microwave, with the extract fan being part of the microwave (the controls are on the microwave) and only covering the back two elements!
Day 21 - Royal Canadian Mint.
What a godawful night. The room we were in was a downstairs unit, and even though the previous night had been a bit noisy from footsteps above us, last night was a whole new level. New people had checked in, and they would run up and down their stairs like they were wearing lead boots. When the six of them left the unit at 10pm we knew we were up for a rude awakening - we weren't let down.
12:30am they came home. Must have been a good night; lots of laughs, running from room to room and up and down the stairs, music and singing, chairs scraping across the floor, things dropping on the ground.
1:00am still going.
1:30am still going.
2:00am still going.
3:00am the running and furniture scraping gets swapped for a door slamming, then feet heading down the outside stairs. We manage to get back to sleep.
3:30am they are back and carry on where they left off. Must just have been a drinks/food run.
4:00am still going. For f*ck's sake!!! Dan sends a message to the air bnb host about the noise, as the unit above is also managed by the same person.
4:30am quiet. Thank the good lord. Sleep...
6:30am are you f*cking KIDDING ME??? Two of them are now outside as well, in their massive Dodge Ram, with the car stereo thumping.
7:30am Dan goes outside to ask the car occupants to turn the stereo down. He comes back to report they are as high as kites. While he goes to the toilet, they turn the music back up.
7:45am the same three tracks have now been on repeat for one hour and 45 minutes. Dan sends another message to the host asking how long the other people are staying.
8:30am the two from outside go back inside, and the noises resume. Might as well get up.
9:30am we try to call the host; no response to anything.
9:45am we sent the host another message saying we're checking out a day early and are requesting a refund of last night and tonight.
After breakfast and packing up, we went to the Royal Canadian Mint. We weren't allowed to take any photos inside (for obvious reasons) but we sure did learn a lot! This mint is one of two in Canada, the other being in Ottawa, and produces coins for 77 other countries, including New Zealand; in fact, Canadian coin production is only 15% of their annual workload. They can produce 15,000,000 coins a day (not a typo...), with the presses putting out 14 coins each second!!
86% of Winnipeg's accommodation was booked, and what was left was either $700+ or had a really low rating, so we had to look further afield for a place to stay. Hello Steinbach! They clearly have a complex...
Fortunately, Steinbach is semi/kind-of/somewhat/not entirely/not even slightly on the way to our next stop. And I just realised in all these photos I'm wearing the same clothes - they're getting washed, I promise!
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