Saskatchewan.

We have made many trips to Saskatchewan, always stopping off in Winnipeg Manitoba to visit with Eva's brother Fred and his wife Evelyn. We always leave the Trans Canada Highway at Swift Current Sask and travel northwest to Lemsford to visit Berniece and Tony (Eva's youngest sister and husband). They always make us so welcome that it is almost like coming home. Because of this detour we have never travelled the Trans Canada Highway between Swift Current and Medicine Hat Alberta. We always travel West in the summertime to take advantage of the good weather. Our last trip however was taken late in the year. We were invited to attend the wedding of Tony and Berniece's youngest daughter Lisa so we had no control over the date. The wedding date was Oct 12th and this posed a packing problem. Last year we traded our camperized van for a new 2001 Dodge Caravan so our luggage space was limited. We had to pack for warm weather and cold weather too, and also had to pack clothes for the wedding. When we packed the van it was 40 degrees Celsius so it seemed crazy to be packing winter coats and ice scrapers. We decided to make our own lunch at roadside picnic areas and packed soup and all the other necessary items. This worked fine for the first couple of days. We had taken a small camp stove. On the third day however it turned so cold that we had to head for Tim Hortons for a bowl of their nice hot soup. This became our regular lunch habit. In Northern Ontario we had to drive through quite heavy fog for about thirty miles so it was nice when we eventually left it and all the trees behind and found ourselves on the praires.

Eva always says that she can breathe again when she sees that big sky. We found the van to be very economicle on fuel and very comfortable to ride in. Using motels instead of campgrounds worked out ok and we found the prices reasonable for the most part. We refused a couple that were priced too high. One thing that we noticed about Saskatchewan was that it was very cold. We had left 40 degree celsius weather in Ontario and here it was only 6 degrees. We had to wear our winter coats all the time.
After driving 3010 kilometers we eventually found ourselves at Berniece and Tony's farm. Just before we got there we hit a couple of wet patches on the gravel road. We had to drive through fast because Saskatchewan mud or Gumbo as it is called out there is very slimy and sets like concrete when it dries. Our nice clean van was a mess by the time we arrived at the farm. We spent a few days resting and visiting family members. It was nice to see the little kids for the first time. Tony had bought a pony and a sulky and he was proudly showing it off. He took the kids for a ride on his knee as he drove because there is only one seat.

Tony showing off his horse and sulky

In the summer time the fields in the background are full of wheat as far as the eye can see.
The wedding day finally arrived and everything went off without a hitch. Well there was one, right? There were over 300 guests and a party was put on in the local community hall. Those Westerners can sure throw a party. They had 250 llbs of beef roasted and Berniece's daughter Susan baked 600 bread rolls. There was a free bar for those that drank. That let me out! They had a disposable camera on each table and guests were supposed to take random pictures and leave the camera for the next one. I can't imagine what they found when the films were developed. I was using my digital camera and had bought an extra memory card for it. By the time I had got home I had taken 82 photos and there were only about four that I didn't print, 3 of which were duplicate shots. We had to leave a couple of days after the wedding to get home ahead of the bad weather. We passed one of the new grain terminals on our way home. All the old wooden grain elevators are being replaced with concrete grain terminals. The bad part is that they are farther apart and the farmers have farther to haul their grain.

One of the new grain terminals

We had been very lucky up to this point, no snow and dry roads. Things could change any time though as we found out when we got to Wawa in Ontario. We woke up to find a layer of snow on the van.

What's this stuff?

From then on we drove in and out of areas where it had snowed. Sometimes the road would be snow covered and at other times the roads were dry and the sun shining.

You will notice that we are leaving the prairie behind us and starting to get into bush land. From here on we run into more and more bush and lakes. Lots of lakes. While travelling around the top of Lake Superior we stopped at a small rest stop in a cove on the north shore of Lake Superior. The weather was cold and damp so the place was deserted but in the summer time it would be a pretty little place to stop.

As we got farther south the weather was much warmer than out west and the trees were changing to their fall colours. The maple trees especially put on a glorious display of reds and yellows and greens and all colours in between.

Ontario's Fall colours.

We finally arrived home again after stopping off in Barrie to watch another of our grandson Braeden's hockey games. We had driven a total of 6288 kilometers. All in all it had been a very pleasant trip and if nothing else it proved to us that we are not past it yet.

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