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Small towns, great people!
Hello from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan! We are now in our 5th time zone and 6th Canadian Province.
The last 10 days we have mainly been exploring the long, straight back roads and small towns across the prairie plains of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The landscape has been extremely flat but very colourful from the various crops grown. The only objects on the horizon being grain elevators and the odd clump of trees. However, the people that we have met have been amazing.
Canada Day weekend was spent in Whitemouth (population 400), where we met Sam and Jacinda, a couple cycling the 7000 km from Vancouver to Newfoundland in around 3 months! We’ve met a few long-distance cyclists on our travels, but are still amazed by the physical and mental strength these crazy people possess. They were a lovely and amusing couple that we shared a few hours with swapping stories.
Whitemouth’s Canada Day celebrations consisted of a barbeque with live music in the field next to our campsite, so we wondered over hoping to gate-crash. After a few polite introductions the next thing we knew we were being announced as ‘special guests from England’ over the Tannoy.
Throughout the afternoon, we met Annie and Dave, an expat couple from Kent, who have a similar love of overland travel and were impressed with Bowser and our rooftent. Blair, a retiree with a classic car collection, one of which is an MGB which he later brought round to show us. Also, Shannon the President of the local Lions Club, who ran the campsite, and also paid us a visit in the evening with her husband Tom. They were all great and we couldn’t have been made more welcome. It was lovely to celebrate their special day in a small town with a big heart.
Blair told us about a classic car show the next day at Lac Du Bonnet, as part of their holiday weekend, so we spent a few hours there looking at the beautiful American cars dwarfing his MGB. There was also a great parade with all sorts of vehicles, from a monster truck to a mini remote-control police car – Bry loved it!
Since then we have been slowly making our way West, stopping off in the small farming towns as we go. We have mainly been staying at cheap municipal or community run campsites, which most towns seem to have. A particularly nice riverside site was in Neepawa, where we stayed two nights. Here we met Bruce, a local who reminded us both of our grandads, who visited us twice on his mobility scooter. He was a charming gent, and through his more internet savvy wife, Margery, we have stayed in touch.
Another highlight was in Cupar, a little place we called into to buy a loaf of bread. Near the small shop there was a barbeque, which we presumed was a charity event, but it turned out to be a local insurance business’ 40th birthday party for their clients. We explained our mistake and went to leave, but the owners, Steve and Monica, said we were more than welcome to join in. So we enjoyed delicious beef baps, potato salad and iced tea while sat chatting with the locals. It was incredibly generous of them, we’d obviously never met them before and clearly had no business to offer them, but we were treated as if they’d known us for years. It was quite special!
The weather has much improved, although there have been some huge thunder storms. One night we spent in Riding Mountain National Park, where we could see a storm approaching across Lake Audy. The thunder was all around us but just when we thought no rain would come, the heavens opened with ‘hail the size of golf balls’! A local fisherman sought shelter with us under our tent and said he’d never seen hail stones that big either.
No damage was done to Bowser, but the downpour brought out the mosquitoes en masse. Our campfire was too wet to smoke them out, so we retreated to our tent with about 30 of the buggers, which we then spent the next two hours trying to swat. The mozzies have been a constant irritation, with us suffering well over a hundred bites between us! So far it’s been the only downside to this beautiful country.
From here we head to Calgary for the Stampede and to celebrate Bry’s birthday.
TTFN