Caron, Saskatchewan to Dauphin, Manitoba – 324 miles
It seems
like all we’ve done the past three days is drive and stop for gas, but there’s
really not a lot to see crossing the Great Plains, whether it be in the US or
Canada. I expected to see more crops and
fields on the Canadian side of the border, like we saw entering Alberta on the
way to Alaska. If you were to fly over
that stretch of the border, I’m sure the border would be a well-defined line of
rangeland on one side (US) and cultivated fields on the other (Canadian). The border we crossed yesterday consisted of
a barbed wire fence, with empty prairie on either side. To be sure, as we approached Swift Current
yesterday and drove along the TransCanada this morning, there were plenty of
what appeared to be mainly wheat fields.
But at the same time, there was an equal or larger area of open
prairie. East of Swift Current is a
large wildlife preserve called the North American Shorebird Reserve, a huge
expanse of rolling hills and shallow lakes of various sizes. But I guess I was expecting this area to look
like Kansas, to be more of the breadbasket of Canada.
We left
last night’s ghost town campsite at about 8:15am and stopped for our first
fill-up of Canadian gasoline at Moose Jaw.
The cost was $1.369 Cdn per litre, which works out, as near as I can
figure with all the conversions to gallons and US dollars, to be somewhere
around $4.75 USD per gallon — kinda like buying gas in California, I guess.
Regina, the
capitol of the Province of Saskatchewan, is a fairly large city of
approximately 195,000 people. Seeing the
skyline rising out of the prairie in the distance as we approached, I was
reminded of the hilltop town of Ciriaque (I think that’s how it’s spelled) on
the Camino de Santiago. We drove around
the city for a bit to get a feel for the place, then stopped to visit the Cathedral
of the Holy Rosary, a 1913 edifice with beautiful stained glass windows
executed by a French stained glass artisan.
We noticed a coffee shop in an old house across the street from the
cathedral, so we stopped for a cappuccino, hot chocolate, and a blueberry
muffin before hitting the road once more.
We
veered off the TransCanada Highway a little bit east of Regina in order to get
away from the Canadian version of an Interstate Highway and back onto what we
hoped would be a more scenic byway up through Yorkton and across into Manitoba
before heading south through Winnipeg and back into Minnesota. Like yesterday, we were making good time, so
we decided to push on past Yorkton. We
set our sights on a provincial park just outside Dauphin, Manitoba as our
stopping point for the night, but when we arrived at the park, it was not open
for the season yet. So we doubled back
to Dauphin to check out the municipal campground we passed on the way into
tow. The park was nearly deserted, with
a couple of RVs parked back in the camping area, but there was no one at the
fee booth, nor were there any instructions posted concerning how to
register. That’s when one of those
angels who suddenly appear in your life to get you out of a jam showed up — a little man
suddenly appeared out of nowhere and asked if we were trying to stay for the
night. We said yes, but we can’t figure
out how to get registered. He told us to
go back to the town recreation center to register and pay, and gave us
directions to get there, a short distance of maybe six blocks away. We thanked him, and as we turned to get back
into the motorhome, he just seemed to disappear (although we saw him walking
down the road as we left the park). But
it’s a good thing we saw him and got the information, because the electrical
box at the campsite was locked, and after we went to the rec center to
register, they sent a man over to unlock the power box so we could have power
for the evening.
In spite
of the misty and rather cool weather, we again took a short stroll around the
park after dinner. The park is
surrounded on three sides by a horse shoe shaped pond which serves as an urban
wildlife sanctuary. I’m sure it’s very
pleasant later in the spring and summer when the migrating waterfowl arrive,
but all we saw were a few indigenous small birds, a couple of squirrels, and
two duck-like waterfowl I didn’t recognize.
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