Long time since I wrote

Been a few days now since I wrote my last post. We have been driving long distances so I have been sleeping quite often. Miss W has the radio going to keep her awake and I just get out of the car when we have a tourist stop.

OOPS! Forgot to tell you that at the Blackfoot Crossing , a little furry friend came in through a door and made the staff rush around trying to chase it out again. I said under my breath “Go for it” – pun pun – what animal did we see?

Now to look back in the diary to see where we last wrote about. …….. that’s right – dinosaurs

Well this morning we headed out to the Dinosaur Provincial Park to check out where they had actually found dinosaur remains. Again it was on a long dirt road – don’t know when we are going to wash the poor car. Looked through the museum there, drove around the loop road, looking out for cactii, rattlesnakes and other wildlife. The landscape was more like the badlands again but many more circular type mounds where erosion had occurred. Could easily see how hoodoos are formed.

Some highways in Canada are gravel yet others are paved, never sure which you will be driving on, but Miss W sure likes slow driving on either of them. Often we have lots of traffic flying past us including huge long trucks but it never seems to faze Miss W, she just keeps driving at 80 or 90kph.

Onto Medicine Hat through Ralston where the Canadian Forces are based. Noticed on one of the walkways around the town there were balancing beams, bench presses and other gym type equipment that the soldiers could use while walking. I know Miss W and I wouldn’t use them often – too much like hard work when you just want to go for a stroll.

In Medicine Hat we saw the largest tipi over the top of the hill. Spent the night in Swift Current then, because Miss W had been in this part of Canada a few years ago, she wanted to show me the original type of grasslands that the First Nations people would have seen before settlers came with their wheat. Off we went to the Grasslands Provincial Park – down near the American border – it was here we could see prairie dogs and bison roaming in the wild. It was fascinating watching the prairie dog, sit on top of the burrow, venture out further because we weren’t moving then suddenly send an alert to get back in the burrow cause danger was present.

On the map was another place that sounded interesting – St Victors Petroglyph Provincial Park – so off on the gravel highways again but this time Miss W was very disappointed as you couldn’t really see the petroglyphs clearly only on the rock at the entrance where it had been carved deeply and recently to show what it originally looked like before erosion of the rocks.

Into Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan for the night. Another person who liked Moose Jaw was Al Capone. He had tunnels under the town where he would run some of his businesses away from the eyes of the lawmen.

Didn’t have far to go the next day – just to Brandon and had already booked ahead – so let’s go north of the Trans Canada Highway decides Miss W.  Within 20 kilometres, we could see a difference in the landscape – there were lots more valleys with boreal forest where the trees were changing colours while south of the highway, there were more farms growing wheat on the prairies.

Again we got lost coming out of Yorkton but Miss W flagged down a car and checked we were going sort of in the right direction. Back on the correct highway, we arrived in Brandon after many kilometres of construction on the highway. Miss W always drove at the correct speed and we ended up with about 12 cars behind us.

Yesterday it was only two hours driving to Winnipeg where Miss W booked us into a motel near the airport, took the car to the airport where we had been told we could change cars – found out we only had to take the car to a Kal Tire store who would do the service rather than change cars – so off to Kal Tire about 15 minutes from the airport – about 90 minutes for the service and back to the motel.

Today has been a day of rest and time to catch up on blogging and washing. Miss W couldn’t get the washing machine to work – had put in the detergent, added the clothes, put in the money, shut the lid but nothing was happening. Half an hour later after getting a service man in to fix, he worked out that she hadn’t pulled the money slot all the way out to start the machine. Didn’t Miss W feel silly!! But at least all our clothes are now clean, looking very white and ready for the next part of our trip.

Remember to leave a comment if any of these things have happened to you or something about the highlighted words. Notice the change s in the posts – only a few images – visit the flickr set on the sidebar to see more.