Sunday, 25 May 2014

Sask & Manitoba

Cheers;

We are finally on our way East.  Started off by driving to Calgary to drop Ben off at home after he spend a few days with Grandpa and Grandma spoiling him.  We spent the night at Pat's Doug's sisters and Bruce his brother also was there, we had a lot of laughts and catching up to do  Then we are off to lovely Saskatchewan.  It was highly recommended to go to the tunnels of Moose Jaw where the legend Al Capone used these tunnel to make moonshine whiskey 90% proof.  The reason that Moose Jaw was selected as the legend states, is because the railroad came direct from Chicago and the line ended at Moose Jaw........who would have guessed????



 How many times in ones life time that you can say you stood beside a giant Moose!
This was of course in Moose Jaw!



Sights around Moose Jaw - nice old Ford




 The real Al Capone in the centre


The wanna be Al Capone (and no we did not buy this hat!




These were not for sale but showed what they were selling back in the day.
During the tour they were actors playing the part of reliving the days of bootlegging and toured you inside the under ground tunnels but you could not take any pictures inside.

After that we got in 9 holes of golf at the Lymbrook Golf and Country Club.  Was in rough shape and we both played terrible, but Doug got to try out his new irons.

We left the next day and driving along Highway #1 to make time, out of nowhere we see this huge wall of white, and a big pile of white stuff between the highway and on both sides of the highway
Your first thought is SNOW!  it was right beside a huge lake or slough? no signs so we had to backtrack and find out what it was.  The town was called Chaplin, and as it turned out it was Sodium Sulphate aka SALT! right there in southern Sask, go figure.  They had a big centre there explaining the process.  It comes naturally from the nearby lake and they have 3 draining pools that they fill all summer long and harvest the salt in December each year.  They use this salt for laundry detergent, fertilizer, but not used for table salt.  They have been doing this since 1948, they first had 300 hundred staff and now have 35 because of technology, the guy at the centre likes to tell Americans that it is Snow that they make incase they don't get enough during the winter months...Sask humour at it best.



 Look how  high the salt piles up between the highway


This is the processing plant


We had to stop at Wolseley Sask as all along the highway they were telling us about the famous swinging bridge......Yes it was a swinging bridge across a lovely pond...famous hard to say?




On To Manitoba, they weather has been hot and humid, around +30 or so, we decided to go to a provincial park south of Brandon called SpruceWood Provincial Park.  It was flooded out in 2011
and just this year starting to open up, about half of the campground is open, would be a great place once it gets back to what it can be.



This is the view of the sunset of the Assiniboine River out our back door


Our camp site was huge and no one around us.......except........wood ticks!


Then of course with in being at the camp site for less that half hour, a wood tick crawled up my arm
so I had to educate Doug on wood ticks, as their antenna's will burrow into your skin and they suck blood until they are the size of a nickel.  They start out the size of a head of a match.  You can't squash them, so in order to kill them, you need to burn them.  If you find one that has burrowed into you, you have to touch it with a hot match and it will release itself.  Ticks are found all through Ontario and Manitoba May to June.....so now everyone is up to date on wood ticks.
This picture is for Sandy and Brian Lee....remember the day??????


Woke up to rain today so started off to Kenora, we by passed Winnipeg as we are trying to avoid all big Cities.  Still cloudy and cool today but found a great camp site right on one of the lake of the woods.  This is the view we are looking at right now, and of course enjoying a great glass of wine!
So far retirement is great!

We will try and post a new blog once a week, but it all depends on access to the internet.
feel free to e-mail us or text us at 780-914-5691 of any news or gossip we should know about.

Till later
Doug and Judy


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