Monday August 17 and Tuesday August 18 – 4 Canadian Provinces

On Monday morning we rolled out of Kenora and on to Highway 17. It was raining. We passed roadworks, rural communities, and the border into Manitoba. The area around Winnipeg was a rich agricultural area but as a we drove north on 16, the Yellowhead Highway, we passed huge fields of barley, canola, and rye and rolled on through Manitoba’s bright green, golden yellow, and wheaten fields. We crossed the border into Saskatchewan and stopped for lunch in a tiny fast-food restaurant in Gladstone, the town of the “Happy Rock”! Get it…? Prairie wit, I guess!! We walked in to the restaurant and were greeted by a couple of old codgers one of whom had a broken arm which didn’t look as if it had been properly set, and who was eating a cup of ice-cream. They had some appreciative local comments which they addressed to the girls, without too much reaction. I don’t think they, the girls, totally understood the local jargon! We passed through Neepawa where Margaret Laurence was born. It was a neat little town with a beautiful four lane avenue lined with overhanging trees on both sides. We saw silver-grey silos, white grain elevators, and plump seagulls feeding on the dark brown ploughed fields. There was a lot of flooding in the fields which made the tiny ducks happy as they floated in the water picking up flies and other bugs and edibles as they went. The road ran parallel to the trainless-railway for miles but eventually in the evening we saw three freight trains moving sleepily along the tracks with a large number of carriages which would eventually be filled with the grain and other produce from the area. We eventually arrived at Saskatoon, found a motel, had a very late dinner, and crawled into bed. We were tired. We had driven about 1000 kilometers over the course of the day.
Tuesday started out raining and 15C. The long straight roads wound across the Saskatchewan prairies; pieces of blown truck tyres littered the highway. The odd straw bale found its way into the median in between the two parts of the divided highway. Yellow flowers lined both sides of the dual carriageway and separated the road from the fields of bright yellow canola which stretched into the horizon. Along the highway were lily filed watering ponds, and the land was undulating, and lush with trees acting as wind and snow breaks in the vast fields. We entered into Alberta, and stopped to take pictures at the “Welcome to Alberta” sign. Not much changed in the scenery until we passed through Edmonton, and reached a small town called Edson about 207 kms west of Edmonton. Then the landscape became more undulating and filled with fir trees. The Rockies tantalized us. They appeared in the distance at a high point on the highway, then disappeared. They appeared again as we passed the highest point on the highway, and disappeared, and then finally as we neared Hinton, they appeared and remained an omnipresence on the highway. You know you are approaching something that will consume you when you see them. We stopped for the night in Hinton located in the foothills of the Rockies. The town has about 10,000 inhabitants, a pulp mill, and tons of hotels. It is about 45 minutes from Jasper and we are looking forward to being right in the Rockies tomorrow.

The journey is long and tiring. The girls read magazines, listen to their i-Pods, play games on their cell phones, do crosswords, and word searches, sleep, and watch videos on the laptops. We all take it in turns to drive. But although we are appreciative of the scenery and the journey there is not much that is exciting and there is not much time for "fun". So far!