4th – 18th August 2019
Soon after leaving Riding Mountain National Park, our long, straight, flat, prairie flanked road brought us to our third Canadian province, Saskatchewan. Before we crossed the border we took a 40km detour to visit a National Historic Site of Canada. What lured us from the path, I hear you ask? The Inglis Grain Elevators! What?
Quick recap of what I learnt… The grain gets harvested, brought in trucks to the grain buyer at the elevator. He weighs it and pays the farmer. It gets tipped into a storage area through a grate, under the truck. A system of cups on a vertical belt is run by a lazy diesel engine and scoops the grain up carrying it to the top of, and depositing it into, a tall storage bin. The grain then gets loaded into railway boxcars that are stacked up along the line next to the elevator, to be collected by a passing engine. There were thousands of elevators around the prairies in its pre-industrial ‘hay’ day, but modernisation saw most of them close and be taken down. Inglis has a rare collection of five original elevators in their original row. It was very low key and we had a personal guided tour by the docent as we were the only people visiting at the time. I learned some things about grain. 1. Canola and rapeseed plants are essentially the same. Rapeseed oil is used industrially and it was only with some genetic modification of rapeseed to remove a few toxic compounds, that canola oil fit for human consumption was created. 2. Flax plant flowers are periwinkle blue and create fields that look like water. It is a little early for us to see this unfortunately. 3. A bushel is equal to 8 dry gallons or 4 pecks.
Suitably educated, we continued into Saskatchewan. To be fair, this is fairly similar to Manitoba in size, topography, and industry. It is also about 2.5 times the size of NZ, but with even fewer inhabitants, barely 1 million in total. It is also pretty flat and mostly given over to the growing of wheat, barley, flax and canola, but has another important export in the form of potash, a potassium rich mineral mined in vast quantities and mostly converted into fertiliser. Saskatchewan is the world’s largest producer of potash. It is in the North American Central Time Zone, the same as Manitoba, but for some reason it does not observe daylight savings, so we rolled back an hour as we crossed the border. Another few days of disrupted appetites and sleep routines. We compensate by eating more, starting drinking earlier and spending a splendid amount of time asleep. We are definitely in the camping groove now.
Our first stop along the road through Saskatchewan was two nights in a small highway town called Foam Lake. Don’t let the name fool you. There was no lake here. Our camp was a small leafy and charming, quiet town-owned park set back about 500m from the main road. We had an enormous site, so big in fact that we managed to have a ‘marital discussion’ about where to actually park in it. We thrashed that out quickly and efficiently and were soon installed. Our ability to have a row about nothing, sulk for a bit, then carry on as if nothing happened has become elevated to ‘grand master’ level. Our trigger is usually hunger, but sometimes a full bladder can work just as effectively. We became a little anxious as the afternoon went on, and it became apparent that almost all the other campers in our area seemed to be all gathered for a family party, with more cars and trucks pulling up as the afternoon became evening. There was a massive table, several BBQs, lots of coolers and even a small bouncy castle for the kids. We braced ourselves for a noisy evening running into the night. Happily for us, it turned out to be the tamest party of the century, fizzling out before darkness fell. I sometimes forget that this is Canada, not America. Volumes are lower. Earplugs were not needed.
The next day we decided to head into the town centre on our bikes to see what was going on. This was only about 1.5km away, and the answer was NOTHING. We knew that it was a public holiday Monday (just to commemorate having jolly long summer weekend, as far as I could tell) but we were expecting something to be happening/open. Nope. Zip. It was a ghost town with out the tumbleweed. Deserted. No humans to be seen. Not one of the 1148 people that allegedly live here. Odd. They must have been all down at that imaginary lake…. Luckily we had provisions for the duration, so we went home for a cup of tea and a biscuit. The rest of the afternoon was spent sat outside the camp office, 500m from Tin Can, the only place that we could access the Wifi. It’s not all rainbows and puppies here, you know, but the homemade bacon double cheeseburgers that we cooked on the campfire that evening were pretty darn good, so it’s not all hardship.
In the morning we rolled onward to some veritable civilisation, the city of Saskatoon. Dubbed the Paris Of The Prairies it is the biggest conurbation in Saskatchewan with about 300,000 inhabitants and was named for the native Saskatoon berry. On our way there we took a moderate detour to visit the curiosity of Little Manitou Lake. This is a smallish lake about 100 km from Saskatoon which has a very high mineral content, the same ones that produce the potash, causing it to be ten times denser than normal freshwater and causing hyper-buoyancy. It is one of only three bodies of water in the world with this property: the well known Dead Sea and the lesser known Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic. We couldn’t not go. There is a little spa resort and a beach on the lakeshore and we parked up to go for a ‘float’.
Unfortunately it was a bit chilly, so it was a very brief event. We came, we floated, we took the obligatory photographs and then we scampered back onto dry land. Luckily we had the sanctuary of TC to change in and get warm again, and after some sandwiches we continued on to our destination.
In Saskatoon we had five nights booked in another town park only 3 km from downtown, with a good riverside cycle trail to get us there easily. Our site backed on to a golf course so it was generally quite quiet with only occasional thwacking, swearing and celebratory noises to break the peace. There was a huge 50ft tall protective fence between the course and the park which made the discovery of a golf ball in our site most intriguing. Some trick shot! Our time here coincided with the Saskatoon Exhibition, a week-long city fair held at the exhibition grounds on the other side of the river from our camp.
This was a fiesta of funfair rides, food trucks, performers, art exhibitions, music and fireworks. We were going! Getting there involved about 8km of cycling up river, across river and down river which was very pleasant and earned some much needed calorie credits for the dubious food choices that we made later in the day. We arrived mid afternoon, the only cyclists to pull up in the 1000+ capacity car park. Our first entertainment was watching a bloke doing an ice hockey themed flaming hockey stick juggling act. Can’t get much more Canadian than that, unless he had doused himself in maple syrup, I suppose.
The second act was a police themed high diving act. Bizarre and impressive. The third was a very lame trial bike demonstration which was generally quite boring, except for the dog that belonged to one of the riders and ran around generally getting in the way and causing mayhem. There was a half decent band playing in the beer tent area whilst we were there, the male lead singer doing a fine selection of high octave female artist covers. As for food, we had our first taste of perogies. These are an Eastern European import and are a boiled dumpling filled with various fillings such as cabbage, mashed potato, meat or cheese. Perfect street food! And of course poutine. The fine, fine, fine, dish of chips, gravy and cheese curd. Who thought chips and gravy could be improved on? The Canadians, that’s who! Our nutritional extravaganza had its finale with a bag of mini donuts. I only wanted a few, but the smallest bag that we could buy contained 20. Shame. Needless to say we both ate 10 donuts each, although possibly I had 12 and Nick had 8. There was a high degree of self loathing in the 10 minutes following their consumption, but we moved on quickly to the beer tent to help ourselves forget… The funfair didn’t lure us in its quest to spend any money to spin ourselves around or upside down, or to try and hit things with things in order to win things, but it provided ample people watching opportunities. Replete and tired we cycled home at about 7.30 pm, opting not to stay for the evening concert which we could hear from our campsite anyway, and each evening of the exhibition there was an 11pm fireworks display t0 keep us from any early nights.
The city of Saskatoon itself is a little treasure. It sits either side of the South Saskatchewan River with cycle trails up and down both sides. It has several French inspired buildings, lots of green space and tree-lined avenues. The city centre is busy as the main shopping mall is located right in the middle of town and it has a very stylish new modern art museum. We spent a day mooching around, drinking coffee, browsing through the mall, eating lunch and then filled the afternoon with seeing the new Tarantino movie, which was excellent. On another day we visited the art museum, spending most of our time being amused by all the bizarre creations that pass as art, and particularly all the hot air written about it. I call it Art Depreciation.
The other jolly thing that we did in Saskatoon was go to a basketball game. The elite professional league is in its inaugural season in Canada, and we got tickets to see the Saskatchewan Rattlers take on the Edmonton Stingers. Having never seen a live basketball game before, this was on our list of quintessential North American things-to-do. We tracked down the shuttle bus stop in town to get transport out to the venue, which was on the edge of the city. (Elton John is playing here in October) and arrived in time to get beer, burgers and find our seats which were one row back from courtside at the home end. It was a high energy evening with a DJ playing tunes all through play, cheerleaders, mascots, commentators, TV cameras and general merriment. Sat behind us was a group of very vocal blokes in their early 20s who obviously knew a lot about basketball, and also knew some of the players of the home team. They spent the whole time yelling, cheering, calling play and getting the attention of their friends on the bench. They were very amusing and made the evening for us.
The tense game culminated in a winning shot by the Rattlers made in the last 10s of the game with the visitors missing a basket in last 2s. What excitement! The crowd went wild, and one of the sweaty 6 foot 10 inch Rattlers players used his unfeasibly long legs to bound up past us over the chairs to celebrate with his crazy mates behind us. Quite a fantastic first basketball experience. We caught the bus back to town, and followed the buzzing crowd to a cool brew pub for a few drinks before getting an Uber home.
After Saskatoon we continued to follow the Yellowhead highway northwest to’ The Battlefords’. This is the collective term for the towns of Battleford and North Battleford which sit either side of the North Saskatchewan River. We stopped here for provisions and had a fun half hour in an enormous self service truck wash shed knocking some dirt and flies off Big D and TC.
Our camp for the next 3 nights was 40km north from here in Battleford Provincial Park, a small park on the shores of Jackfish Lake. We had hoped to do some kayaking or paddle-boarding but the temperature dropped and the wind picked up so watersports were suddenly less inviting. Instead we did some biking, hiking and loafing, had some campfires and cooked some more spectacular burgers. There was even a lakeside mini-golf course and on one memorable windy morning I took a glorious 5 shot victory from my husband. He is still hurting from this.
From Battleford we continued northwest along the Yellowhead Highway. The landscape changed subtly with the fields of the prairies sprouting gas and oil wells and the grain elevators being joined by scattered refineries. Not quite so scenic, but not as ugly as you might imagine. With gas and oil comes jobs and money, and we definitely noticed this as we pulled into our next stop, Lloydminster. The town is currently booming with lots of housing being built and many workers living in RVs and tons of shops and businesses. Lloydminster is Canada’s only province border town, with the Saskatchewan-Alberta border running through the middle of it, marked by four tall red steel obelisks. All the shopping is on the Alberta side as there is no sales tax on that side of the border, and the whole town observes mountain time, keeping thing simpler in the winter. We had booked into the town park which is on the Saskatchewan side but when we arrived our host had a confession to make. He had overbooked and there was no site for us. He had been relying on some of the oil workers to go home and free up some space but this hadn’t happened. He was very apologetic and had a solution. We could pull up next to the pavilion/bathroom block, plug into a normal power socket and could camp for free. He would move us to a site as soon as one became available. We could deal with that. We filled the water tank and parked up.
We weren’t the only ones in the overflow zone as two big motor bikes with small trailer tents arrived soon after us and set up camp on the nearby lawn. After getting sorted they headed off to dinner on their bikes, meeting a big group of fellow bikers at a restaurant about 1.5km down the road. Not quite sure why they didn’t walk. It would have taken less than 20 minutes and they could have had a few drinks and stretched their legs. Oh I know. One has to turn up on a bike to a gathering of bikers, even if you’ve ridden your bike 400km that day. They were packed up and gone by 8am, long before we surfaced. Probably had another bazillion kilometres to cover. Crazy muddy duckers.
The main attraction of our stay in the utilitarian town of Lloydminster was to attend an illustrious sporting event: the Canadian chuckwagon racing finals. A sport we had previously not even known existed so therefore was nowhere near our ‘to-do’ list. It was a series of races over five evenings at the exhibition grounds, 2km from our camp. The end of the series was to be celebrated on the final night with Roots & Boots, a ‘country music cowboy cabaret dance’ with performances by three well known country stars from the 1990s and a couple of sets by an up and coming local band. Despite our usual lack of enthusiasm for both live music generally and country music specifically we felt that this was something not to be missed and we had purchased our tickets a few weeks ago. Now all we needed was some cowboy gear. We saddled up the ponies (the wheeled kind) and headed to Alberta to do some shopping. Our destination? A western wear shop about 3km up the road. They would know what we needed. We were taken under the wing of a very helpful assistant called Yvonne who advised us on the subtleties of Canadian cowboy fashion and we left the store the proud owners of a pair of Wranglers and a new shirt each. We were ready! On the way home we swung our steeds up to the exhibition grounds to check the lay of the land and the safest route to cycle, especially considering it was going to be dark on our way home after the party. We discovered that there was basic on-site RV parking available at the grounds. How better to get home from a party by just walking across the carpark?? We could move up here for that last night and not have to cycle anywhere! We headed back to camp to find out that our host had a proper site available for us and it was still free for our inconvenience, so we quickly packed up and shifted and filled our afternoon with inactivity and a load of laundry. The next day was miserable with the temperature dropping to about 10 deg C and it was really windy too. Summer had been suspended. I got a bit of cabin fever so talked Nick into coming with me to the supermarket, a short 10 minute cycle away. Unfortunately we mis-timed our journey fantastically and got caught in a sudden downpour. I wasn’t very popular. Our planned attendance at the chuckwagon races that evening was cancelled as it was far too cold. We stayed in, put the heater on (!), wrapped up in rugs (!), ate curry and watched a movie instead. This is early August in the Northern Hemisphere, isn’t it? Nuts.
Saturday we packed up and headed to the exhibition grounds after lunch, finding a spot to park up and paying our $15 for the pleasure. We were 50m from the wagon racing entrance, 100m from the cabaret venue. We filled the afternoon with a visit to the town’s cultural centre/gallery/museum, a short cycle away. The highlight of this was a taxidermy display of over 1000 specimens all done by the same chap called Fuchs, apparently the largest collection of taxidermy done by one man in North America. From polar bears to humming birds, he had converted more living creatures into posed stuffed ones than you could shake a stick at. Here is a diorama of rabbits playing poker…
So. Chuckwagon racing. A sort of chariot racing for the modern times. We headed over to the track at about 5.30pm, bought some beers and had a ‘beginners guide’ tutorial from a nice lady behind the bar. Each race had four wagons. Each wagon is pulled by four thoroughbred horses and has one driver. The race starts with each wagon stationary at a starting barrel. Then an outrider, a single rider on a horse, gets off his horse, stands behind his team wagon and when the starter horn sounds, the outrider picks up a ‘stove’ (a very small barrel) and loads it into the back of the waggon, then the waggon races off, around a second barrel, back around the first barrel and then gallops off to do a single lap of the racetrack.
Meanwhile the outrider, jumps back on their horse and, with a second team outrider who seemed to magically appear from nowhere, gallops off to chase their wagon. There was a complicated system of penalties and despite watching 8 races, we still really had no idea what the outriders were doing, or how the ‘stove’ barrel thing was relevant. It was still a lot of fun though. It was sunny, but with a very cold wind and we were like icicles by the end of the races with 30 minutes to kill before the cabaret started. Luckily, home was in the carpark so we went back, put the heater on and had a cup of tea to warm up before slipping into our new threads.
The cabaret was held in an enormous shed with a massive stage and dance floor area covered in a mysterious fine grit. There were trestle tables and chairs to seat about 500-1000 people and two bars. About half the folk were in proper western wear and the other half obviously hadn’t seen the memo. We blended in perfectly as long as we kept our mouths shut. It was a blast. The first few hours we spent stood in a perfect spot for people watching and analysis whilst warming ourselves up to dancing with some drinks. It became apparent that 80% of all people that live in rural Canada learn to do a ‘country two-step’ at some point between birth and the end of high school. It was very impressive. All ages, all sizes, all combinations of couples hit the dance floor and instantly wheeled around doing this tight-stepped, foot-sliding dance move, making it suddenly obvious what the dance floor grit was for. It made the moves much easier than being on plain concrete. We, obviously, could not two-step, but by then could not care less and danced for a couple of hours until the batteries ran out just before the 2am finish.
Getting home was a breeze. Taking your whole home to a party really simplifies the process. We slept like the dead and surfaced very late the next morning feeling only mildly shabby. We headed back to our faithful road, the Yellowhead highway, leaving Saskatchewan and continued northwest into Alberta proper.