Canada - Prairies

Manitoba Plate

We were entering a new Province whose slogan as stated on the car plates is: “Friendly Manitoba”

Lauren from the Tourist Office

We were only in Manitoba a matter of minutes before the people working in the tourist office invite us back to their cabin for a party.

Partying on Star Lake by the fire

All the young people from the area came along for a night of drinks, music (I did some Beatle numbers for them), and to make a fire on the beach in their garden on Star Lake. Miles from any kind of city, the stars were out in their billions. What a welcome we received.

Star Lake

The Prairies is the Great Plains part of Canada, and as its name suggests is endlessly flat. Most Canadians knows them as the “drive through” provinces. We were determined to have a wail of a time none the less.

Typical Prairies

First stop: Grand Beach on Lake Winnipeg. This proved to be a magical surprise. The lake went on further than the eyes could see, and the crystal white sand was set in a cove of luscious trees.

Lake Winnipeg

We stopped in the Town of Winnipeg to take a photo of the Forks where the Red and Assiniboine Rivers meet. That night we camped right on the motorway outside Brandon, it was so noisy, I should never have listened to the brothers – insisting there would be no traffic which there was throughout the whole night.

3 Crazy boys on their haystacks

Continuing west on the number 1 highway we enter the next province along: Saskatchewan, by far my favourite name. There were two ways to get to its capital Regina. Continue along the never changing highway or go through the Qu’appelle valley. This valley trail took us away from a planet we’d come to appreciate as barren for the last 1000km. We went sliding into Crooked Lake in a ghost town called Melville Beach.

Crooked Lake in the Qu'Appelle Valley

Our worst night of camping was endured on the Saskatchewan – Alberta border. We got lazy and didn’t properly peg the tent down (I secretly blame Simon) . A storm broke out and slowly soaked me to the bone. I woke up freezing wet, and had to go to the car and turn on the engine to warm up. An hour later Mark followed suit. Then came Simon.

To stop ourselves from going mad, we had to invent car games which almost inevitably broke out into a fight and a sulk. I.e. I won them all.

All happy because the car game has only just started - give it 5 minutes

Half of Alberta is in the Prairies, the other in the Rockies (so not entirely a “drive through” province). On the map we saw that we could take a detour to: “Dinosaur Provincial Park”. It was a 100km out of our way, but adults or not, we all got giddy and excited.

Dinosaur Badlands

Set in the badlands, over 150 dinosaurs have been excavated so far. Two of them have been left exactly as they were found and covered in a shelter for tourists to look at.

Dinosaur lying exactly where it died 75 million years agoDinosaur Provincial Park museum

Our consensus when completing the Prairies was that they were not at all boring, but we knew that we were headed to Calgary: the last stop before we would be entering into the Rocky Mountains. Adios flatlands and badlands.

Saskatchewan Plate