Road Trip 2011, part two

I've added a few shots to my flickr set of some of the areas we checked out while in Manitoba. Here are a couple of them.



This is taken from Fraserwood Park, in my home town. You see that building way in the background? When I was a kid, that was my first school. It was a two classroom school, though at the time I went, it was K-3 (it used to be K-6), all in one classroom. The other was used as a gym. Where I'm standing to take this photo was nothing but a marshy area. Now it's a park with a pond, public bathrooms, hand pump, areas large enough for RVs to park, with firepits available.

What you can't see from here is the house we used to live in. There's also a hockey rink and a sports club (which now owns the old school building) and a play structure, basketball court and baseball diamond. My kids were pretty young then, and spent many happy house exploring. One year, we gathered some frog spawn from one of the ditches and raised them in a makeshift tank. Out of the many eggs, only 5 froglets survived, and we released them in this pond.

Also released in this pond was a huge snapping turtle! I have no idea if it's still there. A friend called us up one day, asking for help. She'd seen something odd on the side of the highway, in an area surrounded by farmer's fields. It turned out to be a snapping turtle the size of a steering wheel! With no water in sight, and no idea where it came from, it was brought over to our place and we soon let it go in the pond. I must say, driving the car with that thing in a bin on the seat beside me - a bin it barely fit in! - was rather nerve wracking. Especially when the darn thing almost got out!



This is a Purple Martin tower by the marina in Gimli, Manitoba. They don't hang around long, but when they do, they eat a whole lot of mosquitoes, so a fair number of people build "apartment style" birdhouses to attract them. This tower is the largest such structure I've seen.

Click here to see more photos.

Road Trip 2011, part one

As you may have noticed with some of my previous posts done through my phone, I've been on a road trip. My younger daughter and I drove from Edmonton to Manitoba, visiting various places in the Interlake, not too long ago. We also took oodles of photos. I brought along my old Canon S3, since it also has video capability. Little by little, I'll be adding some to a set on my flickr page and highlighting a few here.

The drive out was quite the adventure. We took the Yellowhead (Hwy 16) out of Edmonton, all the way through to the Trans Canada. We drove through and were surrounded by thunderstorms pretty much the entire Alberta leg of the trip.



When I saw this sun drenched field, with its old cabin, sillouted against a distant thunderstorm, I had to pull over and get a shot out the driver's side window. This particular shot was taken at maximum optical zoom (see my flickr set for a different version). We also found ourselve driving into a spectacular double rainbow. We knew we'd driven under it when it abruptly disappeared.

Our plan had been to find a rest stop and camp out for the night. We weren't in any hurry, so an early night would have been fine. Unfortunately, we discovered there are very few rest stops along the Yellowhead - at least in Manitoba! We ended up stopping at a rest area near Minnedosa in the wee hours of the morning. We broke out the foam mattresses and crashed for the night.



It wasn't until morning that I realized the parking spot I stopped in likely wasn't a parking spot at all! *L*

It was a gorgeous morning, so we had ourselves a breakfast picnic before hitting the road again. Quite a few others were taking advantage of the lovely morning, including a fisherman who set up at the river that's just behind the row of trees you see on the right.


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I don't know the name of the river we were beside. It sure is a squiggly one!

When we left, we saw one more rest area to the East of Minnedosa, and that was it. Not what we were expecting at all!

A treat

I have never had Bento before.

Border

Heading home by a different route and finally able to use my phone again. I forgot MB was a dead zone for the phone i have.

The rest area on this route is a lot nicer than our usual one.

Double rainbow

Taken east of Foam Lake.

Surrounded

Thunderstorms all around us. Taken east of Clavet, Saskatewan.

On the road

Let's see how this mobile blogging works with a photo attached.

We have been driving for about 2 hours now. This photo is taken from a mall are we stopped at to get gas, on the west edge of Lloydminster. Time to stop for lunch, too.

No matter how often I take this trip, I am always struck by the beauty of our countryside.