News of our adventures

Since we haven’t had Internet, now we are trying to catch up by including some of what we have seen during our last few days.
On July 30th, we stayed in Blue Lake Provincial Park in Ontario on Highway 647 just off Canada Highway 17. The park’s beautiful long sandy beach reminded us of Sebago Lake State Park where we spent so many days when Josh and Dan were kids. The sand at Blue Lake is coarse just the way the sand is at Sebago. It is tinged with some red sand the way it is at Sebago, too!
Picture this — as Steve and I watched the sunset, one lone canoe paddled across the setting sun. I love this stuff whether I am at home of McWain Pond or here in Ontario. We were the only people on the shore even though the campground was full. Most people were eating at their campers or up drinking beer, I think. After we watched the sunset, we had our supper, and, yes, Steve had a beer! We are enjoying a lot of Kodak moments, some good food, and lots of laughs.
Hopefully, we are documenting a lot of this trip. Steve is using some of the black and white film that Josh gave him for this trip. I am using the digital camera that Josh and Liz gave us the day they got married.( Love that camera!) We should have some good pictures. I think a monkey could get some pretty shots here!
Aug 1,
This morning, we enjoyed a big, delicious breakfast practically next door to our campground here in Saskatchewan at the Craft-tea Elevator Restaurant, a former grain storage elevator. In 1944, it was moved to its present spot. Before, it was across the field a the Indian Head Experimental Farm and was used as a seed cleaning building and elevator. This kind of elevator was replaced by faster, vertically moving elevators when the economy of the prairies grew. According to what we have read, 278 kinds of wheat, barley, oats, peas and corn were being tested at the experimental farm. The "elevator" where we had breakfast stored a lot of these crops. Cool place to have breakfast! We certainly won’t find this kind of building in Naples or Waterford, Maine.
Different view? You bet...the canola fields here in Saskatchewan are beautiful. Today we saw miles of blue. Maybe this is also canola? We will have to investigate.
Just when you think the landscape is all going to be the same for miles and miles, it changes. Right outside of Chaplin, Saskatchewan, we saw salt flats. . All of a sudden you think you are seeing mounds of snow when you know that it is 93 degrees! ( Yes, it was that hot!) These flats look much as the Bonneville Salt Flats, but today what we saw were really smaller patches. It’s surreal.
　
Saw some crazy sights today, too, – Mac the Moose at Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and a twenty-story teepee at Medicine Hat, Alberta. The teepee is on the site where Indians – here called First Nation People – had a 16th century buffalo camp. The teepee was used in the 1988 Olympic Games in Calgary. This was the year that our friend (and one of Josh and Dan’s babyhood babysitters) skied for Canada. Of course, she is from Naples, Maine, but that’s politics. Anyway, when we see Lee Lee, we will have to ask her about the teepee. Maybe she remembers it.
While we were seeing the worlds’s biggest teepee, we had little prairie dogs scuttling around our feet.. Made us think of Teddy Roosevelt National Park. I think we took fifty pictures of prairie dogs on that trip.
Tonight we are staying in Brooks, Alberta at the Kinbrook Island Provincial Park. Again, we are on a lake – Lake Newell, a man made lake. A neighbor here in the park told us that the folks here in Alberta couldn’t have the huge farms they have if they didn’t have this resource. ( Our neighbor is a great, friendly guy. Then again, everyone we have met has been wonderful, friendly and helpful.) We are experiencing a windy night and lots of rain this evening. The kids who work in the park came around warning all the campers to stay inside. A few towns over had hail the size of golf balls. We are pretty happy that we aren’t in a tent in all this wind and rain! Been there and done that, too.