September 20, 2008 by Rae

Regina and the RCMP Heritage Centre

Monday had me at Wascana Lake, in the heart of Regina. It’s surrounded by greenery and has paths along its banks for running, biking, walking, etc. There are a lot of tourist attractions in this area.

Then, the Regina Cemetery. There was a whole section devoted to the graves of children.

There is a native prairie grass garden growing right outside the Royal Saskatchewan Museum. Most of these plants no longer grow naturally as the prairie ecology has been changed to accommodate agriculture.

Now on to Wednesday, which was devoted to touring the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Heritage Centre located right on the site of Depot, where all Mounties get their training. The site has a museum that is well worth the visit and visitors are also allowed to wander the grounds of Depot provided they follow the blue Mountie road.

All the buildings at Depot are in the same style of red brick and sandstone.

Finally, if there’s one nice thing I can say about the RCMP it’s that they sure do know how to put on a show.

I was surprised that I was allowed to take the pictures and videos that I did. Must have something to do with the RCMP’s desperate need to improve their public image and seem more transparent.

September 16, 2008 by Rae

Land of Living Skies

First off, let me thank everyone who has commented in the past few days. I’ll answer each one of you. I’m having to rely on a free wi-fi signal provided in SK’s major centres which, unfortunately, is extremely slow. Combine that with the slowest laptop in the universe (doesn’t mean I don’t adore you, Bea!) and I’m keeping my surfing to the absolute minimum this week.

I’m posting from a coffee shop in Moose Jaw. The town opens really late, so I have about an hour to kill before I can start doing the tourist thing.

As it turns out, my location just outside of Regina is absolutely perfect. Moose Jaw is just an hour away, perfect for a day trip. Downtown Regina is barely 20 minutes away, so yesterday I was able to go out for the morning and part of the afternoon, go home for rest, then return in the evening to run some errands.

Monday in Regina is pretty much like Monday in Montreal, at least the way it was last time I was there on a Monday: just about everything of interest is closed. Fortunately, I’d done my homework and had a list of a few things that were open.

Joke was on me when I woke up at 7 yesterday. Saskatchewan has its own time rules, the details of which are fuzzy at present, but it turned out that even though I was still on central time, it was a whole hour earlier than I realised! I was pretty shocked when I got my bill at the pancake house and saw that it was 8AM, not 9AM as I’d thought!

The first thing I dealt with was mail. Being in Regina for the week and being willing to extend my stay if Canada Post is a bit slow, I felt that this was the perfect time to have some mail forwarded to me.

Then, I headed to the Regina Cemetery. Cemeteries are usually one of the first places I visit when I get to a new city. You can tell so much about a community by walking among its dead–what they believed in, what they fought for, what they fought against, major calamities, hierarchical divisions… At this cemetery I was must struck by the fact that simple wooden crosses sat next to large granite stones and by the number of graves belonging to soldiers killed during the Korean ‘police action.’

Next stop was the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, the quintessential natural history museum found in most cities. I found this one to be particularly good, with interactive displays and audio that complemented printed information.

The RSM is located on the shores of Wascana Lake, a beautiful urban playground with paths for running, jogging, walking, bike riding, etc. I walked around there for a spell and went to see if the science museum was open (no). So, I returned to downtown for an hour and checked out a few antique shops (it’s so easy to resist temptation when you live in an RV!).

Which brings me to this glorious sunny prairie morning in Moose Jaw. I have a full day of activities planned and tons of photos to share. Stay tuned. 🙂

September 9, 2008 by Rae

Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

When last our heroine updated her blog, she was parked at the Canadian Tire in Val D’Or. She has done more than 900km since then… and not all of them have been above ground.

Not much happened on Saturday. I wound up boondocking outside the visitor’s centre at the eastern edge of the city where I was told overnighting was ‘tolerated’, but I’d have to move to pay site or the Walmart for the next night. The only pay site in town was 15$ and that didn’t include hookups or, at least, a view, so guess where I spent my second night in Val D’Or? 🙂

At any rate, the sole purpose of my visit to Val D’Or was to see the gold mine at a complex they call the Cité de l’or. Other than outdoor sports, there isn’t much to see or do in Val D’or. I therefore wouldn’t recommend making a detour there just to see the mine, but if you just happen to be going by, then, please, don’t miss it and pay the 40 bucks for the full tour!

A vein of gold does not look like what you’d expect as it is black and white. The white is quartz and the black is tourmaline. This is extracted and then processed to get the gold flakes inside. It takes about 5,000 tonnes of ore from this mine to get a single oz of gold.

There was nothing but wilderness around the mine site, so a village had to be built to house all the workers and their families. Imagine a whole neighbourhood of log cabins.

The old mining village is just adorable and is a historic site, so current owners face strict regulations as to how much they can change the houses.

These houses offered excellent accommodation for the miners with running water, heating, telephones, and electricity. Miners were considered rich. They made about 35$ a week while a living wage was about 5$ per week! This is how they could afford such luxuries and pay the rent of 50$ per year for these houses.

Before my tour of the mine, I walked through the village and was accosted by a withered wraith of a man who used to work at the mine! He spent about twenty minutes sharing his life story. I thought it would be a tale of woe, but not at all. He loved his time at the mine, saying that the work was hard, but that conditions were good and safe, and that unlike coal mining it wasn’t that bad for the health as there was no dust. His job was to take core samples that would be analysed to determine which way the mine should be further excavated. When he retired from mining, he used his knowledge to found his own diamond drilling company with more than 150 employees. Meeting him proved to me that there are no accidents in life. I was sure my mine tour was at 1PM, but it was at 1:30. I therefore had time to kill, time enough to make an encounter that completely change how I felt down there, 300ft below the surface….

I really don’t like enclosed spaces, so the hour and a bit we were underground was just enough for me. When we got back into the shuttle for the drive back up, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I can’t imagine spending a whole day in such a place, including a lunch break spent in a room that was literally carved out of the rock face.

elevator cage

indicates at which level is the elevator

elevator cage speed regulator

dispensary

door into the room where the cage is

drilling cage; miner’s liked these because they were safe and cut down on their labour

electrical panel controlling the elevator cage

horrible joke

ladder to the drilling platform

lunchroom!

me as a miner!

mining drill that can be driven forward, backward, or sideways

outside of the mine

99 Perrault (the house where the interior pictures were taken)

miner’s cabin

luxurious bathroom in the miner’s house

dresser in the miner’s house

calendar for 1943

chamberpot in the miner’s house

cheques

newspaper about the FLQ crisis

food stamps

hats belonging to the wife of a miner

ice box in the miner’s house

this gift shop area was the kids’ bedroom in the miner’s house

kitchen in the miner’s house

miner’s outfit

phone in a miner’s house

radios, adding machine, magazine

wartime ration coupons

rock chute

the shuttle we took down into the mine

ceiling sprayed with concrete for the visitors’ safety

gold vein, the black is tourmaline and the white is quartz

After the tour, I went to pick up Miranda at the Sears where I’d received permission to park her for the day, then we moved to Walmart. The store was closed, so I just set up for the night and treated myself to dinner since I couldn’t get anything working at home. 🙂

Miranda at the Walmart in Val D’Or

Sunday, I pushed off ludicrously early (around 7) and felt my mood change as quickly as did the kilometres beneath me.

I passed this very cool sign mid-morning:

entering the Arctic watershed

The weather was (and is) gross, not motivating me to try to find a boondocking spot on Crown land as I’d thought I might, so I decided to make a push for the Walmart in Kapuskasing:

Seeking a Walmart in the wilderness

(I was just amused that I was driving through the wilderness looking for a Walmart).

I passed some very interesting towns, such as Swastika and Moonbeam, where I had to take a picture:

yes, we’re still on Earth (and staying there)

When I got to Kapuskasing (and was done with the whole dumping thing), I went to the Walmart figuring that it would be closed for the evening. Nope, it’s open 7 to 8 seven days a week!!! So, I went in to ask for permission to stay overnight. The manager replied “Of course!” in a very friendly manner. I knew I would have a good night there: I had permission to stay and the OPP had a station literally across the street. Can’t get any safer than that! I wound up sleeping the sleep of the proverbial dead and woke up this morning at 5:30 feeling very odd because I haven’t slept that many hours straight through since I was a teenager!

Today was another big push as there is just about nothing between Kapuskasing and Thunder Bay. I was very glad to find this park. It’s nothing special and not a place where you can set up your hibachi or awning, but it’s perfectly adequate for a one night stopover. Tomorrow, I’m going no further than the Walmart in Thunder Bay! I have this site until noon and I plan to take advantage of that to get caught up on my housekeeping.

If there is one thing I will remember the most about my first days on the road it is that the world is not nearly as hostile a place as some people would try to make me believe. There has been at least one person per day who helped me in a way that might have seemed small to them, but which made me feel like I am not alone on this vast and open road.

Tomorrow is Thunder Bay. Wednesday will be my last night on the Shield. Thursday I’ll hit the Prairies. And then I’ll slow down properly as I’ll be hitting new things.

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. Good lives, I’m discovering, have no shortage of bad days, but they are measured by the sum of the whole.

I’m impossibly happy, in good spirits, comfortable in my rig, grateful that my cats have taken to this life as well as their mom, and have discovered that it’s easy to be a morning person if your day is going to be filled with adventure.

November 14, 2007 by Rae

Museum of Natural History and Home Again

The Airporter shuttle was picking me up near the train/bus station at 1:30 this afternoon, so I didn’t plan much for the morning. Julie suggested I take her car into town and leave it parked in a lot for her to pick up tonight, which turned out to be a fantastic idea.

My choice for the morning was the Museum of Natural History, which was okay but nothing to write home about. I did like the exhibit on quill art as I knew nothing on the subject.

The rest of the day was the usual going back home stuff. It was pouring by the time I exited the museum and I was a soaking wet, frozen, and a tad grumpy when I finally made it back to the train station to kill the forty-five minutes or so until my shuttle arrived. My poor bones just can’t handle dampness. I look forward to the dry heat and cold of the Prairies!

The Shuttle arrived on schedule and I was at the airport by 2:30. For some reason, I always forget that I have to go through security, so I almost plopped myself down before the checkpoint. *shakes head*

Friday’s flight had been smooth with an almost unnoticeable landing, but such was not the case tonight. There was a nasty bit of turbulence and the landing was quite hard, but takeoff was worth it. We left in peasoup fog and climbed and climbed and climbed… Suddenly, we burst out of the clouds into a brilliant blue sky. At the horizon, a large swath of rainbow separated grey from blue.

To sum up, Halifax was okay. Like Minneapolis, it’s a tad cold in attitude and inapproachable and should probably be experienced in the summer, when the tourist trade is at its peak. But the people are extremely friendly, the seafood is awesome, and the scenery is spectacular.

I find it interesting that the in-air magazine on the flight to San Francisco had an article about Toronto, which wound up being my next stop. The on train magazine for the Toronto trip had an article about Halifax, which was my next stop. Boarding the plane on Friday, there was a touristy video playing. It was about Manitoba.

Dum da dum dum.

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A Life By Design

"Sometimes in life, we reach to a right place by departing from a wrong port with a wrong ship!" ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Natural History Museums

Regina and the RCMP Heritage Centre

Land of Living Skies

Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

Museum of Natural History and Home Again