Early start to the day as we head East out of Lloydminster and immediately into Saskatchewan. The border actually splits the town into two and as we depart we both commented on our observation that most of the recent commercial development had occurred on the Alberta side of town leaving the Saskatchewan side feeling less loved.
Saskatchewan is what you expect, arable farm land as far as you can see. On our journey we are accompanied by a railway line and a never ending string of electricity poles. The yellow brick road Yellowhead highway is occasionally crossed by secondary roads that if you turn to look along as you pass, appear to go over the horizon. Maybe Oz is out there somewhere.
Contrary to rumor, not all of the old grain elevators have been torn down and replaced with new shiny silver bins. Below you will see a few that we passed.
We stopped in Saskatoon primarily to visit the PleasureWay Industries plant where our van was made. Unfortunately it being a Saturday there was no one there. We still took the obligatory photo in front of the factory.
The afternoon was supposed to go like this; drive into Manitoba, find the town of Russell, and end the day by parking up for the night in their “Peace park” where they have free camping and electrical hookups. I say ‘supposed’ because that’s not quite what happened.
We started the afternoon well and finished driving across Saskatchewan and into Manitoba. We even found the town of Russell and the ‘Peace park’. It was barricaded and a sign indicated that the site was soon to be the home of a new Co-Op. Hmmm. Now what? Where do we stop & park up for the night?
After filling up with fuel, we travel a short distance and look at a couple of campgrounds neither of which we felt comfortable stopping in (one was particularly sketchy although the online reviews made it sound fairly nice but basic). Looking at the map we realize that we were only 2 hours from Portage la Prairie and a Walmart. Decision made! Onwards we drove, we can re-provision in the morning.
The Walmart parking lot was freshly paved and there was lots of room. It was 10:02pm CDT and we had just driven for about 12 hours and covered just over 1000km. Sleep will come easily tonight.
