To say I was disappointed when crossing from Alberta into Saskatchewan would be a understatement. There was no welcome to Saskatchewan from Google when we crossed the border. There was however a nice pull off “Rest Area” with a huge map of the province.
Used to be back in the day at the visitor centers you could
pick up a Provence map for a smile, but it looks like all I’m going to get is a
giant wooden map, that if I could cut it down, I would never be able to fold it,
and I don’t have room for it anyway.
I did learn from this big map that there was Prince Albert
National Park. The park was only about 275 km from my location and I thought
about going there mostly because it looks like this is about as far north as
you can get in Saskatchewan on the road system. But maybe getting some lobster
sounded like a better idea so I am sticking with my original plan.
The night was spent in Yorkton at a clean municipal camp, across from the golf course. They also had paths along a stagnant pond that included a board walk. So, it was nice to walk around the pond and see strange aquatic animals possibly a turtle eating even stranger aquatic plants.
In the morning the T3 laundry was open at 7:00am. Perfect as
I need to do wash.
The place was nice enough and had a change machine that
would convert paper money into Loonies.
Most of the washers and dryers took loonies, but several dryers took quarters, but there was no change machine for quarters, so there was a wait time for the big dryers that took Loonie's When it was my turn for the dryer, after I got it rolling, I noticed up by the camera that may or may not have been keeping a eye on the place a tiny speaker that was advertising fire, brimstone soul salivation reincarnation, wrinkle rejuvenation, and all you had to do was send money to Jesus, cuz he is broke again. I was glad the message was at a low volume, and barely audible over the noise of the washers and dryers.
Clothes clean, and packed (stuffed) neatly into the van we
headed east into Manitoba.
Again, there was no welcome from Google, but right away the
road was smoother. There were some trees and hills instead of massive agriculture
industry, growing mountains of flax,
oats, and barley.
Agriculture is on the same industrial scale as it is in the
us, but it’s interesting to see other crops besides corn and soybeans the
mainstay of rural scenery in the us.
The flax maybe because there a kilometers and kilometers of
it and maybe because I never understood the difference between straw, and hay. Hay,
I knew was grass or alfa. But what is straw?
Most likely it is flax stalks that are raked up into rows
like hay, left to dry then bailed for either straw or the big white fermentation
sileage tubes you always see in fields. The
sileage is either used for animal feed or left to ferment all the way back to
compost, then spread on the fields for fertilizer cuz unlike a lot of rural
areas there ain't a lot of cows here to supply the manure for fertilizer.
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Now that I have learned all about Flax, I will attempt to make all three clocks in the van with a name have the same time!
Why no animal blankets? Too hairy?
ReplyDeleteThanks for keeping us abreast of quirky news from the road.
No wrinkle rejuvenation or soul salvation?
ReplyDeleteAppreciate your photos of grains & fields of flax.
Hay is a crop grown to feed animals such as alfalfa.
ReplyDeleteStraw is the byproduct of grain production: the stem of wheat, barley, or other grain crops. It isn’t very good for feeding animals, but is used to line stalls in barns, etc. livestock and wild animals may eat it if there is nothing else, but it doesn’t digest well.