June 18th - Regina, SK

Me with some Canadian geese!

Today was a much nicer day, though a little cool and windy. We drove into Regina (about 20 minutes) and found a parking spot not far from what looked like a shopping mall. Civilisation!  (I did forget to get a John Grisham book L). We did a drive through town to work out the best place to park. There were lots of construction works going on. So we parked and walked about three blocks to the… shopping mall. We wandered around and commented on how much more expensive things are in Canada compared to the USA just down the road. I did get some Bodyshop body butter because it’s so nice for my skin – it hasn’t recovered from the high altitudes in Colorado yet and their skin drying effect! It was only $10 – unlike the $26 we pay at home! Similar to the £5 I paid in Europe J. We also went to the Roots shop (in actual Canada this time! thinking of Heather! Very Canadian!) and looked at their clothes – so nice, but again, quite expensive for travellers! The shop guy was very chatty and wanted to talk Australian politics which Will couldn’t resist! Anyway, gave me a chance to check out their sale items, though we didn’t get anything. 

Me = windblown. Possible museum behind.

We had a snack in the form of a Dairy Queen shake – their menu board was so confusing and I thought I was ordering one thing when they said they didn’t do those but how about…confusing. Anyway a tasty shake that wasn’t actually a shake. I think! It was cool to people watch anyway – Canadians! After wandering around a little more we walked back to the car and drove down to the park to have lunch. After a quick lunch, we went for an intended short walk that ended up going all around the lake. We saw heaps and heaps of Canadian geese who were being fed by various people. I knew we should have kept that stale bread! At one point Will thought one of them was going to attack him – I don’t think it was, but funny all the same! There were lots of cute chicks of varying ages too. Tiny little fluffballs to ‘teenagers’ – the latter hanging out with each other rather than their parents and showing off to each other and chasing others. Typical teenagers! They did quite a bit of speed-flying across the surface of the lake in their area too. 

It was a really nice walk and great to stretch the legs. We saw a kayak race too which looked like fun, even though I have no arm strength! Maybe one day. There were lots and lots of people in the park, running, walking and just hanging out. We went through a few muddy squishy parts as some of the paths were under water! It got quite warm and I wished I were wearing shorts instead of jeans, but oh well. The building near where we were parked looked very European. Might have been a museum – it reminded me of the domed buildings of the Museum Ile in Berlin. There was a wedding photo session happening there – it was such a pretty building so I can understand why! After the park we drove through a really pretty neighbourhood with lots of huge trees and huge houses. We stopped at Canadian tire, which is kind of like Supercheap Auto. We had  been needing to fill up our tires with air, but none of the service stations had gauges and Will was worried he’d overfill our tires! So we stopped to get a gauge thingy and then we waited in a queue for ages. Some lady’s card wasn’t working and they kept trying and trying. I think she was getting a little nervous that she couldn’t pay for what she was getting! After that little adventure (I did get to read the cover of the local Regina newspaper – people complaining about record flooding!) Then suddenly we were out of Regina and back in the countryside.

We wanted to camp at a particular place about halfway between Regina and the US border, but the road was blocked off due to flooding. We did see lots of water lying around, so not really surprising! However, as we turned off to continue down the road to the US, Will thought maybe the campsite would’ve been ok as local traffic was being let through. Oh well. Anyway, we continued driving, getting a little tired. It was a pretty narrow road with grass right on both sides – we didn’t see much traffic!

Will decided we needed gas (umm, why didn’t stop and get some in Regina where there were actual servos??!) so we stopped in some random little towns to look. One town seemed to consist solely of scruffy houses and hundreds of shiny red farm machinery implements. And an ‘RV park’ which was somebody’s yard with a couple of taps and posts with power points on it. The only other RV there was older looking than Betsey and looked pretty permanent. We did drop off some recycling there though J. We continued driving to a little town called Ogema There was a campground there but it looked a bit strange – in the showgrounds – so we didn’t stop to look. Not much to see from outside the grounds for $20!! We drove into ‘town’ and did a block, then came back to where we saw one lonely petrol bowser. Lucky for us the guy let us fill up – he was just about to pack up and leave for the night. It was 5 o’clock after all. Phew!

Then we hit the road again, Finally we came to a little town that had a campsite, called Bengough. It was just Will and I in the campground – we paid for a ‘primitive’ site (no water or electricity) but most of the sites were pretty muddy and we thought we might get bogged so we parked in a non-primitive site. Anyway after we got settled, we snacked on baby carrots and French onion dip and Will taught me a new card game called ‘Rummy 500.’ It was a really addictive and once we’d established the rules, really fun. Will’s instructions for card games are like his instructions for driving – you’re past the turn-off and he says ‘oh yeah, you should have turned there.’ But eventually I got the hang of the game (actually not even ‘eventually’ I beat him straight up! And kept winning. So we drank some red wine as we were afraid customs going into the US would be as harsh as those going into Canada and whoever lost a game had to have a shot of Jagermeister. That was definitely Will’s idea. And his downfall hehe. We observed some local Canadian bogans who pulled into our RV park and listened to loud doof-doof music while talking car to lowered car. Reminded me of my days of doing ‘blockies’ in Deloraine with my mates. Ahh good times. Anyway, Will said I couldn’t go out and talk to them so we just listened to their music instead. All we could here from where we were was: doof doof. It was hard to guess what songs they were playing! They left eventually and the card games continued. Until about 11 o’clock when Will realised we hadn’t had any dinner, we were drunk and that he had lost way too many games!! Then we packed up and passed out (not literally, we both just fell asleep pretty well instantly when we hit our pillows!). ZZZZZZZZZ.