Manning Alberta

Manning Alberta appears to be a hidden gem in the Peace River district between High Level and Grimshaw. Named after an Alberta premier with a population around 1500, Manning appears to be an agriculture center for the large grain farms in the region.  We discovered it by chance on the way towards Grande Prairie from Louise Falls. It was getting late in the day and we were looking for a place to stay when N found a listing for a municipal campground in Manning.

We drove into a nice little campground situated beside the Notikewin River in the center of town. Only 9 sites, but all equipped with electricity and water. There are washrooms and showers available as well.
When we were getting set up, N noticed a problem. The floor on our main slide out which contains the sofa bed and dining room set had started to pull away on one end. On closer inspection we determined that the super rough roads going into Yellowknife had apparently bounced the sofa enough to separated the floor from the sidewall of the slide. Now I will admit that the sofa air bed is one heavy beast, but I would have thought that the engineers at Keystone would have designed a fastening system between the floor and wall to keep it all together. We will stop at the Keystone dealer in Grande Prairie and get a temporary fix until we get home and have our local dealer repair it permanently. This has been our first major problem in some 15,000 km so I guess we should feel lucky. However, it is still frustrating when you buy a supposedly well built unit only to find out that the engineers who worked on the building specifications had not factored in the strength to carry the load of furniture in the slide!
Now, back to Manning.
When the town employee came around to collect the $20.00 fee, he turned out to quite a salesman for the town. There is a lovely trail along the river. Across the bridge was a place that sold great ice cream, there was free firewood as well as free coffee at the seniors complex right next door to us and that the Saturday night movie at the local theatre was Gunless, starring Paul Gross.  He was just a fountain of information abut his town.
We had dinner and then decided to go for a walk around town. We thought we would try the ice cream for dessert and her was right. It was about the best soft ice cream we had ever had! While strolling around town eating our ice cream we came across the theatre and on the spur of the moment decided to go and see the movie as it was just starting. We both can highly recommend seeing this one. It’s easy to watch and will have you rolling in the aisles laughing. Well written, well acted and well done! On our way home we realized that this was the first movie we had gone to see in years. By the way, the ice cream and the move cost a total of $20.00.
We decided to spend an extra day in Manning to look around a bit more. By staying here on Sunday, it will allow us to stop in at the RV dealer in Grande Prairie on our way in town to let him look at our damage and hopefully do some quick temporary repairs.
We slept in on Sunday morning! First time in a long while! Most everything in town is closed. The only open store we cold find was the IGA, so we freshened up our food supplies.

Spent the rest of the day doing general chores around the rig and walking around town. From the parts of Manning we saw it is a nice neat little place. We had a late dinner and got the rig ready to move out to Grande Prairie tomorrow morning.

Cheers

P & N