Southern Saskatchewan

We woke up to a cold, rainy, windy Friday morning in Swift Current. We can’t complain too much though because this is only the second time on this trip that we have had to hook up and get underway in the rain. In fact, the rain eased off to what we would call an east coast mist being driven by 40kph winds.
Swift Current is a very easy town to get around in and we were out of town and heading due south into wheat country. Who ever said that Saskatchewan was flat never drove on any other highway than the TCH. We drove through rain and wind until we reached Cadillac then turned east and headed through Assiniboia then south through Willow Bunch to Coronach where we stopped for the day. Willow Bunch had the first bi-lingual English French signs that we have seen for a long time. We found out later that this area was settled by Metis which explains the French names and bi-lingual signs.

We drove over plains, through valleys past fields of wheat that are still a long way from harvesting. It has been so wet down here that the fields are literally floating in water. The ground must be totally saturated.
Coronach is a small prairie town with the basic essentials. There is a Co-op gas station, grocery store, drugstore, insurance company, restaurant, motel, spa, a recreation center and golf course. As well, there is a small RV park where we are staying tonight.
We walked around town today, bought a couple of things which have to remain unidentified because they are gifts for certain people we know. The weather has cleared some but the wind is howling. Must be gusting to 70 kph. It was a good evening to stay in and play cards.
Tomorrow we are heading up Route 34 to Bengough where there is a regional park. We will probably stay there for a couple of days, and hope that the rain stops, so the back roads can dry up some. If they dry up we will be able to get into the Big Muddy and see what we want to see.
Saturday morning dawned bright and clear, with the wind down to a whisper. With the wind blowing as hard as it did overnight, we have no idea how the grass around us could be so white and crunchy with frost. We got hooked up and were on the road in the early morning.

Our first stop was in Big Beaver where we dropped in at Aust’s General store. It is a family owned country general store that sells just about anything and everything. Big Beaver and area was also, many years ago, the starting point for the “outlaw trail” that ran from Big Beaver down through the mid western states to Cludad Juarez, Mexico, and was established by Butch Cassidy and his “Wild Bunch”. They ran it like the pony express. They had a series of ranchers who were either on the shady side of the law, or had been threatened into cooperating, maintain a string of fresh horses for members of the gang as they ran from various lawmen and posses. Of course there were also a lot of lesser known outlaws like Dutch Henry, The Pigeon-toed Kid and a half breed known as Bloody Knife. Bank and train robbing along with stealing horses seemed to be the main occupation of these characters.
It was interesting to be able to drive and walk through some of the places where these people rode and lived. Some had small ranches in the area while others lived in caves dug out of the sandstone cliffs of “The Big Muddy”. They even had caves big enough to hold their horses and keep them out of sight.

The only way to visit these caves is to take one of the local tours that only run in July and August. We could have hired a tour guide but the daily cost for just two of us was too high. However we did get to see and walk around Castle Butte which has been a landmark for centuries, used by first nations people, outlaws, and the NWMP. We also spent a short time talking to one of the ranchers in the area who only had 10,000 acres to run his beef on.
We only drove about 60km today and stopped at a nice regional park in Bengough. Bengough is just north of the Big Muddy valley and has a population of about 450. This regional park is small, but really set up for big rigs. Lots of trees and is very quiet. We drove around the local area just sightseeing and finally settled in for the day with a nice sunset and good dinner. We decided to move on towards Brandon and the grand children the next day with a stop in the Turtle Mountain Provincial Park in southern Manitoba, south of Brandon.
We were up early the next morning and on the road by 8 am. Drove from Bengough north to Highway 13 and turned east. It was a beautiful day with a strong westerly blowing giving us a push along the way and improving our gas mileage. We drove through Weyburn, just missing seeing Keefer Sutherland by two days. Weyburn is the birthplace of Tommy Douglas, known as the father of medicare. The town dedicated a life size statue of Tommy Douglas on Friday. Keefer Sutherland is his grand son and was there for the unveiling. Needless to say most of the crowd was present to see the famous actor rather than for the unveiling of the statue.
Around this time we got a cell phone call from family in Brandon advising us that some work schedules had changed for the time we planned to be there. After the call, N suggested that we drive straight through to Brandon now and arrive early. The driving was good and the tail wind still strong and the traffic was light, so we headed to Brandon.
Crossing into Manitoba we left Sask. route 13 and entered Manitoba route 2. This route took us all the way east to route 10, then just a few short km and we were at Meadowlark RV park in Brandon setting up camp for the next week. There were some surprised grand children when we called to let them know we arrived early. They were at our trailer door in 15 minutes.
This next week will be spent with family, cleaning up our trailer, getting the truck serviced and generally getting ready for the final leg of our trip back to Nova Scotia.

Quote fro the day: Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.
  - Frank Leahy

Cheers

P & N