Our Trip to the Great White North, Part II

We managed to leave Manitoba for a few days for a quick trip to Sasketchewan. Oh, it was so good to see old friends.

The roads we traveled in Manitoba looked like this and not very safe. The highway was so desolate. No gas stations, no houses, no lights for miles and miles. Not even another car. I was so happy we made it safely to Sask. without ending up in a ditch! I have a new respect for Canadians after our visit. They are pretty tough people. They know they could end up stuck when things are bad so some are sure to have ski pants & boots in case they have to walk out. I’ve heard of others that keep a candle in their car because when lit, you won’t freeze to death.

The amazing lady on the left is one who lived in the Bush (another word for wilderness 🙂 ) for 6 years with her husband and family of 7 (it may have been 9 – can’t remember for sure). They heated their own water for showers, used an outhouse and were self-reliant. She told me that they taught all of their kids how to start a fire and whenever they would go somewhere they each one carried matches in case they were split up and they needed a fire for survival.

All of their family is very handy at making things from nature and my niece has now married into the family and learning, too. When Seth was guiding hunters in British Columbia last year, my niece Amy is the one who came and cooked for the hunters and lived in a 10×12 cabin for 2 months along with her husband and 3 kids. You can see the gorgeous pictures here.  So Amy is learning from her husband how to make things…

like these moccasins.

But I digress. Back to our road trip to Saskatchewan. We drove on those snowy packed roads and arrived Tuesday morning at some friends’ house for breakfast. What a delicious spread awaited us and we did it justice. Actually for our whole trip we had all these wonderful farm meals and we partook of them with pleasure not considering the consequences…

…Those extra pounds that like to attach themselves to us so readily!

Some of us came back (not mentioning any names here) carrying back with us more than what we took. (sad face)

Our breakfasts hosts are also a homeschooling family and enthused about it. I really like that. Too many of us get bogged down and don’t enjoy the journey of learning with our children. Not only does this lady enjoy learning with her children she now does things with her grandchildren doing all kinds of fun things with them. She even took my kids under her wing and taught them a few things.

Seashells found on a Florida beach kept the kids busy for quite a while as they tried to identify each one by using a seashell identification chart.

A perfect sand dollar (they had a lot of these – all perfect, none broken) and a sea shell that is called Shark’s Eye.

She even showed Serenity how to knit a curly scarf, letting her choose her own yarn and sending all the supplies with her when she left. (Thank you, Sis. Holly for doing that. That was very special.) She’s a lady after my own heart with her love of aprons.

We have friends in Sask. that own a large farming tractor company where they hire many people from the local church. So, we swung by there and had to get a few shots of the giant equipment.

We got to spend time with my niece and her Canadian husband.

Pretty big stuff, aye?

Another homeschooling, apron loving gal showed us an old tradition of her mom’s where you take caramel (made from scratch) and pour it directly onto the snow where it hardens.

And then…you eat it. Very yummy.

Check out the hoar frost. I just learned what that is on this trip and still don’t understand it well enough to explain it. Read the short version of what hoar frost is from Wikipedia below.  Read the more detailed version here.

Frost is the solid deposition of water vapor from humid air. It is formed when the temperature of a solid surface is below the freezing point of water and also below the frost point.^[1] The size of frost crystals varies depending on the time they have been building up and the amount of water vapor available.

The roads going back to Manitoba are looking much better.

And just because I can’t show you all 500 photos I took, even though I know you are dying to see them, let me try to quickly wrap this up.

Back in Manitoba we took an amazing snowmobile ride across Lake Manitoba.

Riding across Lake Manitoba while it was frozen over was like being at the North Pole. Like I was at the top of the world. An amazing feeling.

Our destination was a peninsula where my brother-in-law’s family lives and where Seth has been going when he does commercial ice fishing.

We were even able to get a firsthand look at how it’s done.

We went on a fun little cook-out to the Magic School Bus. The Magic School Bus is so named because someone drove the bus over the frozen lake years ago and parked it. Maybe as a little getaway for themselves?  Who knows but it is now there permanently, complete with a little wood stove, a dead racoon and various and a sundry other items inside.

The motto for me keeping warm was “function over fashion”. 🙂

Although the snowmobiles zoomed on out of there, the bombardier came too close to the shore line where the snow was deeper and…

it got stuck.

We left the men to the job of digging it out and zoomed off on our snowmobiles to a warm cozy cabin. And although we had several more days that we spent enjoying family and friends, I will end the report here.

But, I must say that I would recommend Canada in the winter. No mosquitos, no black flies, just cold and you can dress warm enough that that doesn’t seem to be a huge bother.

From the time we left Canada to the time we landed in Arizona we experienced a 110°F temperature difference.

Heater when we left and A/C when we arrived. 🙂