Riding Mountain National Park, from my dim understanding, is roughly
a three hour drive north-west of Winnipeg. Wasagaming is the main community
within the Park, consisting mostly of privately-owned cottages, rental cabins
and Parks Canada staff accommodations.
After close to three months on the road, hanging out with friends for
almost a week, acting all domestic-like, in a National Park to boot, was a
lovely, re-invigorating interlude.
Highlights included:
- spending a full afternoon playing with a soon-to-be-three-year-old;
- having said three-year-old repeatedly running across the living
room to launch herself at me;
- hanging out with her five-month old sister (and seeing her flip
herself from her back to her stomach for the first time. That was cool. Sorry G.);
- sitting by a campfire, which I had not done since, well, last
September, but that was at a farmhouse wedding and was more of a bonfire so
that does not really count. Before that, I cannot remember the last time;
- hanging out with Mr. and Mrs Woodrow, always a good time, although
Woodrow (whom you may remember from Grey Cup posts) and I succumbed to our
joint near-Pavlovian impulse to drink many, many beers when we are around each
other. I blame nine Grey Cup trips together. And beer, I also blame beer.
- home-cooked meals.
Did I mention this was a nice, domestic-like break?
We did make one side trip to Winnipeg, via Transcona (because who
could skip Transcona on a lovely late July day, really?) On Friday and Saturday
(July 26-27) to meet some more friends (I'm a right popular fucker, aren't I?)
and take in a Winnipeg Blue Bomber game at the brand new Investors Field.
Investors (capacity 32,000 or so)
is a gorgeous football stadium. It is very compact; we walked the
100-level concourse around the stadium fairly rapidly prior to the game. That
concourse is open to the field which means people heading to the concessions
mid-half do not miss the action. Those concessions, in keeping with modern
stadia, are quite diverse: BBQ, pizza, Salisbury's (a local chain), burritos
and the like. The most popular by far was Khan's shawarma stand, owned by
former Bomber Obby Khan.
We had seats in the 200 level, about a third of the way up, around
the 35-yard line. Our sight-lines were great:
It was also fairly painless at half-time to hit the washrooms and
the concessions. We were back in our seats with plenty of time to spare prior
to the start of the second half.
The Stadium features two jumbo screens, one at each end zone, which
makes it easy to follow the replays and on-screen activities. One huge
negative: the in-house volume is turned way too loud for pre-game activities.
It was deafening.
Side note: The Bombers are bad. Truly bad.
Ottawa-Rough-Riders-in-the-mid-80's-bad. They are disorganised on the field,
take ridiculous penalties ('No end' twice in the same drive? Really?), are
badly coached, at least on offence, and their front office... Well, incompetent
just scratches the surface. This is a bad team and a dismal organisation.
Wildlife update:
- I saw a moose! I have been wanting to see a moose in nature for a
long time and finally did, on the side of the road as we drove through the
Park. Quest completed. Now, to see a musk ox...
- A bit further on the same drive, we saw a black bear.
- We saw white-tailed deer behind Woodrow's back yard. (I had also
seen some hopping through a field or meadow on the train ride from Saskatoon.)
- There is a managed heard of bison living in a very large enclosure
within the Park. After driving around for a while, we found a large portion of
the heard on the Sunday afternoon.
Random comment:
- To get there, I took the Winnipeg-bound train from Saskatoon and
disembarked in the thriving metropolis of Rivers, Manitoba.
- The White House Bakery in Wasagaming makes some darn good cinnamon buns.
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