Aaron Provincial Park to Moosomin Regional Park, day 6

 We knew it could be a long day when we got up at 6am thinking it was 7am but we'd forgotten about the extra hour we got yesterday when we crossed into Central time. So we actually left the campground at 7.30am on our westward journey. From this point on we had not booked any campgrounds as we weren't sure how far we'd get each day.

Crossed into Manitoba at 9.50am with the original intention of overnighting at Bird's Hill Campground near Winnipeg. However as that would be a drive of only (?) 369km we thought we could get further than that, even more so after our earlier than planned start.

By now we had discovered that gas stations can be few and far between with the result that a couple of times we'd been down to the car showing we only had around 30km worth of gas in the tank and we'd better find a gas station PDQ if we weren't to run out. Naturally, when you find one gas station you find several! Getting low on gas we pulled into a Shell gas station and attempted to gas up only to find my credit card declined - oh no 🤯! We pulled away from the pumps and called the bank who told us there was no problem with the card and their system didn't even register a couple of failed attempts. The service agent was confident it was a gas station issue rather than our card giving problems. So we were able to pull forward less than 50 metres in to the adjacent Esso gas station where the card worked seamlessly. 

The countryside along the highway seemed to be opening up now, still plenty of trees but not as dense as before. Additionally, since we are now on a four lane highway (2 each direction!) there is naturally more space as well as it tending to be straighter, flatter and faster road.

As we approached Winnipeg we came across a sign indicating we were at the longitudinal centre of Canada. Parking was a little tricky as the parking lot was quite small and I couldn't park on the service road. I did manage to reverse into the parking lot and even managed to make it look like we were flying a Canadian flag from trailer roof!

We were making good progress but still had nowhere booked to stay tonight. Stopping at a Walmart to buy some batteries we took advantage of their internet to research where we might stop and made a few notes. We crossed in to Saskatchewan at 7.09 pm (note tht we crossed Manitoba in a day - took us 4 days to get out of Ontario!). Entering the town of Moosomin we spotted a sign to a campground that we though was close to the highway. After about 18km and several small, rough and winding roads later we finally arrived at Moosomin Regional Park. Fortunately the campground had vacancies although we were informed that the site was fully booked for the following night, not that that bothered us.

We checked in and headed down to our 'almost lakeside' site with electric and water hookup available.

Having driven our personal best of 704km in a day we were well pleased with the day's effort. Some nice cloud formations were on display.....

We explored the park a little and found the park store (with internet access) as well as a sizeable beach and playground but also quite a few solidly built cottages (holiday homes) making quite a sizeable summer community here. Maybe due to the late arrival at the campground, a late supper, talking with some residents or maybe just because it never seems to get dark here it was gone 11pm by the time we turned in for the night. This beach photo was early the next day, the sun was not quite high enough for a better photo......but high enough for us to be setting off again.