And so to Saskatchewan...and Manitoba

After a quiet night in the church parking lot we awoke pretty early on 29th July, refreshed and ready to go. But go where? We'd already booked a site just over the Ontario border for 30th July so although we wanted to make progress we wanted to leave ourselves  with a reasonable, but neither too short or too long, a trip on 30th July. The other factor working against us today was that as we cross into Manitoba we'd effectively lose an hour as we move into Central time.

A survey of the route had given us some ideas for where we might stop, one of them being at the Virden Lions Campground, MB. I called the campground and reserved a spot for us. I was a little concerned that if we didn't make it that far we'd lose our deposit however, being run by the Lions volunteers, there was no requirement to pay a deposit. I was told that on arrival I should park in our designated spot and someone would be around later to collect the fee. The other upside was that if we were a no-show for whatever reason we wouldn't have had to pay anything.

The drive through Saskatchewan proved uneventful enough with a gas stop in Hanley and a coffee stop in Chamberlain for 45 minutes. We'd stopped in Chamberlain on the drive west but here's the picture of the grain elevator again in case you missed it! We hadn't spotted it on the drive west but, just by the grain elevator, on the same side was a large, graveled, rest area. There were one or two semi trucks pulled in there and we joined them for our break.

We continued pushing eastward, making good time through Regina and took a Tim Horton's lunch break in Indian Head, SK at 12.38pm having driven 358km so far today. 

Not for the first time, the actual parking lot at Tim's was a bit small for anyone pulling a trailer but fortunately there was an area of 'waste' land on the north side of Tims so we pulled onto that, had lunch and watched a train roll slowly by. It was only after we'd had our Tim's lunch and gassed up the car we realised that the 'Indian Head' was just across the junction from Tims so we pulled over there to investigate.

 

 

 

 

 

Thirty minutes or so after pulling in to Indian head we were pulling out again and crossed into Manitoba at 3.10pm - whoops - make that 4.10pm!

A little further on and we pulled in the Virden Lions campground at 5.00pm Central time. 

After talking with someone at the campground by phone earlier in the day I had been allocated site number 7 for the trailer. We found site 7 easily enough but we were a bit concerned as to whether or not we could get the trailer onto the site due to a low hanging branch! We decided to give it a go and after some careful manoeuvring managed to get the trailer under the branch with about 15cm to spare! We had driven a comfortable 482km today with an estimated drive of 540km tomorrow but with no time change..

Whilst setting up and exploring the park a little we got into conversation with a woman also traveling east with her two dogs for company. She was pulling her trailer from the Vancouver area to Kitchener, ON. She was pulling her smallish distinctive, cream coloured, rounded corner trailer, with a blue Toyota SUV. She said she'd done a long drive that day and was just overnighting in Virden. Consequently she said that the next day or two would be shorter drives and that she'd be headed through Dryden, ON. We told her we really enjoyed our two night stop in Dryden and she shouldn't miss the 'Pieces of Dryden' mosaic and the suspension bridge. Later that evening a woman came around as expected to collect our fees. The campground was actually quite large with some large motorhomes and trailers towards the back of the park, there seemed to be plenty of unoccupied sites so we don't know why we wee squeezed into site number 7.