On the Road Again

Yesterday, Sunday, our party left Brandon Manitoba for Duck Mountain national park, which lies astride the Saskatchewan - Manitoba border. I have not said much about the weather, but the day was hot ... maybe 32C. The journey took us NW across the prairies (from the old French praierie, or meadow), an expanse of flat or slightly undulating grassland like that pictured here.

The roads are often dead straight - and incidentally poorly paved as the result of frost damage and passing of heavy trucks full of grain. And periodically the roads are crossed by the transcontinental railroads, CN and CP (see above). The trains, by the way, go on for ever - well, at the most 100 trucks. This doesn't mean the trip was boring because the countryside has a a sort of majestic beauty and there are places of interest en route. For example, we saw yesterday an ethanol plant, a museum lamenting (or celebrating as the case may be (rural life), and a ski run.

I associate the prairies with wheat and other coarse grains - for example barley. Not today, however. They are coloured yellow and I wondered why. The answer is that the Canola (rape seed for the Brits) is input into ethanol plants like the one at Minnedosa pictured here - a large modern facility. Further up the road we came across a line of abandoned grain silos, which are also pictured. These were under restoration as they were among the last locally of a breed dating back 100 years as the railroads extended into the prairies. This group, at Inglis, Mtb, were at the end of a spur railway from Russell and casualties of a contraction in wheat production and/or rationalisation of transport. It was fascinating to walk around the interior of one of the silos seeing how wheat was stored, sorted and dispatched.

AS