Man, did I screw up!!

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Man, did I screw up!!

Wednesday, 18 July 2007

Today we were all going to drive to Spruce Woods Provincial Park, where, among other things, as a result of something to do with the glaciers, there is quite a desert-like environment in a part of the park, with large sand dunes, and cacti much as one would see in the southwest (obviously they must be cold-hardy...). The Trans Canada Trail also runs through part of it. I was hoping to get in a 10 kilometre walk today, in lieu of a bike ride.

Looking at some maps I came to the conclusion that it would be just as short (or long) a trip if we went via the south end of Brandon, rather than the “traditional” route along the Trans Canada Highway, north of town. BIG BIG MISTAKE!!! The first “problem” we encountered was a long stretch of highway re-construction, where one of the rigs transporting sand to the site had gotten itself stuck trying to leave the site by doing a U-turn. All the vehicles, north & south of him, had to wait while one of the tractors grading the new roadway pulled it out. Even once we got going, it was very slow.

We then turned left onto another highway, and it too was under re-construction, with a fairly long detour, which entailed a long stretch on a gravel road - I think the people in the nearest town probably didn’t want truck traffic coming through their town. And on re-examining the map, I came to the conclusion that we were traveling about twice as far with this southern route than we would have done otherwise. We actually had to stop for lunch before we got to the park, just in case there were no concession stands open there.

At the park we picked up some literature & maps & drove on what seemed like a suitable road - a lot of the roads only led to campsites. It did take us to a viewing platform from which one could see the Assiniboine River below and there were also some trails, the TCT and another one, more in the bush, which would have been nice, as it was very hot & sunny. Alas that latter trail was closed, don’t know why, so we decided to go with the Trans Canada Trail, which was very much out in the open. There were no other people around, so we let Panna off-leash, which she enjoyed, I’m sure - she’d make a beeline for the shady spots, waiting for us silly humans walking in the sun. It was a relatively short walk, only about 45 minutes or so. We then drove to a boat-launch site to see if we could get Panna into the water, to cool her off, and she did go in, although the river was flowing pretty fast & we didn’t chance it to let her swim loose. After that we figured we’d seen what we could & figured we’d missed the desert area because of the closed trail, oh well, too bad...

It was on leaving that portion of the park, that I realized from looking at a park map, that the desert-like area was across the river & across the highway from where we’d been. Driving past it we could see the signs for the Spirit Sands area. But by that time it was after 3 PM, it was hot, and I was planning to return tomorrow to cycle from near there, so we decided to check it out at that time.

This time we took the better route to return to Brandon, and got there in about half the time it had taken us to get to the park by my badly mis-interpreted map reading...One item of interest, there was a detour on the way back too - we had to use one of the eastbound lanes of the Trans Canada Highway, because there’d been a terrible fatal accident the previous night, where one tractor trailer plowed into another one, which was stopped at a level railroad crossing, causing a big fire which killed the “offending” driver & burned the contents of both trailers & melted the asphalt on that stretch of highway. Quite the “mess”!

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