Nothing much in Minnedosa

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Nothing much in Minnedosa

Friday, 13 July 2007

Alas, yesterday was a fairly wasted day. We would have not wanted to stay here as many days as we are doing (3), but the next hotel, in Neepawa, is full (a wedding, I think), so here we are, at least till Sunday morning.

While Bob was walking Panna in the morning, I phoned the local library to see if they had internet access for the general public & they do. So I went down there, it’s about a ½ kilometre walk, and checked my email, then returned to the motel & waited with Panna while Bob went down there.

It had seemed that Bob arrived here via a different route than I and I was curious to see it. He’d also driven through a large valley crossing, with a significant hill going down then up, and we wanted to see which hill was more difficult (if you ask me, mine was, because I was doing the work to get up it, not my car!). And I just felt like being a passenger in a car, driving around the countryside.

So we all hopped into Casper & I discovered another route which I could have taken to get into town. It passes by some of the light industry of Minnedosa (which includes an ethanol-production plant, which probably explains why the town smells like a brewery sometimes!), and joins up with highway 10 a bit farther south than where I’d turned off. I hadn’t noticed, but the road I was on was 16A, not 16 (the MAIN highway), which explains the poor condition of the pavement I’d noticed coming into the area. We all went up a pretty good hill & then headed west at the intersection where I’d turned into the Minnedosa highway from highway 10. That again was highway 16, which goes from the Ontario border (I think) all the way through Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and maybe Alberta too. We’ve been on parts of it before.

After another 25+ km we turned right, north, onto a paved road which led directly back to highway 45, at Sandy Lake, where we’d been the day before! It’s a nice, quiet paved road, but doesn’t have the same “designation” as highways 10 or 16, so there are essentially no shoulders, and no “slow vehicle” lanes going up the steep hills, as on the major roads. And the hill Bob experienced was about as bad as mine - maybe would have been more difficult for me, because there was less distance in which to build up a “head of steam” before going up the hill.
So even though highway 10 was not particularly pleasant, on the whole, at least in regards to the hills I was glad I’d taken that route. We then drove towards highway 10 & had lunch in a little town called Erickson, which has a strong Scandinavian heritage, then headed back towards Minnedosa, the same route I’d taken.

Once we returned I decided I’d just take half a day (won’t even count it as one of the 60 days unless I accumulate another half-day) and took Panna for another walk, more or less in the same area as on Thursday, just a bit longer. The total walking for the day was only about 5 kilometres, nothing to get excited about.

Later, we decided to drive to Brandon, firstly for dinner somewhere other than here, and secondly so I could stop in a some motels & check whether or not they allow pets and whether or not they have internet access - are we tech junkies or what?!? The trip definitely brought back memories of my visit there last year with Leslie, to watch Mike’s “graduation” from one of his more advanced courses for Army Reserves - we ate at a place called “Wok Box”, sort of an Oriental-style fast food joint. And I do think we’ll stay a couple of nights in Brandon, after Neepawa - may cut that visit short. ;-p

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