My flight came in at 9:30 pm on June 26th, the day after I left Sonoma State for good. The sunsets later up here so I had a beautiful sky to enjoy when I landed.
It was fantastic to see Larry and we were both very excited because it was my first day of freedom from work. I slept in the next morning until 9:45 am and we enjoyed the warm sunshine of his beautiful backyard. Later in the morning, we walked around his town of Hague. It's a sweet little town of about 800 people. It has only eight or so streets. So walk around here are pretty short. They have a small grocery store, The Big Way, a pharmacy, and a hardware store that has absolutely everything. If it’s not there, the owner will order it for you! The train tracks run parallel the main street and on one set of tracks, there are trains that need repairs. I love to climb on them! One evening the train came through Hague and Larry’s niece Chantelle and I rode bikes to the track to watch it. It had 99 cars including 3 engines. The conductor blasted his horn and I almost peed my pants!
Saskatoon is the largest city close to Hague and one of the largest in the province of Saskatchewan. It’s about 30 minutes south and has almost 250,000 people. We drive into the city to do lots of stuff. We were there to see a classic car show on Friday and a jazz festival at the Bessborough Hotel. This is a beautiful hotel that looks almost like a castle and is right on the South Saskatchewan River.
We rode our bikes on an amazing bike path along the river called the Meewasin trail. The entire trail is 20 km. We rode around for 3 hours with lots of stops to see all the beautiful bridges. Saskatoon is called the city of bridges and boasts eight of them. If you come to Saskatoon, I highly recommend spending time here. We went on a riverboat ride later in the evening on the Prairie Lily that gave some history of the river, bridges, and hotels along the river. Before hopping on the boat, we made a quick stop at Finn’s Irish Pub at the Park Town Pub. It had a super cute outdoor patio. They had a great selection of beer on tap. I had a Churchill Britisher English brown ale and Larry had a Blonde lager, both were delightful.
Larry surprised me on Saturday morning with a Bobcat tractor. He borrowed it from his old partner for a few hours so I finally could drive one. It has been a dream ever since I was a kid to drive a tractor. This Bobcat was close and I had a blast. Larry drove it a block away out of town to some dirt hills. This is where the city dumps extra dirt from construction sites. I spent 2 hours playing in the dirt, scooping and dumping. I moved one small pile to make one larger pile. In the beginning, I had a little trouble with the controls and I dumped a bucket of dirt on myself! So much fun! This seriously was the highlight of my week and a tremendous surprise.
We have taken out Larry’s 1969 Plymouth Roadrunner. He has a 440 in it and it has a lot of power. Some tricks we performed in town were donuts and a smoke show! It was great fun and I gotta drive it around a bunch too. I look pretty cool driving his hot rod.
We went out fishing one evening on the South Saskatchewan River near Hague. Larry caught small Pickerel but released it. One really cool thing I discovered here is a small car ferry. I got to drive the truck on a 4 car ferry and get a ride to the other side. Super fun! It was a great first few weeks in Canada. I can’t wait to discover more interesting things in the area.