Winnipeg

M and I were just here in Winnipeg a year ago and now we're back.  I guess it's sort of on the great circle route between Seattle and Northfield. Last year, we spent an hour or two at the Forks, eating lunch and walking along the river.  This time we spent the night and I was out early the next morning on D's bike checking out the river and the bridges.  Last year, the Red River was still recovering from the floods of the previous year, but the evidence of those is fading quickly.

Wasagaming

The basic plan was to head west (and north) on the Yellowhead Trail (CA 16) from Winnipeg to Jasper, with stops in Saskatoon and Edmonton.  Riding Mountain Park was a little off the path, but offered a diversion from the prairie and the wheat fields.  The Park is a large forested upland that rises above the flatness of southern Manitoba.  The transition is abrupt - you could be climbing into the foothills of the Rockies, except that the Rockies are still 700 miles west.

Wasagaming (accent on second syllable) is the resort town on the southern edge of the park, on the shores of Clear Lake.  By resort, I mean the cabin resort communities of the 1930s and the 1950s.  This is not Sun Valley or Cancun.  The fact that it is within the historic park helps maintain its feel.  The summer crowds were gone and you got the sense the town was buttoning up for the winter.

Wolseley

On our way out of town, we stopped at the Neighborhood Bookstore and Cafe in the Wolseley area on the west side of town.  The streets are lined with elms, something long gone in most north American cities thanks to Dutch Elm Disease.

The Forks

Winnipeg was the first stop on our trip west on the Yellowhead Highway -- we'll check out Saskatoon and Edmonton before getting to the Rockies.

The Forks refers to the convergence of the Assiniboine and the Red Rivers, where the historic rail yards are being redeveloped with markets and museums and restaurants.

Crews were still  cleaning up the mud from this past year's floods.  I suspect it was Mrs. Holbrook in 5th Grade who suggested the Monongahela was the only river in the U.S. that flowed north - but she must not have known about the flood-prone Red River that regularly overflows it's banks in Fargo and Grand Forks before heading north to threaten Winnipeg and to dump all that American top soil into Lake Winnipeg.  Eventually it reaches Hudson Bay, via the Nelson River.