Where the Buffalo Roam…

Ahem. Your attention please. Permit me a moment of pride.Two thousand, two hundred and fifty-eight kilometres. Four provinces. Two time zones. Eight days. I am not complaining. I am bragging.

Let me tell ya, we’ve been hanging out with some purdy big animals lately. Just the other day, can you believe I started my day pointed toward the giant moose?! Relax. It was just a statue. Whew.

A little later, instead of driving through tunnels (which RVs such as myself love to do) I actually drove over some tunnels! Let me explain. The Moose Jaw Tunnels are not what you expect from a small prairie city. Apparently the steam tunnels are rumoured to have hidden the underground operations of some guy named Al Capone and company during Prohibition. Entertaining. Genuinely a bit sketchy.

But I overheard my crew discussing the real history… the stories of Chinese immigrants in the early 1900s, lured to Canada under false promises, forced to live hidden underground just to survive. Indentured. Invisible. Paying a debt they never agreed to.The kind of history that sits with you. That should sit with you.

Heading ever eastward the GPS started flagging tornado warnings to the south. The Dutchman noted this. We drove anyway. It seems GrandRaisers are not, historically, deterred by weather information.

Big D Bison Ranch: Our Harvest Hosts Night in Saskatchewan

As I rattled down the secondary highways, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the prairies living skies. From blue fluffy cotton-candy morphing into ever darkening ominous clouds, I can understand why the Skipper keeps referring to “the land of the living skies”.

We eventually made our way to Big D’s Bison Ranch, part of the Harvest Hosts network. Hosts Tanya and Dwight welcomed us warmly, their dog Leroy met us at the gate like we were the best thing that had happened all week. I think he’s that way with everyone.

It didn’t take long before I was happily parked for the night nestled by some trees and my crew was loaded into a wagon rolling out into the pasture. Face to face with bison. Actual bison. North America’s largest land mammals, up close, curious, enormous.

I wouldn’t know personally. I stayed parked. Dry. Watching from a respectable distance. But oh my my… I was watching those dark clouds roll in.

Then the sky opened up and the hail started. Pounding down.

The side-by-side pulling the wagon turned around and Dwight floored it back toward the gate. What got kicked up in the process, spraying all three of my humans and everyone else in the trailer, is a matter of ongoing debate. The official position of this motorhome is that it was mud. You draw your own conclusions about what becomes airborne when racing through a bison pasture at speed.

I, for my part, remained entirely clean.

A Prairie Hailstorm in an RV

It was a dark and stormy night…

That night the storm hit in full. Hail hammered my roof. (Near-baseball-sized stones were reported just a few kilometres down the road.) The wind shook me. The bikes on the rack rattled like tambourines all night. The lightning never quit. All night long.

Nobody slept.

I held everyone’s safe and sound and cozy. That’s what RVs do the best.

And I will admit the rain did give me something of a rinse. Unsolicited. But thorough.

Morning came clean and bright, the sky scrubbed, the prairie glistening. Tanya and Dwight had promised the morning after a prairie storm is something special out here. They were not overselling it.

The crew went back out for another uninterrupted tour that included even more ranch activities!

The Connection between Kids and Animals

I loved watching my First Mate and Leroy. Those two found each other with the certainty of creatures who were always going to be friends. Fetch. Chase. Fetch again. Hours of it. The kind of simple, pure, all-in joy that eight-year-olds and farm dogs do better than anyone on earth.

By the time they had to leave, the First Mate and Leroy were inseparable. Watching them say goodbye was, by general consensus, the hardest thing that had happened all week. We miss Chica at home.

You know, I notice stuff in my role as a caring RV watching my First Mate make his way through the world on this trip so far. I gotta tell ya, kids are amazing. And kids, especially singletons, traveling with GrandRaisers become experts at finding new friends. There is no sibling in the next bunk to fall back on. So you learn to show up. You learn to throw the ball. You learn that a friend can be found almost anywhere, and that the goodbye is worth it.

A lovely little Gift Shop

If your travels ever take you through the south east corner of Saskatchewan, I sure do hope you check out Big D Bison. Stop in for a visit and pick up some fresh bison meat. But from my perspective, it’s a great place to spend a night on a working ranch. My human crew keeps yammering on about the bison tour and the adorable little gift shop full of unique bison-themed and other fun items. I hear they have a few copies of Here We Go Again.

On to Manitoba !

So we had just survived a near-tornado and a bison stampede and day 7 brought a short run east to Brandon, Manitoba, with a detour through Souris for lunch. Thirty-one degrees and humidity you could chew. The crew walked the swinging bridge over the Souris River, which claims to be the longest swinging bridge in Canada.

If you have been following along, you may be noticing a pattern. The biggest sausage. A big moose and the biggest snowman. The largest land mammal. The longest bridge. Canada sure just has a lot of biggest things.

Finally I met Kori and her dog Hope. Good friends, good food, good company. And a washing machine.

Some reunions are sentimental. Some are entirely practical. The best ones are both. ❤️

Well dearest readers, that’s it for me today, thanks for reading.
Love, Harvey