August 28^th, 2005:

It’s an absolutely beautiful day down here in sunny Willowbunch, the temperature around 30 and our motor home parked in a level, shady spot in a beautiful park. I just got permission from the man at the golf club house to borrow his phone to send this Report off.

Our feet got itchy again last week, so we took off to see the Motherwell Homestead and Canningon Manor. On Monday, we drove to Abernethy, where we found a nice campground with shade from the western sun (it got up to about 30!) We had planned to stop for afternoon coffee at The Old House in Kuroki, but it was closed. Oh, well – we can go to the bakery in Foam Lake and have coffee – but it was closed too. We forgot it was Monday. Instead, we had a beer when we camped at Abernethy. Then we loafed the evening away, our favorite occupation these dog days of summer.

It took us a good two hours to get mobile next morning, then we went to the Motherwell Homestead, which neither of us had visited before. What a wonderful experience! The house was fascinating, as was the barn and implements, but the personalities of the people we talked to was what made it wonderful, beginning with the lady who greeted us at the visitor center, to the girl who showed us through the house, to the lad who showed us the barn & implements.

They planned to start bindering (binding? Cutting grain with horses and a binder, anyway) right after lunch, so we drove to the field to wait, and I had a little nap. Pretty soon the lad from the farmyard came over and told us because of threatening storms they wouldn’t be working after all.

So, we went back to Abernethy and toured their Natural History Museum, dedicated to naturalist Ralph Stueck. A very good museum, built around a lot of taxidermy, but again made wonderful by the terrific people at the museum. What a difference personality can make! You can have the neatest, most expensive attraction in the world but if you put duds in charge, it will fall flat!

We had some advertising material for Country Lane Crafts & Tea Room, north of Lemberg; open from one to five daily through to the end of August, so we headed up there. After nine kms on a gravel road we found the place with the door locked and not a soul around. Let’s see – 9 kms there and 9 back is 18 kms at 30 cents per km: it cost us close to six bucks to find out they were closed! That’s why Doreen used to be adamant about keeping her tea room open until its posted closing time.

So we went to Neudorf and visited Cooper’s General Store and Chicken Coop Café. We had a nice visit with the owner, Lisa (Bender) Ross who after touring the world decided to come home to Neudorf and make her life here. They took an old cottage with a lean-to and built a general store with everything, a licensed restaurant with home cooked meals, and an outdoor patio. There were at least ten customers there, as it was coffee time. Lisa served us a terrific piece of peach pie & ice cream with a cup of good coffee for two bucks each! Lisa is the spark plug that every small town desperately needs. Don’t ever pass through Neudorf without visiting Cooper’s General Store and Chicken Coop Café!

We took Highway #247 along the north side of Crooked and Round Lakes, staying overnight at Crooked Lake Prov. Park, in a lovely, private little campsite. Next day we had a conversation with a Park employee; we asked him about the water problems, and he said the low water situation was blown out of all proportion by the media. He said there was never a time when the lake was inaccessible to boating etc. Another case of believe nothing you read, with the possible exception of this column, where veracity is a given.

We spent about five hours at Whitewood, most of it at Ashfield Antiques where we had a delightful conversation with the owners, who showed us how to view their famous mural, and the rest at Old George Chopping’s Antiques – a three storey, 17-room house jammed to the rafters with antiques of all kinds. Old George also took us on a tour of his Hidden Village, a collection of old buildings he has hauled in from all over – trapper’s shack, pioneer farmhouse, blacksmith shop, etc. Some of them are available to rent for overnighters.

We stayed overnight at Moose Mountain Provincial Park in a lovely campground. First time we had been there.

Paid a brief visit to the Bear Claw Casino next morning, then went on to Cannington Manor. The big house you have likely heard of, Beckton’s, is off in a farmer’s field and not accessible. It is apparently falling apart and closed to the public. The rest was a few original buildings typical of any old town and a bunch of cairns marking where foundations once were. There is another huge old house but it too is closed off and boarded up; all you can do is walk around it and view some old stone foundations. We were, quite frankly, disappointed. There was one good feature – a pleasant young lady in period costume in one of the houses, trying to get the wood stove to burn properly so she could bake some bread. There was a terrible wind and the stove kept smoking.

When we left there, we took a wrong turn somewhere and got completely lost. It was overcast, and I have no natural sense of direction. We wanted to go to Carlyle and wound up almost at Redvers! When we finally got to Carlyle, it occurred to us that we had a laptop computer with us, and it has a Streets & Trips program with a GPS – It would have immediately told us where we were and how to get to Carlyle!