September 2015
Intro
O Canada. I know I don’t visit you too much even though you live right above me, but I love you, you know that right? I love your accent, your friendliness, your maple syrup, and your passion for curling.
I especially love your bustling cosmopolitan cities, from Montreal to Toronto to Vancouver. I’ve seen your East, I’ve seen your West, I’ve even seen your far-flung Maritime Provinces.
But how could I truly love thee, without ever having seen your heart? And so, here we go, to the Prairies.
To be honest, I was in desperate need of a good, long road trip – and I certainly wasn’t expecting too much of the prairie or its cities. What I wanted and expected was wide open spaces, never-ending skies, and small, quaint towns, in between some interesting regional centers and provincial capitals — and that’s exactly what I got.
My ‘welcome’ however, was actually pretty hilarious. In Edmonton, where I had a layover before catching a morning flight to the road-trip launch city of Winnipeg, I was interrogated, politely, by an extremely skeptical border control officer:
“What brings you to Edmonton?”
“Just traveling. On my way to Winnipeg tomorrow morning.”
“Winnipeg? What’s there, you’re visiting friends or family?”
“No, just touring around, going to drive from Winnipeg back here to Edmonton.”
(a pause… then, said while giving me a very confused look): “Why?”
“Just taking a road trip though the Prairie Provinces, I like to travel, and wanted to see them.”
(said with a completely serious face): “That is NOT a good enough reason.”
With that, I literally laughed, a bit shocked, and said, “Are you serious?!” Then I proceeded to prove to her that I really was here to see the prairies, by pulling up my website on her computer! Once she saw the “Where Next” page which listed my itinerary for this trip, she finally believed me (“Oh, yep, there it is!”) and turned into one of the friendliest people I’d met in Canada. We chatted for a while about travel, about Canada, and she even wrote down my website address to look up when she got home later!
And that was just the first one! The customs officer gave me the same skeptical look and couldn’t understand why I would purposefully drive through the prairies on a vacation. He laughed about it and eventually let me through. As if that wasn’t enough to make me want to turn back home, in Winnipeg the next morning, the young woman at the car rental agency also couldn’t process that I wanted to drive across the prairies. I said, “But you live here! You should be telling me how great it is!” She laughed, and said “It’s pretty flat and boring, but… have fun, and try not to fall asleep or run out of gas!”
Winnipeg was a really cool city; beautiful parks, vibrant downtown, great architecture, and some really great restaurants too. In one of them, I got to partake in ‘Le Burger Week’, a gourmet burger competition held in select restaurants in various cities across Canada. My vote went to deer+almond’s delicious “Big Trouble in Little China” burger. Yum!
From Winnipeg, the road trip began, and included the major stops of Regina and Saskatoon, finally ending back where it all started in Edmonton — after hours upon hours of driving and passing through numerous towns and open prairie in the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.
I can now tell you, don’t listen to what anyone says about how you should instead spend your vacation in one of the major Canadian tourist destinations people expect you to go to. I promise, if you give the prairies a chance, you will be rewarded with some very off-the-beaten track experiences full of extraordinary scenery, extremely friendly Canadians, charming towns, big cities, and yes, lots of beautiful, flat, open-sky prairie – all to yourself.
…I’d say that sounds pretty good, eh?
Galleries
Featured Image
Grain Elevator, Davidson, Manitoba
