Out and about in Saskatchewan

Well, we've been here about a month and a half and I have yet to post any pics of the early days of our prairie adventure. Actually, now that I look at the pics I've selected, they're mostly of Abner, but if you look in the backgrounds, you'll get a taste of what it's like here...sort of.

This first one shows how we spent our first non-hotel night in all its glory. The story goes that within the first few days in town, we managed to find a great home to rent. Woohoo, we all do a big happy dance. The catch was, we couldn't move in for a month. Hmmmm. A month of hotel rooms? I don't think so. We lucked out and the rental agency had a one-bed apartment available in the same neighbourhood so we took it sight unseen. If we hadn't been desperate, we probably would have run for the hills the moment we saw the place (which would have been a long run since there are no hills around here). Anyhow, the carpets were steam cleaned the day we arrived and were still very wet that first night, so we set up our air mattresses on the kitchen floor. On subsequent nights, we upgraded to the carpeted luxury of the bedroom.

One of us was thrilled to sleep on the floor for a month...guess which one of us.

One of our favourite things to do on the weekend is hit the farmer's market. It's a pretty awesome market...sorry no pics. Abner is particularly fond of going because there is a great park nearby. Our tradition is to pick up a little treat at the market and make our way to the playground afterward. Even after a month in town, Abner is still asking to go on the carousel at the farmer's market. Seems she got it in her head that farmer's market = carousel because there's one at the Burnaby farmer's market and we went MANY times in the weeks leading up to our move to the prairies.

Having a little fun with John A. Macdonald after the market.

Another tradition we've started since being here is to go for ice cream together on the weekends. I don't know that Abner had had too many ice cream cones before, but now she's quite the connoisseur.

Those first few cones were rather messy affairs.

Before we moved into our house, we had a lot of time to kill on the weekends so we ventured out to Fort Qu'Appelle (best name for a place EVER) one weekend and wound up playing a round of mini golf on a partially-submerged course. There has been an insane amount of rain in this region this year and some areas are still suffering. You can't tell from the picture, but the water was half way up that fence just days before we were there. It was still covering 3 or 4 of the holes...and it smelled pretty bad.

Not too fond of the golf, but loved the ice cream.

She's getting better with the cones...way less messy than that first one.

We've also done some exploring within the city. One of the highlights being Wascana Lake which is smack dab in the middle of town. It's a lovely place with a trail circling the lake and plenty of park space for just hanging out or having a picnic.

A rare mother-daughter shot.

Another out-of-town adventure took us to Craik. Never heard of it? Well, I wouldn't know about it either except that The Dear Sweet Husband conducted some of his PhD research there. If you must know, it's a wee little place on the highway between Regina and Saskatoon. It was nice to finally see the town after hearing about it so often over the year's of TDSH's work...it's kind of like meeting someone face-to-face for the first time after only ever talking or emailing with them.

Abner loved the Craik playground (of course).

The view from the Sacred Space monument located at the Craik Eco Centre.