Canadian prairie road trip day two: Saskatoon-Regina

by Alex Robertson Textor on


Our proper road trip begins early at Saskatoon John G. Diefenbaker International Airport. We are headed to Regina via Moose Jaw, and not a moment too soon. We’re stir crazy and we can’t wait to get on the road. We pick up our rental from a grinning car rental company employee and we’re off. As we round Saskatoon, not yet into the suburbs, we can already see flat prairie fields.

About a half hour outside of Saskatoon we see the sign for Blackstrap Provincial Park (see above) and decide to take a detour. The entrance for a single car is C$7. The park centers on Blackstrap Lake, a long finger of a body of water. The park is on one side and a handful of houses cluster on the other. It is so picturesque and serene, even with a few motorboats puttering along. A family swims in the swimming area and a group of retirees settles down for a picnic. We wade around in the blissfully cool water before moving on.

Fields of wheat, mustard, and rapeseed alternate across much of our journey. It’s difficult to convey just how beautiful these fields are in mid-summer. They’re not showy or dramatic. They’re straight-forward, and while no field is identical to the last, the color palate does not vary much. Their beauty is nonetheless striking. We wondered out loud over and over why the highways weren’t full of summer visitors eager to see the fields in their fullness.

Later the landscape changes quickly as we pass through Buffalo Pound Lake. Here, another long finger of a lake disrupts the terrain. That there is a Provincial Park nearby is not surprising.

Moose Jaw, 226 kilometers (140 miles) southeast of Saskatoon, is hot and bright and dry in the mid-afternoon. We wander into a downtown tea house called Renate’s Tea Time with a refreshing drink in mind, but the dessert menu looks so inviting that I order an apple strudel. I ask the distinguished-looking server if she is Renate and she replies in the affirmative, and in German no less. It turns out that Renate of Renate’s Tea Time is a Liechtensteiner! The probability scale crashes. Who knew how far and wide Liechtenstein’s diaspora had expanded? Perhaps it goes without saying that Renate’s strudel was terribly, ridiculously good.
Mac the Moose, about to get his ass kicked by your faithful correspondent.

On our way out of town we stop at the tourism center and meet Mac the Moose, the enormous moose replica that serves as the city’s icon, just off the Trans-Canada Highway. We also meet Henri-Philippe Lamothe, an avid bicyclist currently biking from British Columbia to Montréal. Henri is taking just two months to cross Canada by bike.


Henri-Philippe Lamothe, trans-Canadian bicyclist.

After arriving in Regina, we scurry on to Crave, a restaurant and bar located on the ground floor of the storied downtown building that housed the Assiniboia Club, an elite men’s club, until 1994. Crave is subdivided into a number of dining and recreation rooms of varying sizes. It’s a very appealing concept, and its execution works so well due to a careful renovation job. Owner Craig Perrault joins us for a beer and several small courses. The kitchen’s offerings are all very tasty and fresh. This isn’t bar grub by a long shot.

After dinner we walk through Regina’s downtown and Cathedral Village neighborhoods. The crowning glory of the former is Victoria Park, a huge block of dense trees organized around a Cenotaph commemorating fallen military heroes from the city. Cathedral Village, named after the imposing Holy Rosary Cathedral at its heart, is Regina’s funkiest central ‘hood. It’s home to a number of quirky small businesses and the annual Cathedral Village Arts Festival, which is held in May.

Upcoming events in Regina include the Regina Folk Festival (August 6-8) and the Great Saskatchewan Mustard Festival (August 8). Be sure to pick up a copy of the independent fortnightly prairie dog newspaper for a blast of principled local political irreverence and cultural listings.

Read the entire road trip series here.

Some media support for this road trip was provided by Tourism Saskatchewan. All opinions belong to the author.

Short skirts, low necklines drive drivers to crash

by Tom Johansmeyer on

The end of summer is fast approaching – can you believe it’s August already! – and that means a last-minute road trip is bound to be on your list. Well, if you’re planning to load the car, thrown in some music and put the pedal to the metal, it pays to keep your eyes on the road, especially for those of us who happen to be men. There is danger everywhere, especially above the knee.

A study by an insurance company in the United Kingdom, Sheilas’ Wheels, found that men’s car accident rates are about as high as “women’s summer hemlines,” according to an article on MSNBC. Twenty-nine percent of confessed that short skirts and low-cut tops make traffic, stop signs and other aspects of driving without killing someone less appealing (what would you rather look at?). I’m still wondering what the other 71 percent were looking at.

As usual, the fact that “[m]en are more visually oriented” is proffered as the reason why we are distracted more easily than women, on the road or anywhere else. And, testosterone gets some blame, too.
Said a spokesperson for Sheilas’ Wheels, which specializes in selling auto insurance policies to women:

“Men are significantly more likely than women to claim during the summer months – often as a result of wandering eyes.

“We urge all motorists to keep their eyes on the road – regardless of outside distractions – and keep cool behind the wheel,” Sheilas’ Wheels said.

I suspect this will be particularly tough if you’re road tripping out to the beach. My advice: take a drive out to a buffet. Keep your eyes off the hotties and on the road!

[thanks, @BrokingLiz, photo by nesta eber]

Canadian prairie road trip day one: Calgary-Saskatoon

by Alex Robertson Textor on

The first day of our three-day road trip had to be reworked when we discovered that it is impossible to arrange a one-way car rental from Calgary to Winnipeg. After a half-day spent checking out the appealing Boho mish-mash of Calgary’s Inglewood neighborhood, we nabbed a ride to the airport and checked in for our almost completely full flight to Saskatoon.

The Calgary airport, much like Calgary itself, is bold and busy, with remarkably low-stress security lines. Note to the TSA: please take a look at Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) protocol. Thank you.

The flight was very short, so short in fact that it left me unable to come to any sort of pithy summation of the airline, but I can fairly claim that WestJet flight attendants are unquestionably cheery. WestJet, for the uninitiated, is sort of a Canadian cross between Southwest and JetBlue.

The airport in Saskatoon is bright. It smells fresh and new, and there are hanging plants that give the gleaming space a ribbon of color. Saskatoon’s cab drivers talk about the oil, potash, and uranium resource wealth of the province. That the population is also increasing is a fact so obvious that it comes into conversation almost as an afterthought. We had the good luck of meeting two chatty cab drivers, one a hilariously sardonic fellow who lamented the Disneyfication of Times Square; the other a transplant from Toronto who told us that we had to see the Bollywood film My Name is Khan. The prairie’s legendary friendliness is real, and it’s also catchy.

Saskatoon’s downtown is well-serviced with shops and businesses, though it is utilitarian. The city’s trump card is the South Saskatchewan River, which bisects it. The park along the river is absolutely gorgeous, so idyllic it overwhelms the senses. During our stroll, joggers, bikers, and loungers were taking advantage of the riverside park.


University Bridge across the South Saskatchewan River.
Saskatoon centennial monument.

In the evening we walked across the Broadway Bridge, with its dramatic views of the river and downtown. Our goal: Calories Bakery & Restaurant, a Saskatoon institution that sources much of its menu locally. Our evening there was lovely, with a fantastic menu and a disarmingly charming waiter. The Caprese salad, organized into a tower, was brilliant, as were the courses that followed: duck confit over polenta and slices of cake served to share.

Calories is located in the funky and appealing Broadway neighborhood, which centers on the relaxed and wide avenue of the same name. Stand out Broadway retailers include the Bulk Cheese Warehouse delicatessen (732 Broadway Avenue), a free trade shop called The Better Good (640 Broadway Avenue), and the Vinyl Diner (628B Broadway Avenue), a music shop.

The walk back to downtown, just past sundown, was everything one could want from a summer prairie sky: glorious streaks of red across an enormous expanse of fading blue.

Saskatoon is fresh. As Saskatchewan thrives economically and its biggest city continues to grow, Saskatoon will continue to be a city to watch.

Upcoming events include the Saskatoon Fringe Theater Festival through August 7 and Folkfest (August 19-21).

Read the entire road trip series here.

Some media support for this road trip was provided by Travel Alberta and Tourism Saskatchewan. All opinions belong to the author.

The great Canadian prairie road trip: Calgary-Saskatoon-Regina-Winnipeg

by Alex Robertson Textor on

This road trip had its genesis in idle travel fantasy chat, as so many journeys do. A few months ago my friend Melissa and I discussed how much we wanted to do a road trip together over the summer, and we cranked out a number of ambitious itineraries. The craziest of all involved Melissa driving 18 hours by herself from Colorado to Alberta to pick me up prior to an eastward run across Canada. Perhaps it’s best, all things considered, that this particular itinerary did not work out.

Time and other constraints meant that we had to curtail our ambition just a bit. We settled on a four-night Calgary-Winnipeg itinerary, with stops in Drumheller, Saskatoon, Moose Jaw, Regina, Brandon, and Portage La Prairie, a distance of 1486 kilometers or 912 miles.

Sounds great, right? Not so fast, cowboy. It turns out to be difficult to orchestrate a Canadian prairie road trip with a rental car. One-way car rentals are scarce in Canada. In fact, we were unable to find a single car rental company that would let us pick a car up in Calgary and drive it to Winnipeg.

After exhausting online booking site options, I turned to Twitter. The ever-generous travel writer Eva Holland suggested we take a look at Rent-A-Wreck. We did, and were disappointed to discover that the outfit doesn’t operate in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The rather less literally helpful Grant Martin suggested that we purchase the PaceSaver Plus III Electric Scooter that he so kindly found on Craigslist.

We even looked into the possibility of renting a U-Haul, rejecting that option because it was too expensive. Thinking that there might have been some secret I’d missed, I even checked in with the very helpful logistics team at Travel Alberta. Again, no dice.

Disaster! How would we ever consummate our Canadian prairie road trip?
Fairly easily, as it turns out. Once we started scrambling everything fell into place quickly. We found a one-way Winnipeg-bound car rental originating in Saskatoon. And then we found a cheap one-way fare on WestJet between Calgary and Saskatoon. (A silver lining was already emerging, as I’ve wanted to fly WestJet for some time.)

Cutting out the first day on the road means that we’ll miss some beautiful territory across Alberta and Saskatchewan, Drumheller in particular. In place of that first day on the road, we’ll spend a morning exploring Calgary and a long afternoon and evening in Saskatoon. With the replacement of Calgary by Saskatoon as the point of our road trip’s origination, our road trip will shrink to 873 km, or 542 miles. Here’s the itinerary breakdown. Day 1: Nighttime arrival in Calgary. Day 2: Calgary and Saskatoon. Day 3: Saskatoon to Regina by way of Moose Jaw by car. Day 4: Regina to Winnipeg by way of Brandon and Portage La Prairie by car.

In addition to my posts here, I’ll be tweeting about my Canadian prairie road trip with the hashtag #cdnprairieroadtrip for the next few days. Our road trip will deliver me to Winnipeg, where I’ll spend the following five nights reacquainting myself with the Manitoban metropolis.

Read the entire road trip series here.

Some media support for this road trip was provided by Travel Alberta and Tourism Saskatchewan. All opinions belong to the author.

(Image: Flickr / Space Ritual)

Distracted driving rules drive you to distraction

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Road trips are a staple of summer travel. You load up the car, cram in the kids and put the pedal to the metal. Well, it’s not that simple any more. The rules with which you have to contend vary from state to state, especially when it comes to distracted driving (also “known as get off your cell phone while driving”). Can you go hands free? Should you just shut up and drive? It depends on the state.

We’ve become more reliant on our cell phones, and not just for talking. Travel apps abound, and iPhones, BlackBerry devices and Androids laden with them help us communicate with each other to get local color, find hotels and cheap gas and even get from Point A to Point B without getting lost. All these tools that make travel easier could make driving safely harder, as you desperately need to monitor the Twitter public timeline while blowing down the highway at an absurd rate of speed.

Well, it turns out that keeping track of distracted driving rules from state to state, particularly if you’re on a long road trip, can lead you into distracted driving. Simply put: trying to obey the law can cause you to break it.Distracted driving laws, according to MSNBC, are far from uniform:

So far, 30 states – and some local jurisdictions, including Chicago and Phoenix – now have laws that address using cell phones or sending text messages while driving. Fines range from $20 to $150 for the first offense.

Unfortunately, the laws aren’t uniform. One state may ban handheld phone use in cars while another may allow it. Texting while driving is banned in dozens of states, but will result in a ticket in others only if you get into an accident.

Just keeping track of distracted driving laws can distract the heck out of you. So, you may want to print them out, MSNBC suggests, particularly since these laws aren’t always posted at state borders. A better idea, I think, is to e-mail or text them to yourself … which only works in states where you can use your cell phone while driving. D’oh!

Even better? Bring a copilot.

[photo by Lord Jim via Flickr]