I kinda like road trips. Just getting in the car and driving for hours and hours. Even better when there is no arrival deadline. Lots of time to sort the thoughts in your head, and ever changing scenery.
Today I hopped in the car to drive to Saskatoon to meet a friend from Edmonton, for a girls weekend...well, a girls Monday-Wednesday.
I found one plastic dvd holder of pre-Bermuda CD's, and pulled it out for the road trip. Successful playing of those CD's required a bottle of lens cleaning solution and a sunglass cloth (seriously, there was mud on one of them...and it wasn't even the "Puddle of Mud" CD that was muddy...yes that is a legitimate band name.) A few blogs back I theorized about what your choice in music says about you. And while I was singing along at the top of my lungs to Melanie Doane, a kinda folky rocker, I realized I was listening to feminist music. I was kinda surprised by the implications for a second, but then I just carried on singing to the rest of the album, feigning silence when I met oncoming traffic so that no one would SEE me car singing. At a small town stop sign, I glanced at my phone in the counsel of the car and saw there was a WhatAspp message, but I had not heard a notification. At the stop sign, I reached down and held the increase volume button for a few seconds, and carried on down the road. A half hour later I stopped for coffee in Swift Current, yes that is the name of a city, and checked my phone. I was met with a very disturbing WhatsApp message from my friend in Qatar, the Dev. It said "Are you road tripping? :) And a bit of singing!" What? I thought. I scrolled back and to my horror, there it was, a little blip with my profile picture and a play button denoting an audio file. I had inadvertently hit "record" instead of volume and fired off a lengthy clip of me singing at the top of my lungs halfway across the globe. What can one say but "OMG!!" It was followed by about 13 lines of hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha from my friend. Apparently I not only made his day, but supplied him with digital blackmail that is going haunt me for a very long time.
The only consolation was that the drive had been very pretty. Amidst the singing I had pulled over on a few grid roads to snap some photos of the trees, which were totally snow encrusted towards one end and absolutely bare towards the other.
It was also striking that the sky was almost the same color as the snowy ground. The light was intense and bright...but muted through the thick cloud layer. As the drive went on I saw many more snowy fields, the occasional blue sky, and many more snowy trees.
There is a Provincial Park called Saskatchewan Landing, which I have photographed in the fall earlier in the blog. But this looks much different covered in snow and ice.
Somehow the ice and snow make this area look even more timeless. The prairies suddenly fall into these jagged hills where water peacefully flows through an ancient river system that shows the scars of more tumultuous geological times.
Unfortunately, Saskatchewan Landing is only about 1/3 of the way to my destination of the day, which was Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Saskatoon, just for information, is not the capital city of the province, but it is the largest city, with a population of 261,000. It was named after the Saskatoon berry, of course, with the Cree name misaskwatminiskahk, literally translating to at the place of many Saskatoon berries. The Saskatoon berry is a sweet, violet colored berry, that often gets made into jams and pies. Probably not well known outside of Canada though. Saskatoon has an interesting history -- initially is was a 21 acre section of land granted to the Temperance Colonization Society, which was seeking to relocate away from Toronto and the evils of alcohol. Now a University town, the current population has strayed from those temperance roots. Also interesting is that back in the day, the temperance settlers would have to take a train to Moose Jaw, a famous party hideout for bootleggers and gangsters like Al Capone. After that it was a horse ride for several days to get to Saskatoon.
My journey, albeit somewhat embarrassing, was also much easier thanks to technology. The drive only took 5 hours with coffee and photo stops. And focusing on the present, the point of the journey was to meet with my Edmonton friend Monique at the halfway points between her home and my current address. It was after dark and minus 27 when she arrived in Saskatoon, but it was onwards with the plan -- catching the most recent Hunger Games Movie -- Mockingjay Part 1. I can be a bit of a book snob when it's a book or series I like...and I loooved the Hunger Games despite being far older than its intended audience. The first movie I thought they did pretty well on, although I had my reservations about how it would translate into film. It was only the closing scene with the dogs that I thought they lost too much in translation and got too crazy with animated effects. The second movie, Catching Fire, was a rare case in which the movie was better than the book in my opinion. And so I was very curious how Mockingjay would turn out. The critics had been negative, and I was a little put off that they extended the 3rd book into 2 movies. However, both Monique and I really enjoyed the movie. It was easy to get lost in again, and oddly, I suspect the 4th movie can level out some of the odd characterization that takes place in the second half of the 3rd book. I hope it doesn't take another whole year to see what they come up with!
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