Our Second Stampede

Friday, June 22nd – Riding Mountain National Park to Morris, Manitoba - Day 161 

The time change got to us. We arrived at our campsite at midnight, the time change made it 1am. By the time we got to bed it was 2am. Not a recipe for an early morning; the alarm went off just before 9am. We had showers, wheat germ-oatmeal-yogurt bowls (which did not go over that well with the kids despite the obvious nutritional benefit we told them about) and packed up. 

 We arrived at the visitor centre to find out that they were out of Explorer books. Aisling was unimpressed. We received the dog tags for our previous completion of Parka books. For those who don’t know, Parka is the beaver mascot of our national parks. He’s obviously pretty cool. We’ve taken several pictures with him. The Parka books are for younger kids and are fun. There is a story with pictures in place of some words that John loves getting read to him; he identifies the pictures, but he takes his time with each even though he has read the story several times. 

We were recommended multiple hikes, but time was our enemy. We wanted to see the Manitoba Stampede with our favourite Winnepegians, Andrea and recent convert, Greg. The Stampede ground was 3.5 hours away, add in washroom stops and that turns into 4 hours, so we were time limited. We went to the Ominnik Marsh walk, a 1.9 km trail featuring a floating boardwalk. Nets were on offer so we took them; we didn’t catch anything except muck. I was hoping to see a at least a frog, but at least we saw water striders and a duck. There were floating chunks of land with plants growing out of them that drifted around the marsh that were interesting. 

 Next was lunch on the beach. Gen made a McDonough classic, orange spaghetti. She has very fond memories of her grandmother lovingly preparing this dish. The spaghetti, tomato sauce and cheese whiz may not have all your essential vitamins and nutrients, but the kids loved it. The water was warmer than the glacial melt rivers and lakes we’ve recently swam in which was very much appreciated. 

 Into the car and off to Morris, Manitoba, an hour south of Winnipeg. Our drive featured a brief stop at the largest Coca Cola can, a silo painted with the classic logo. I love the idea of seeing oversized things on road trips. 

Once we were off the TransCanada, we had an hour of driving 120 km/hr alongside farm fields that were flat all the way to the horizon. I dropped Gen, Jo-Ce and the kids off at the rodeo to meet our friends while I went in pursuit of a campground. The one campground I phoned had no vacancies. The campground I drove to now was “Closed due to Flooding” but the woman I talked to said she had seen campers there. Good fortune struck, the campground was almost completely empty, $15 a night with electricity, and 500 m from the rodeo grounds. I met Corny and Frank who I chatted with while setting up the trailer. There was an older gentleman they pointed out that had started riding his E-bike east, leaving Vancouver last August and tent camping the whole time. 

 A quick walk to the rodeo and I was in the grandstands. What struck me was how close I was to the action compared to the Calgary Stampede which was massive. I had only missed the first few rides of the saddle bronc riding. I had seen a 30 second explainer on saddle bronc riding so I felt I was in a good position to judge their performance. This was followed by steer wrestling, tie down roping, ladies barrel racing, team roping and bull riding. The team roping was interesting, one rider lasso’s a steer’s head then the second rider ropes their back legs, it seemed challenging. 

The grand finale is the bull riding; the first two riders were thrown from the bull right out of the gate. The last two had fantastic rides; bulls are all muscle and very powerful, to stay on one is impressive. 

 After the rodeo, we enjoyed the usual carnival fare; eating junk food from food trucks, each kid got to pick one ride and one game, a variety of buildings to wander through, and live music. We got to catch up with Greg and Andrea which was great; John could hang out with his godfather. The kids were very excited to see someone they knew. Afterwards, they came by the campground to see our humble home away from home.