Brandon, Manitoba

Friday October 26...10:05pm

Had a good nights sleep at the Wal-Mart. Whiskey woke us up around 6:45am, so I took her for a little walk while Ruth put the kettle on for coffee and tea. Couldn't access the internet from the parking lot, so drove around to a nearby park where
we got online no problem. No swimming pool nearby, so planned on heading to Brandon area where they have another big swimming/skating complex. We've sent another globalfreeloaders request to someone near Brandon, but haven't heard anything back yet.

Took the southern side road from Winnipeg so that we stay off the main 4 lane highway. It's still a decent road with a 100 km/h speed limit despite being a 2 lane road. Nobody on it though, so we're certainly not in anybody's way doing our 80-85 km/h. It starts off as quite a rough road but quite a few areas of it are under re-construction, or have recently finished reconstruction...so it ends up to be alright. Stop for a break at a little town called Glenboro where they have a statue of Sara the camel...depicting the fact that Glenboro is only a few km's from Manitoba's only official "desert"....what a claim to fame! Went for a walk, but not much else here. Not too many people around, and no internet connection. Continued on to the town of Wawanesa where there is a road detour due to a bridge being found unsafe. We find out later that it's been this way for months, even though it's a fairly major route.

Sara the camel...in Glenboro Manitoba

We head a few km's north to Brandon to the swimming complex. It's about 3pm when I go inside to ask what the adult swim times are, and they say there is none on Fridays, only a general swim from 7-10pm, where there are usually lots of kids, and no closed off swim lanes. And Saturday is closed to the public for some special swim meet. I'm told that the only other pool in town is at the Y, but it's closed for maintenance. Hmmm...someone doesn't want us to have a shower! Go and tell Ruth, and she suggests we just ask if we can use the showers. We figure that all they can do is say no. So we go in together and explain our situation and are told sure, go ahead and use the showers. We are very impressed with Brandon, Manitoba at this point! Very nice people.

Just near the pool, there is a nature conservation area where the have walking trails and a tourist building that also happens to have an RV dump site. Very happy with Brandon again! So we use the facilities and take Whiskey for a nice long walk. Get back to the motorhome around 5:30, and also find that we have an internet connection, which was unexpected because the parking lot wasn't really close to any buildings. But this wi-fi antenna continues to amaze me with it's range. Happy to have received an email from the globalfreeloaders people we had contacted saying they could give us a place to park Sherman for the night. Called the number they gave us, and were promptly invited over for supper, as it was getting close to that time.

Randy and Elaine live with their 4 cats just a few minutes outside of Brandon. Had no problem finding the place and were quickly parked and hooked up to electricity. We are being spoiled today! This is only the second time we've had Sherman hooked up to hydro. Elaine made a wonderful supper and we spent a couple of hours sharing stories and talking about our kids. They have 2 daughters, one is in university in Winnipeg, and the other is finishing her last year of high school in Argentina through a student exchange program. What a great experience that would be! Both girls love travelling, and now Randy and Elaine are starting to do more of that as well.

Starting to get cold at night now. Randy says that it would be odd for Brandon not to have had a decent snowfall by Halloween, but the weather office has said they're not going to get one this year. Still, we're looking at the weather forecast for Weyburn, Saskatchewan (our next possible stop) and they're calling for -9C tomorrow night. Let's hope that turns out to be wrong! Anyhow, we're thinking that the sooner we make it to southern BC, the better.

Total Nights Sleeping in the RV... 13...

October Fuel $ 655.79

October Grocery $ 165.15

October Overnight Costs $ 0