Another day of driving. The thing that is most noticible while you are driving through Manitoba and Saskatchewan are the hundreds and hundreds of dragonflies flying all over the highway. Sadly it is impossible not to hit them. They are just everywhere!
Sometimes we take the lead in my brother's car and sometimes my parents take the lead in the RV. It's great that we had multiple drivers so that we can switch off every few hours. Eventually we cross the border into Saskatchewan and to our surprise we crossed another time zone. We didn't think that the time zone change was supposed to take place until much further into the province but apparently they have moved the time zones. Someone said that Saskatchewan does not change their clocks and that they have the same time year round. This means that clocks in most of the province match clocks in Winnipeg during the winter and Calgary and Edmonton during the summer.
Sometimes we take the lead in my brother's car and sometimes my parents take the lead in the RV. It's great that we had multiple drivers so that we can switch off every few hours. Eventually we cross the border into Saskatchewan and to our surprise we crossed another time zone. We didn't think that the time zone change was supposed to take place until much further into the province but apparently they have moved the time zones. Someone said that Saskatchewan does not change their clocks and that they have the same time year round. This means that clocks in most of the province match clocks in Winnipeg during the winter and Calgary and Edmonton during the summer.
Once we got into Saskatchewan we stopped at the Tourist information center. Everyone headed inside and I had the dog so I stayed behind. That's when I noticed that there was smoke coming from the back seat of my brother's car! I shouted to my daughter (who hadn't quite made it inside yet) to run and get my brother. My dog was on a fairly long leash so I was able to fling open the car doors and started pulling out all the luggage and various items in the back seat to see what was burning. When I lifted the cushion of one of the seats I could see that the foam in it that was normally yellow was now charred black. There were no flames but the smoke was still pouring out and it smelled horrible.
By this time my family came back out and my daughter took the dog. My brother started emptying bottles of water onto the back seat and then started pulling things out of the trunk to see if we could get at the back seat from that direction to pour more water on it from that direction. The smoke started to dissipate and eventually stopped all together.
I looked under the car and could tell almost right away what the problem was. Before we had left on the trip, my uncle and brother had bought a patch kit from Canadian Tire to patch up the crack in the muffler pipe in an attempt to make the car quieter. They figured it would hold until we got back and then my brother would have the muffler fixed properly. Well, it didn't hold. Instead the cracked pipe broke completely off and separated. The patch had moved and worked it's way up the pipe and past the part where the heat shield was. The muffler pipe can get very hot, and instead of the patch melting and bonding to the pipe like it was supposed to, the patch instead dried up and started burning. That heated up the seat so hot that it started to smoulder from the inside. Had we traveled too much farther it was possible that we could have ended up with flames. The solution....take the patch off. So I crawled under the car and armed with a pair of scissors and some oven mitts, I proceeded to remove what was left of the patch. Worried that this might not quite fix the problem my brother took a case of bottled water and placed it on the seat. The thought was that if the seat heated up again and started burning, it would melt the plastic bottles which would release the water inside and douse the fire. Luckily we didn't have another problem with it the rest of the way. We were concerned about it for a bit though and my parents took the fire extinguisher from the RV and we carried it with us in the car.
This Tourist Information Center must have been the "hot spot" for fires because just as we were pulling out along came another car and their car was on fire too! The difference being that theirs had flames licking out from under the bottom of the front of the car and you could see that a broken hose of some sort was dragging on the ground from underneath it. The people jumped out of the car and one of them ran in to call 911. We drove up to them and offered the use of our fire extinguisher but they refused it and just shouted "Get away! Get away!" in a total panic. They didn't figure that a fire extinguisher was going to help the situation. Since my parents had already left a minute or two before us we decided to just leave since there was nothing more we could do anyways. As we traveled down the highway a couple of fire trucks passed us by heading in that direction. We knew exactly where they were going.
Travelling down the highway again we remarked about how the prairies were not how we had pictured them in our minds as people had described them. In all honesty they just looked like the farmer's fields in southern Ontario. One difference though was the pretty fields of all yellow Canola or all blue Flax. Then there was the hay fields.
By this time my family came back out and my daughter took the dog. My brother started emptying bottles of water onto the back seat and then started pulling things out of the trunk to see if we could get at the back seat from that direction to pour more water on it from that direction. The smoke started to dissipate and eventually stopped all together.
I looked under the car and could tell almost right away what the problem was. Before we had left on the trip, my uncle and brother had bought a patch kit from Canadian Tire to patch up the crack in the muffler pipe in an attempt to make the car quieter. They figured it would hold until we got back and then my brother would have the muffler fixed properly. Well, it didn't hold. Instead the cracked pipe broke completely off and separated. The patch had moved and worked it's way up the pipe and past the part where the heat shield was. The muffler pipe can get very hot, and instead of the patch melting and bonding to the pipe like it was supposed to, the patch instead dried up and started burning. That heated up the seat so hot that it started to smoulder from the inside. Had we traveled too much farther it was possible that we could have ended up with flames. The solution....take the patch off. So I crawled under the car and armed with a pair of scissors and some oven mitts, I proceeded to remove what was left of the patch. Worried that this might not quite fix the problem my brother took a case of bottled water and placed it on the seat. The thought was that if the seat heated up again and started burning, it would melt the plastic bottles which would release the water inside and douse the fire. Luckily we didn't have another problem with it the rest of the way. We were concerned about it for a bit though and my parents took the fire extinguisher from the RV and we carried it with us in the car.
This Tourist Information Center must have been the "hot spot" for fires because just as we were pulling out along came another car and their car was on fire too! The difference being that theirs had flames licking out from under the bottom of the front of the car and you could see that a broken hose of some sort was dragging on the ground from underneath it. The people jumped out of the car and one of them ran in to call 911. We drove up to them and offered the use of our fire extinguisher but they refused it and just shouted "Get away! Get away!" in a total panic. They didn't figure that a fire extinguisher was going to help the situation. Since my parents had already left a minute or two before us we decided to just leave since there was nothing more we could do anyways. As we traveled down the highway a couple of fire trucks passed us by heading in that direction. We knew exactly where they were going.
Travelling down the highway again we remarked about how the prairies were not how we had pictured them in our minds as people had described them. In all honesty they just looked like the farmer's fields in southern Ontario. One difference though was the pretty fields of all yellow Canola or all blue Flax. Then there was the hay fields.
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Now Ontario has it's fair share of hay fields and you can often see the rolls of hay left drying in the fields at certain times of the year. .... but not like this. These fields of hay were huge and stretched on for miles. As far as the eye could see there were rolls and rolls of hay.
At one point we drove past a field that at first glance seemed to look like there were piles of snow in it. Later my mom told me that it was actually potash (sylvite).
At one point we drove past a field that at first glance seemed to look like there were piles of snow in it. Later my mom told me that it was actually potash (sylvite).
Approximately 95% of world potash production is used as fertilizer. Potash was first discovered in Saskatchewan during the early 1940s while drilling for oil. Underground, the vast deposit of this mineral lies diagonally across the southern plains of Saskatchewan along a north-west line through Rocanville, Esterhazy and Saskatoon all the way to Northeastern Montana and North Dakota.
The rest of the trip through Saskatchewan was rather uneventful. We stopped and set up camp for the night at a little privately owned campground called Prairie Oasis near Moose Jaw. It was really not that great a place but the staff were fairly friendly. We had to laugh about the bathrooms because they were so tiny (and dirty) that when you sat down your knees almost stuck out of the stall underneath the door. No really! They did! I took the dog down to the pond only to find a sign saying "no dogs allowed" There was a swim area for people to swim but it was so gross and weedy looking (more like a marsh pond) that no human would ever want to swim there. We had a good laugh over that....It's OK for people to swim in grossness but hey, keep your dog out. The dog might make it.....more gross!
My stomach started to bother me by the time evening rolled around and since we were tired anyways, we didn't stay up long. I was hoping all my stomach needed was a good night rest and that I would feel better in the morning.
I wasn't all that impressed with Saskatchewan and was looking forward to getting to Alberta the next day.
The rest of the trip through Saskatchewan was rather uneventful. We stopped and set up camp for the night at a little privately owned campground called Prairie Oasis near Moose Jaw. It was really not that great a place but the staff were fairly friendly. We had to laugh about the bathrooms because they were so tiny (and dirty) that when you sat down your knees almost stuck out of the stall underneath the door. No really! They did! I took the dog down to the pond only to find a sign saying "no dogs allowed" There was a swim area for people to swim but it was so gross and weedy looking (more like a marsh pond) that no human would ever want to swim there. We had a good laugh over that....It's OK for people to swim in grossness but hey, keep your dog out. The dog might make it.....more gross!
My stomach started to bother me by the time evening rolled around and since we were tired anyways, we didn't stay up long. I was hoping all my stomach needed was a good night rest and that I would feel better in the morning.
I wasn't all that impressed with Saskatchewan and was looking forward to getting to Alberta the next day.
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