Fort Qu'Appelle

Fort Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan

We spent yesterday in Regina visiting the city.  I have not been to Regina in forty years.   Some things have changed, some have stayed the same.   When you approach a city on a bicycle you get some warning that you are arriving when you seen a road that parallels the highway with tire shops, fast food joints, gas stations and so on.   When you get to Regina you arrive in the city abruptly.   You can see the city from a long way away and all of a sudden you are in the middle of it.  

Unlike Calgary, which is bicycle-hostile, Regina is bicycle-indifferent or more like bicycle-bewildered.  With so much flat land around you would think there would be a million cyclists out there.   We hardly saw any.  People would look at you on the bicycle with an expression of confusion and a little bit of fear.   Children, seeing me in my cycling outfit, would scream and grab onto their mother’s legs.   Mind you, that often happens to me regardless of whether I am in Regina or not – so, nothing new there.  In fact we found out that Regina does not expect people to be out of their cars.  We noticed a dearth of sidewalks but a plethora of roads. 

We had a visit with an old high school friend of mine who still lives here in Regina.  It was great to see him again after so many years.  We got into so much trouble together in our miss-spent youth and we recounted them to each other in exquisite detail.   We added all kinds of new stories.

Some of which may even have been true.

Today I rode from Regina to Ft. Qu’Appelle which is not a long ride.  However, the shoulder of the road, for quite a bit of the way, was ragged.   It had been paved in 1954 and patched in 1956.  Subsequently it had been subjected to prairies seasons and looked considerably worse for having done so.   I spent quite a bit of the time watching the road in front of me and it struck me that I was missing all the scenery.  So I looked up and, nope, hadn’t missed a thing.  Same darn canola plant.

I did beat Telen to Ft.Qu’Appelle by almost an hour.  And she was driving!   Mind you, after I departed she went grocery shopping and stopped at a Starbucks for a coffee. 

That still counts though, doesn’t it?

Ft. Qu’Appelle is a really nice little town right on Echo Lake in the Qu’Appelle Valley.   It has a really nice feel to it.  Kind of a warm, friendly feel.   Mind you it was 31 degrees out today, so that might account for the warm thingy.  We spent the afternoon wandering around the town and down on the beach.   Very nice and relaxing!