Manitoba
Typical Ontario geography
It may sound odd, but throughout the drive from Ottawa to Kenora (easily 24 hours of solid driving, not including any stops) it’s hard to feel like you’ve gone very far from home.
The landscape is exactly what you’d expect in Ontario – rocks, trees, lakes, rivers – and the stops all seem to look the same. You can rest assured that every couple hours you’ll pass by a Tim Hortons, Subway, Esso station, OPP officer, LCBO, etc.
It’s hard to tell whether you’re just outside the confines of Ottawa, Sudbury, Thunder Bay or any of the other places along the way. But something strange happens as soon as you pass through the Manitoba border.
All the familiar sights instantly change.
Suddenly, you’re hard pressed to find any trees at all, the rockiness is gone, and the rolling hills and beautiful lakes are entirely replaced by flat, seemingly featureless plains. It’s amazing how far off into the distance you can see completely unobstructed on a clear day here, and it makes it easier to appreciate that prairies have they’re very own brand of beauty. The usual Tim Hortons and Subways are replaced by the frequent grain towers that loom everywhere and look as though no one has stepped foot in them in years. The always brightly lit and super clean LCBOs and Beer Stores disappear and in their places are dimly lit dives where you can order your beer of choice through a small teller window and “off-sale” at bars where you can buy cases of beer or booze straight from the bar.
The speed limits change, the road signs look different, even the way that they paint the lines on the road is different. The lights on the traffic lights are in a different order, license plates are different. It also gets significantly colder.
Another striking difference is the video gambling machines that you find in every bar. Much like the coin slots you’d find at any casino, these machines populate every bar and are almost always occupied. It’s somewhat disturbing to watch someone at them for an entire night, as the waitresses bring them drinks and they squander their money away. I’m quite happy that we don’t have them in Ontario.
Tonight we’re playing in Brunkild, which is just south of Winnipeg. It’s a very small town, populated by the aforementioned grain towers and a few scattered houses and businesses. The people here are friendly, drive trucks, and like their country music.
Which means we should do just fine.
The stage in Brunkild
Tour Tip of the Day:
Ipods. They are absolutely essential to any road trip with music lovers. We’re travelling with two video ipods. They’re loaded with tons of music, episodes of South Park, Flight of the Conchords, and many other good shows and movies. It’s easy to create playlists on the go, and it means that we’re not travelling with a boat load of CDs or messing around with a cumbersome laptop. We’ve got a car charger so they’re always fully charged, and if one person isn’t digging the music or wants to watch a movie on their own, they can use the other one. We’ve also got a cable to connect the video ipod to a TV so that when we’re in hotel rooms or band rooms we can chill out and watch a movie. They also double as a small and portable usb hard drive and work well as a place to store photos and video that we take while on tour. They’re small, robust, and even Anders can figure out how to use them. If you’re planning on going on an extended road trip anytime soon, I highly suggest picking one up.
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- Mark
Tags: Music, road blog, Silver Creek
