Dr. Rob E. Roughley

I received an email today, informing me that a man I was proud to call a colleague and fellow traveller in this business of science has died. Professor R. E. Roughley was not someone I knew well, but I did benefit from knowing him as much as I did, and I am saddened by his death.

Rob was an expert on water beetles, particularly of the family Dytscidae, which is a group I worked on for the time I was based in Guelph. Rob provided excellent advice on methods of capturing, identifying, and generally working on these beetles and other small animals commonly found in the numerous small lakes, ponds, streams, and rivers of North America. His advice was always useful, and I can think of many instances where his help turned my fieldwork, collecting aquatic animals, from hopeless to bountiful.

We shared a glass or two of whiskey while we were both in Churchill in the summer of 2007. I raise my glass now to his fond memory. Goodbye Professor Roughley, you will be missed.

Sunday Drive 5: Burnt-Out Clutch

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Start: 306249
End: 306573
Driven: 324 km

I set out in the early afternoon, heading northwest from Saskatoon up highway 12 on the advice of a co-worker at a party the previous evening (the Roughriders won). Anyways, I was told there is an interesting bridge and some terrain that includes more than flat wheat fields about an hour from town in that direction.

Near town, it’s the now-expected flat prairie.

Approaching the North Saskatchewan River and the Petrovka bridge.

I pulled over at a driveway near the bridge and took a few pictures.

For whatever reason, several shoes were nailed to the top of some fence posts here at the edge of the property adjacent to the Petrovka bridge.

The proud tradition of prominently displaying rusting farm junk is alive and well in Saskatchewan.

Looking upstream.

I crossed the Petrovka bridge and continued northeast along highway 40, intending to re-cross the river via the ferry at Wingard, but the ferry was closed, presumably due to ice conditions or water level. Finding myself with plenty of time and no particular destination, I turned northwest for Emerald Lake regional park.

Some farmers were active in their fields on the north side of the river, harvesting hay or wheat, I think.

This facility, which I think stores either fertilizer or pesticides, is visible from a long way away.

The road to the regional park is about 30km of gently rolling dirt and gravel. Many of the adjacent fields were pastures for cattle.

Corners and trees and hills, oh my! I had fun driving too quickly on this road.

I think the speed limit along here is 40km/h. I was going faster than that.

Beef!

The regional park, like so many others, was closed. However, this doesn’t mean the gate was locked, rather it means I didn’t have to pay to check things out.

Emerald Lake from the small beach.

Boba found no rebel scum at Emerald Lake, but did enjoy a chance to frolic on the beach.

I checked out my map, and determined that secondary highway 792 continues to highway 12 near the town of Shell Lake. 792 is a fun road, so I kept on it. After a few kilometres I reached a paved road, which from my map I thought was highway 12. It was actually highway 3, and I reached Shell Lake after a few minutes, and turned south on highway 12. I really want a GPS unit for my car.

Parts of highway 12 are good…

… but much of it involves following a debris-throwing pickup truck at slow-and-variable speeds.

I had intended to drive straight back to Saskatoon on highway 12, thus driving the full length of that short road. But I got bored of the straight-and-narrow, so I impulsively turned west on secondary highway 781 just before the Petrovka bridge, intending to return to Saskatoon by highway 16 instead.

781, like I think the majority of the “grid” roads in Saskatchewan, is gravel surfaced. Zipping along at probably unwise speeds, I noticed my engine was revving much more than it usually does. At 100km/h in 5th gear, I’m used to seeing the tachometer at about 2000 rpm, not swinging up to 5000 at random intervals. I slowed to about 70 and geared down, thinking there was something wrong with the higher gears of my transmission, but the engine continued to alternately race and slow, so I pulled over on a gentle uphill slope. I thought maybe the wheels were slipping a bit in the patches of softer and deeper gravel scattered over the road, and that this was causing the engine to work much harder. The temperature gauge was comfortably in the safe zone, but when I stopped I could hear some fluid boiling somewhere in the engine bay, so I thought perhaps the gauge was not working and I’d overheated the engine. My previous car, the Minivan of Doomed Love overheated frequently, once to the point that the entire vehicle was shaking from the violence of the boiling coolant in the radiator, so I tend to assume the worst when it comes to engine temperatures.

I got out and popped the hood, to discover a wisp of smoke from underneath the middle of the engine – and nothing untoward happening around the radiator. I could smell a bit of burnt clutch, which has been normal for this car. Between the age of the car, the previous owner’s advice about the age of the clutch, and my own less-than-skilled driving, a faint smell of burnt clutch has been normal operating procedure for this car. Still, smoke was not a previous feature of the transaxle. I thought maybe I’d simply overheated the transmission, sticking with the hypothesis that the drivetrain was working much harder on gravel than it does on dry pavement, so I checked the fluid level (right where it should be) and left it to cool off for about 10 minutes.

I closed the hood, got back in, and started the engine. Reassured by the lack of error and the quiet state of my warning lights and gauges so far, I put it in gear and tried to move off. No go. I tried reverse, I tried starting in 2nd, but nothing worked. The engine revved just fine, exactly as if it was in neutral. The clutch pedal felt fine, so I think the clutch was being pressed against the flywheel, but there wasn’t sufficient friction to get the entire car moving. I couldn't even stall the car, putting it in any gear and releasing the clutch pedal resulted in no change from the engine.

Time to call CAA. I’d had a bit of cell phone reception when I’d first pulled over – I’d been able to check my voicemail, to discover that my supervisor had provided an update on the invitation to his house for dinner: show up by about 5:00. As it was now 4:30 and my car was immobilized some 80km from home, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to make it for dinner. For whatever reason, my phone reception evaporated, and I wasn’t able to use my phone to call for help. As I’d had reception, then lost it, I thought I might be on the edge of a tower’s range, and that perhaps I’d get reception if I walked to the top of the slight rise I was on. Before I reached the top, only about 200 metres away, a pickup truck pulling a trailer coming the other way stopped beside me.

The very friendly locals, a middle-aged couple out visiting their daughter, were happy to loan me the use of their phone, on Sasktel. Sasktel is the provincial crown corporation for telecommunications, and competes aggressively with Rogers and Telus. They also apparently have by far the best rural network, and I had excellent reception on the borrowed phone.

The friendly locals predicted a 15-minute phone call with CAA, apparently based on experience – this was neither their nor my own first experience with a non-functional car at the side of a lonely highway. I thought this was needlessly pessimistic, as I knew where I was (they were able to confirm my location) and the problem was pretty clear – car no go, need tow truck. Sadly, the 2 calls I had to make did take about 15 minutes. It seems that CAA doesn’t like it when one moves between provinces. I was transferred between the Saskatchewan and Ontario offices a few times (including the failed transfer that necessitated me calling again), I gave both my old (Guelph) and new (Saskatoon) addresses multiple times, but eventually it was confirmed to me that a big orange truck was on its way from Saskatoon. Fine, can we do this address-change malarkey some other time, when, you know, I’m not on a borrowed phone at the side of a nearly-empty road? I can’t really complain, having that phone number in my pocket makes a huge positive difference, regardless of the bureaucratic weirdness.

I thanked the friendly locals and returned to my car, mentally calculating the truck’s arrival in about an hour. The sun set shortly thereafter. A few other locals stopped on their way past, but after I thanked them for stopping and told them of the expected arrival of the tow truck they were happy to continue on their way. After dark, one told me to turn on my 4-way flashers because I was nearly invisible at the side of the road even with the dome light on. The 4-ways include a clicking noise and noticeably dim the interior light when they come on, but I thought that less annoying than getting rammed in the dark by some local’s ½ ton pickup.

The nearest farmhouse to my stranded position. One of the people who stopped told me that Jim, the owner, was mostly likely at home and was very friendly should I decide to seek shelter.

The weather was unseasonably warm, a few degrees above zero, so I wasn’t too worried. In addition, while my car was incapable of movement, the engine and all electrical systems were working, so I ran the engine for about 10 minutes to warm up and keep the battery happy. I was using the dome light to read a book I’d thrown in the backseat on a whim a few weeks prior; I was very happy to have it, and the blanket I’d also stashed back there.

Just after 7:00pm the tow truck arrived. Huzzah! The driver told me he’d had some trouble finding me, and had called my phone to ask for better directions, but no matter, I was rescued after really only minor discomfort. He was a friendly sort, and told me stories of other rescues and vehicle salvages he’s attended over the past few years. Apparently, highway 11 for the 30 kilometres south of Saskatoon is the road with the highest number of deer-strikes in Canada, particularly around this time of year. The combination of evening rush hour coinciding with sunset and hunting season making the deer a bit jumpy results in many deer venturing onto roads just as traffic levels are peaking. The good news is that most deer-strikes do not result in serious injury (to the humans), but there are an alarming number of elk (Cervus canadensis) and moose (Alces alces) strikes every year, too, which are often more dangerous to the drivers.

He got my Honda hooked up, and we were off back to Saskatoon. Back to highway 12, then down into town. The drive took about 45 minutes, and he deposited me and my car at the transmission shop that’s only 2 blocks from my apartment, just before 8:00. He’d recommended that particular shop, having taken many other tows there in the past, and the fact that it’s so close to my home is just a nice bonus. And the tow was free, even though it was 110 km (I think my basic membership normally includes a first-25-km-are-free restriction) because apparently a truck from Saskatoon was the closest available. Yay!

I can’t say enough good things about my CAA membership, despite the phone-run-around-weirdness. My day would have been really ruined without it, as it was I experienced only an inconvenience, not a crisis.

I called Steve when I got home (reception is fine in town, of course), and told him of my adventures, and that I wouldn’t be coming over for dinner 3 hours late. Rather than the excellent fish supper I’m sure was prepared, I grabbed some McDonald’s.

The next morning I dropped by the tranny shop and said “that’s my Honda”. I told them of my experiences as they related directly to the transmission, and asked them to call me with a quote when they’d had a chance to look at it. It took until Thursday afternoon, partly because of the Remembrance Day holiday on Wednesday, but they put in a new clutch, a new slave cylinder, and a pair of axle seals for me. For slightly more than the purchase price of the car. Oh well, this wasn’t really a surprise.

Sunday Drive 4: Driving a Stick

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Amanda is a friend in the department, working on a Master’s in Soil Science. She used to drive a Honda with a manual transmission, and told me she’d like to make sure her stick-handling skills have not been degraded by the most recent few years driving an automatic. So she dropped by on Sunday afternoon, and we went for a drive.

We didn’t have any particular plans, except to run through the transmission a few times with her at the wheel, so we started out heading west on highway 16.

Like elsewhere near Saskatoon, west of the city is flat and open. The landscape looks pretty much the same from the passenger seat.

Amanda is enjoying the handling and gear shifting on my old Honda. Her skills had not degraded at all, as far as I could tell.

After driving west for a bit, we haphazardously chose a smaller road running north, and got off the main route. We were just outside city limits, so there was still a fair bit of activity around, even on a Sunday afternoon.

There were big yellow machines around these short cliffs, leading me to think this is some sort of mine. There are big potash (K2O) mines in Saskatchewan, but I think most of those are deep shafts, not surface scrapes.

More flatness. We have a lot of this vital resource around here.

I like the clouds in this picture.

Re-approaching Saskatoon from the north, on a tertiary “highway”.

My colleagues in the Faculty of Agriculture and Bioresources, where I work, would probably ridicule me for not recognizing the one still-green crop growing here.

I dropped Amanda off at her home after we’d been driving for about an hour, then rumbled around the south western part of Saskatoon for a bit, squinting into the low-hanging sun. Sunsets in this part of the world can be quite spectacular, and I’ve been meaning to get some photographs for a while. However, my car at the time was missing the license lamps (small white lights that illuminate the rear license plate) and I’d been told by a neighbour that the police like to pull over cars for minor offences this time of year. Apparently, this is the season when people are putting their nice summer cars away and bringing out their winter beaters, and the police want to keep the really old and broken cars off the roads. I’ve been told they’ll inspect rust levels, too, and impound cars that are considered too far gone. I don’t want to give the police any excuse to pull me over and decide my car is unsafe, so I’ve been avoiding driving at night until I can fix the license lamps. But I still found some industrial backgrounds to take a couple of shots of my car.

I think this is an active grain elevator, during the week. I like the way the lighting from the setting sun makes my car look more silver than blue.

From the other side, with the sun shining through the windows.

The sun was low enough that the slight camber of the road, the water-shedding peak in the middle, was sufficient to cast a shadow across the eastern (north-bound) side.

The full moon was striking over the twilight-shrouded road.

I returned home just after sunset. I took this picture to demonstrate that Boba Fett continues to accompany me on my adventures. No rebels were captured in the making of this picture.

I'm on TV!

As I described previously, in late July of this year we were visited by a crew from Global Television at Alexandra Fjord. They spent about 2 days filming us and the suroundings, and they said this footage would be edited down to make one of a number of roughly 60-second vignettes to be broadcast before the evening news.

Well, I guess they kept their word. Here's the bit I'm in.


Full disclosure: I'm realistically faking it in the parts I'm in. While those are reasonably accurate portrayals by me of my day-to-day activities at Alexandra Fjord, I didn't actually write anything in my notebook there, and I didn't actually collect any data from that chamber at that time.

And Anne would probably kill me if I mentioned that she was none too pleased about being asked to look at a specimen of Eriophorum with a magnifying glass, nor would she be happy if I reiterated her (much repeated) point that no self-respecting botanist would need to use such a glass to examine any plant of that genus.

Sunday Drive 3: Lake Diefenbaker

Sunday, October 25, 2009

As I was heading home on Friday evening (October 23), I ran into 2 grad students in the department, and asked them about places I might enjoyably visit in nearby parts of Saskatchewan. Following a bit of discussion, they agreed that Gardiner dam, at the north end of Lake Diefenbaker, would be worth the hour or so drive each way. Apparently, it’s the largest earth-filled dam in Canada, and is the reason the lake exists. Sounds good.

At home on Saturday I perused some maps and websites, and discovered something I find a bit exciting: Saskatchewan operates a dozen free ferries. Why would there be ferries on the prairies? River crossings, of course. This website lists 13 ferries, 1 of which is not free – one must pay and book in advance to cross Wollaston Lake. Of the remaining 12, only 1 is not a river crossing: Riverhurst ferry crosses Lake Diefenbaker near its middle. There’s a bit of a grey zone here in the definitions, since Lake Diefenbaker is really only a particularly slow patch in the South Saskatchewan River, and was formed by Gardiner dam. Previous to the dam, the town of Riverhurst was quite a bit further from the waterline, and the river there was probably not very different from the river 100 km in either direction. Still, I like ferries, and that website looks remarkably like a checklist, to me.

Google maps, while usually accurate in its directions, seems to lie rather pessimistically when it comes to estimating travel times. Planning a route that would take me across Gardiner dam from east to west, south down the west side of the lake, across at Riverhurst, then back north up the east side of the lake Google maps informed me I should plan for about 7 hours of driving. Taking this advice to heart, I arose rather early on Sunday, and was heading out of the city, Starbuck’s grande latte in hand (literally: I still have no cupholders) by 9:30am. For me on a Sunday, that’s horribly early. But I had early dinner plans to meet that evening, so needs must and so forth.

The landscape due south of Saskatoon is what my colleagues in the Soil Science department refer to as “prairie potholes”, with hummocks. The hills are not tall nor steep-sided, but they are numerous.

I exited the city by highway 219, described on my PDF map downloaded from the provincial government as “thin membrane surface (no shoulder)”, which rapidly deteriorated in quality from aging municipal blacktop to roughened rural asphalt to gravel-strewn construction site.

Astonishingly, the highway crews were hard at work on a Sunday morning. I had been blasting down the highway, cheerfully ignoring the orange reduced-speed-limit-construction-zone signs because I’d assumed nobody would be working that day. Wrong! I carefully drove through the many-kilometres long construction zone at a sedate 60km/h, mindful of the enormous dump trucks pacing me on both sides of the driveable road.

Saskatchewan is supposedly the land of the living skies. I experienced a wide range of weather on my drive.

Secondary highways in central Saskatchewan are pretty empty, at least on Sundays. I travelled for dozens of kilometres at a time without seeing any other vehicles.

I reached the dam by about 10:30, and proceeded happily across it. Highway 44 crosses the South Saskatchewan on the dam, the road was simply built right across the top.

Approaching Gardiner dam from the east.

Lake Diefenbaker on my left….

… and the South Saskatchewan on my right.


As requested, I took a video as well as still photos.

These big towers apparently are involved in controlling the flow of water through the hydroelectric turbines buried within the dam.

I stopped at the small provincial park office / recreation area just on the west side of the dam, but of course there was nobody else around. This is a significant tourist area in the summer, but in the cool and windy days of late October, everybody else stays home or something.

There’s a sandy beach area along with a restaurant and some other facilities. Nobody else was around save a few pelicans.

I was well ahead of Google’s pessimistic schedule, so I took the time to drive down the gravel access road behind the dam, to take a few more pictures.

Coteau Creek Hydroelectric station generates a modest amount of power for the province.

I’m not sure why this little gravel road was built, but I found it useful for getting down to a decent position for photography. Maybe that’s exactly what it was for.

On my way back up to highway 44, I noticed the wind was blowing steadily from the north, forming a strong updraft where air rushed up the north slope of the dam. This small hawk was taking advantage of the conditions to hover, apparently effortlessly, and search for prey. I sat and watched for a few minutes, and it barely moved at all.

The weather cleared up as I continued west and south, and the landscape became stunningly-flat as expected in this province.

A ferry terminal sign in the middle of the prairies! Though, to be fair, I certainly wasn’t expecting Tsawwassen.

One kilometre to go!

There was an enormous flock of white birds on the middle of the lake. I never got close enough to see what they were, but I did see a few pelicans closer.

The ferry itself was pretty small, though I think this is the largest in this province. It crawls across the lake, about 3 kilometres, on a cable. I followed a truck/trailer combination up the loading ramp, straddling the cable where it lays on the ground. Apparently, this was a mistake, and I was instructed to back up, and try again on the right side of the truck. The ferry is long enough for one full-size semi trailer + truck combination, with room for 3 lanes. Fortunately, the minivans behind me in line probably knew what to expect, and made room for my ignorance. Then we cruised across, at a couple of km/h.

Mid-lake.

At the other side, I was off first, and I pulled into a small driveway just above the ferry terminal to take in the view.

The truck I’d tried to follow onto the ferry, accelerating with his load up the hillside away from the lake.
The bridge of the ferry is about 3 decks tall, and is just visible here above the line of cars waiting to cross in the opposite direction.

Beyond the Riverhurst ferry lies the village of Riverhurst. I stopped, but there’s almost nothing there, except apparently “smorg” on Sundays, where I think the majority of the local residents were. Other than my fellow ferry-passengers, whom I let get well ahead of me, there was pretty much nobody around at all. The road, once you climb beyond the hills coming up from the lakeshore, is epically flat, straight, and empty.

Flat. It’s flat in the southern part of Saskatchewan. Very flat. Flat flat flat.

I stopped along that flat road for a break, and I still like the way my car looks.

Continuing along, I passed under a large collection of flocks of geese, flying in broad V’s across the prairie, towards the lake. They are distinctly dark-bodied, and there were far fewer than the vast flocks of white birds I saw earlier.

Taken straight up through the sunroof as I was driving along highway 19.

I drove up the east side of Lake Diefenbaker, where the highway runs a few kilometres distant from the lakeshore. I came across a smaller dam, which the highway runs under rather than across – there’s a rail line across the top of the dam.

Approaching the Qu’appelle dam, which is apparently co-responsible for the creation of Lake Diefenbaker.

Under the Qu’appelle dam.

Highway 19 curves up around Qu’appelle dam, and there’s a scenic viewpoint / rest stop overlooking the dam. I stopped there for lunch, and admired the scenery for a few minutes.

Qu’appelle dam viewed from the east.

Highway 19 crosses a rail line just after my lunch spot. When I saw this bridge, I immediately thought of the idealized terrain that model railroaders construct in fine detail.

Continuing north I passed a very long train stationary on what I think is that same rail line. I didn’t count the cars, but there must have been at least 100.

More flatness.

Highway 19 meets highway 15, which then intersects the main route between the 2 biggest cities of Saskatchewan, highway 11. It was here that I really missed having cruise control. My foot started to cramp from holding the gas pedal in one position (flat flat flat means very little throttle variation) and my leg was sore from constantly leaning against the center console. So, I stopped for fuel and had a bit of a stretch after being on highway 11 for only a few kilometres.

Highway 11. Ho-hum.

I got home much sooner than Google maps had led me to believe. I guess Google is very pessimistic about driving times, though I think the distances at least were accurate. I’ve now driven south from Saskatoon 3 weekends in a row; next week I should pick a different direction.

Monday Rant: Falcon Tube Racks

Here's an esoteric rant for you: I can't friggin' find a test-tube rack that holds either 15mL or 50mL Falcon tubes, and it's pissing me off because I know I'm not the only person in the world who would use such racks.

These are Falcon tubes:The BD website describes these things as the "workhorse" of the Life Sciences lab... everybody I know uses hundreds of these things, for all sorts of purposes. They don't goddam fit in standard test-tube racks, because of those big, fat screw-on caps. Normal test-tube racks have the positions arranged in a square layout, with very thin barriers between the positions. The lids on these tubes overhang the edges of the positions, and two tubes next to each other squeeze against or on top of each other. It's annoying. Plus, the bigger size is apparently much larger than any other tube that people would be using more than one or two of at a time, so standard test-tube racks usually don't even have positions in them large enough to squeeze these guys into.

You can order these tubes in styrofoam racks, which adds a bit to the price when buying them, and because the tubes are disposable most of the time we don't bother - we just buy them in big bags, sans racks. The styrofoam racks tend to fall apart pretty quickly in any case, and some websites say "do not freeze in racks" without frickin' explaining why. Argh!

I've spent too much time today, in the blocks between the end of something and waiting for somebody else so I can move onto the next task, trying to track down a rack solution for our hundreds of Falcon tubes. The only thing I've found is a hideously expensive coated-wire rack that holds 8, 16, or 36 of these big tubes - for about $80 for the largest. At any given time, I've got between 200 and 500 Falcon tubes in use, distributed between a couple of freezers and whatever random patch of bench space I happen to be using. At the moment, all of my 50mL tubes are just jumbled together in the freezer, completely disorganized, and my 400 or so 15mL tubes are squeezed awkwardly into about a dozen unsuitable racks. It's annoying, I need a better system.

Why can't I buy a cheap plastic rack in hexagon arrangement that will fit in my freezer?

Sunday Drive 2: Pike Lake Provincial Park

Pike Lake Provincial Park
Sunday, October 18, 2009

My supervisor, Steve, recommended I visit Pike Lake Provincial Park when I told him about my plans for weekly exploratory journeys around Saskatoon. It’s not very far away, and according to the website it’s a popular family get-away destination.

I needed to pick up a tiny part for my Prelude – I’d lost the cap for the power steering fluid reservoir. My neighbour, who owns an Accord of similar vintage, recommended a junkyard to the south and west of Saskatoon. I found it without difficulty (it’s well signed), and wandered between the rusting hulks for a few minutes. There are 2 old Preludes and 1 old Accord in this particular junkyard with parts in common with my Prelude, so I was able to find the reservoir cap, and they charged me nothing for it. I’ll probably come back sometime to get some other parts – I’d especially like to replace the seat-belt buckle on the front passenger seat. It works as it is now, but it’s tricky to get the belt unbuckled.

Valley Road, near the junkyard. The neighbourhood is a mix of turf farms and berry farms, for the most part. This road is remarkably flat and straight. I think it runs in a near-perfect straight line for about 8 kilometres.

This being central Saskatchewan, there are some grain farms around, too.

Pike Lake Park is at the end of highway 60, about 30 km south of Saskatoon’s west end. It’s a little odd to be driving along at 100 km/h and then suddenly have to stop at a park gate. As at Blackstrap the previous week, though, the entrance office was closed and nobody was around asking for money. I gather that during the summer, it costs about $7 per car to visit for the day.

There are a couple of campgrounds, which were behind closed gates, and a central green space adjacent to the lake and swimming pool area.

The swimming pool facilities. Pike Lake itself is behind these buildings, beyond the screen of trees in the background.

There is some playground equipment clustered near one parking lot bordering a large lawn spotted with trees.

Pike Lake was clear and smooth, with some ice on the surface near the down-wind side.

The geese more or less have the park to themselves.

I saw one other vehicle there, a minivan in another parking lot. I think I met the dog of the owners of that minivan, as a medium sized pit-bull-like dog had a bit of a sniff while I was walking around.

On my way back to my car I found Boba Fett. Here he surveys a patch of sandy desert terrain. I’m pretty sure there are no sarlaccs in this part of Saskatchewan.

Sunday Drive 1: Blackstrap Provincial Park

Last week I decided to start a new blog series, then of course I procrastinated for 6 days before actually implementing it. This is the first post in a series I’ll try to put together about every week, that I call “Sunday Drives”. Basically, on the weekends I’d like to drive my car around, just to explore and to enjoy driving for fun. There are plenty of places to see within an hour or so of Saskatoon, and visiting them gives me an excuse to practice driving my car.

Blackstrap Provincial Park
Monday, October 12, 2009

A little way south of Saskatoon, Blackstrap “mountain” rises majestically above the prairie, to the lofty height of 45 metres. Yes, around here this qualifies as a mountain. On the Thanksgiving holiday Monday, I decided to visit this alluring mountain, and try out the full range of gears on my Prelude on the highway. We’d had some snow just the previous Thursday, with sub-zero temperatures continuously through the weekend, so this was also potentially a chance to try out the handling on a bit of ice.

The view from above my steering wheel, driving east on highway 211 towards the park.

I passed fields of hay, baled and just about ready for winter, I think.

The entrance to the park is guarded by hut, and a nearby administrative office. There’s a sign describing the prices for visiting and camping in the park, but I guess at this time of year there’s so little traffic they don’t charge. Maybe for camping, but there was nobody in the hut or administrative building when I was there.

I parked at the admin. building, to see if there was somebody there I should give money to, but no-one was about.

There’s a small plastic floating dock near the admin. building, which I wandered out onto for some pictures. There are apparently freshwater crayfish in the lake, as I saw several disembodied clays and one carapace on the dock. I guess the birds and/or aquatic mammals have been eating them.

I drove through the park, pausing to check out the various waterfront access areas along the way.

Driving through the first campground.

Somebody stuck a chairlift on Blackstrap mountain!

And a rope-tow!

I poked around for a bit, then left the way I had come. I saw one other car in the park, out near the maintenance area, but no other people.

The view from the causeway crossing Blackstrap lake.

On my way back to town I paused briefly at the Saskatchewan International Raceway, but nothing was happening there. I suspect the race season is over for this year. There was no ice on any of the roads, just a bit of compressed snow through the campground, so I'll have to wait to see how the Prelude handles on the slippery stuff. But I got to work it through all 5 gears on the manual transmission, and I only stalled it once, early in the day running around Saskatoon before heading out.