Ottawa To Saskatoon - Day 1

Mike and I looked forward to our trek out to Saskatoon by van. Both of us had never seen the flat grain fields via the ground (always by air), nor seen Lake Superior, our largest Canadian lake of the Great Lakes and the largest freshwater lake in the world. Maureen has gone west by train when she was a young teen, however memories aren't as prolific. We've both seen Canada by land to Nova Scotia & PEI and north to Thunder Bay, but always flown the westward route, stopping in Winnipeg for our CSSA Nat'l in 2002, and otherwise Vancouver or Victoria being the end destination. Maureen is a 'God's Country' girl by birth, so has made many a trip to visit relatives since being in Ottawa in 1961.

We left on a lovely Saturday morning. Getting away at 7am just didn't happen. One thing after another delayed us, like fixing a screwing in one of the platforms in the dog run.

So the runs got fixed, the van loaded and we hit the road around 8am. If it were not for my mom, her husband and our good friend Mary-Anne looking after the kennel, with not one, but 2 3+wk old pups (8 pups in total), there wouldn't have been peace of mind that all things would have been taken care of.

Loaded up for the ride out was our just 6mth old girl "Tootsi", our Ch "Tyme" and our senior boy BPIS Am/Cdn Ch "Rocky", who he himself has flown to Winnipeg dog shows as a young dog and also to Florida where he competed for his Am Championship.

West we went with our 1st destination being Sault Ste Marie to end our day. We weren't far from the US boarder when a call came in from Mary-Anne - 'You guys forgot a bin!! and it contains the dog food, treats, bowls and blow dryer!' Yikes .... now what are we going to feed the dogs tonite? Do you think we could find a pet store open in the Sault area? Everything seemed to close up around 5-6pm. But, Wal-Mart is open!!! The Garmen led us to one and there we were able to at least get a small bag of food to tide them over till we hit a pet store to buy our regular Proplan & Proplan Selects.
At the 1st hotel this is a vehicle parked next to us. Just loved their slogan!

Arriving late day, finding dog food, and x-ing the dogs meant it was a quick bite to eat. Next to the hotel happened to be an Arby's. YUMMM .... I just love their roast beef on a bun so that was fine by me. Up until about 2 mths ago when an Arby's was put up here in Ottawa, the closest we could come was one about 1.5 hrs away. On our show travels to the TO area we'd always make a point of stopping at one - MA knows how to work the Garmen to find them! I hadn't realized that on those trips Mike wasn't with me, thus he'd never tried one. So, here's his chance ... well it wasn't to be. Yep, they were all out except for 3oz! Who'd of thunk at 8pm they were all out?? They'd had a rush at dinner time, guess the Ottawa Sens hockey playoff game against Philly was the reason, who knows, but poor Mike was left with just getting a salad.Arby's is calling me ....