backtracking, part 1

One night I packed a bag big enough for me and the luggage compartment on a plane. Sometimes, these aren't usually the same things, but I managed.

I got on a plane. This did not make me smile. The world is in a lot of pain thanks to fuel consumption. I will one day tell children of the days when we carelessly and recklessly got in big iron birds and traveled to far away lands with nothing more than a few days of clothes. This, I hope, will make me smile. Oh the folly of life. Driving across the country! You didn't!

I got to Winnipeg at almost midnight. I swear to blog land that Winnipeg smells like jasmine and lilacs  at night. I've smelled it twice. Maybe not in the winter, but I vow to not be in Winnipeg in the winter so I wouldn't know. I drove round and round looking for a tiny bar and stayed for maybe 10 minutes. Just enough time to be embarrassed "do you want to pay for the book I sent you too?!" ( I thought it had been a gift). I drank 2 cups of coffee and left. It was worth it to get the book. It's a very funny book.

I headed out on a road heading south. I figured I'd find it eventually- the main highway south that is. What I found was a secondary highway instead and passed through a small town call Domain.

A small town I'd never heard of and I've become oddly familiar with small town Manitoba in the last year. Something didn't smell right and it wasn't the cow manure. I took the first road going west..a connecting road. If you've ever been driving in the middle of the prairie at 1 am fueled on 2 cups of coffee, a dirt road connecting the secondary to the main is a bit freaky, especially at 120k.. gravel can twist your tires into the direction of a ditch if you're not careful.

After spotting what looked like a small gremlin in my toothpick eyes..

and deciding it was more likely a jack rabbit












I managed to get to Morden, Manitoba where my hosts were sound asleep. So, I did what any weary traveller would do.. I let myself in, left a note I was in the house, and went to bed.

I went to Morden to see my friend Denise who is packing up her house of many trinkets and setting off on an adventure to teach English in Vietnam for a year. She helps organize a sweet little Music Festival call the Back 40 where the best thing I saw was a band call the Doug and Jess band. That and a woman selling photo booth photos for 5 bucks. She was cool. Here's Jess and her husband fella Jeremy. Doug is her dad. If you look at the photos, he's the cool guy in the hat.

IMGP0004-1, originally uploaded by jilly71.

Jess wore a pretty dress and I took a bunch more photos.

And then I got some more of the prairies. 

I love to try and capture the birds and the crickets and the rain dew, but I never quite catch the silence. 

I also didn't eat the Saskatoon Perogies, to which I regret, but I did buy a vintage tin that says SNAP on it. I did have a most excellent time.

It'll be a while before I go back to Morden with Denise being away. I drove back to Winnipeg at the crack of dawn, dropped off the car, realized I'd left behind my camera batteries, got a coffee and  resumed my planet smashing journeys..