A pretty - and pretty windy- day on the prairie

 

We woke up to bright sunshine and mild temperatures, which was good since our plan for today was to visit a couple of outdoor attractions. It was however really windy, which I understand is normal around here since there is nothing in the way to stop the wind coming from the north!  It must be brutal in the winter!

Tomorrow is supposed to be colder and wetter (we may have to go to a museum- yikes!!!), so we kept to our plans and went first to the FortWhyte Alive - A large park within the city of Winnipeg, consisting of about 660 acres of reclaimed urban land, whose goal it to give a glimpse of the prairie now long gone.

Its mix of prairie, marsh land and aspen groves gives just a glimpse of what the original prairie must have looked like and makes me wish there was anywhere to experience it fully (I don’t believe there is but will do some research).  

Along the trails, there is even a small bison herd:  since this is actually in the city, you can see people’s houses right behind the bison…..).

 

The forest  of “quaking or trembling aspens” was true to it’s name today! The wind made the leaves tremble indeed, and a wonderful noise was made!  I sat for a while just listening to it….  I could have stayed much longer.  

The trail system intersects at some point with the “great trail”, aka the trans canada trail, the longest continuous trail in the world:  At over 15000 miles, it is more than 6 times the length of the AT!!!!  Some people have walked it end to end - it takes about 2 years!  And you have to deal with the weather around here…..  Make the AT look like a stroll in the woods….  It got me dreaming….. 

The marshy part of the park has floating bridges that make it possible to get up close to the plants and wildlife - it was really quite delightful. 

 

There are many birds migrating right now, and one could spend a long time in the park catching sights of them. Every evening (except Tuesday…. Sigh…), you can go an see thousand of Canada geese landing in the lake at sunset.   It must be wonderful.  But we just got a nice view of a lot of them flying overhead.  We had lunch at the pretty cafe, which has a nice patio overlooking one of the lakes, but it was just too windy!!!!

 

In the afternoon, we went to the zoo, specifically for it’s “road to Churchill” exhibit, 

which is all about the wildlife and ecosystem of Manitoba (it has other stuff too, which is pretty good, but that can be seen in other zoos).  The Manitoba exhibit was really good. 

 The best part was the underwater tunnel, where we could see the polar bear and seals swimming (not together!).  One of the bears gave us quite a show!  

They also have a mockup of the town of Churchill itself.  

My second favorite part of the zoo was this largish pack of grey wolves.  Quite impressive!  

And we saw a little arctic fox- his fur looks ratty because he is in the process of putting on his winter white coat. 

So there! We’ve seen everything we came to Manitoba to see - so i guess we can go home…  😂

Plus we saw a snowy owl and a Canadian crane, which I was not expecting,

     

Tomorrow we plan on exploring downtown Winnipeg, even though when we asked our Uber driver “what is there to see downtown that’s cool”, he answered quite emphatically with “nothing!”.  I believe he is wrong and we’ll find things to see (I’m particularly interested in the French area- the largest French speaking area outside of Quebec.  it even has a French university - St Boniface, which surprise me.  More about that tomorrow.

In the mean time drinks were consumed, sunset was watched.  

And there are a few more pictures of the prairie and of polar bears.