Glorious First Day in Manitoba

Manitoba rolled out the welcome mat for us with some awesome weather today.  I don’t like to talk about it when things have been just fair weather wise back East.  It must have reached 30 degrees today and it is 9:15 pm and the kids are still in tank tops playing in the field.  It must still be above 20 degrees.

This morning we booked a tour at the Canadian Mint and were educated on the process of how our Canadian coins are made.  It was very interesting and the kids had lots of questions.  On of the couples who were touring with us were from California and were on their way to PEI and then back.  It was neat talking with them for a bit.

After the tour the kids spent some of their money at the gift shop.  It is neat to hear them talk about who they are buying stuff.  They have yet asked for something for themselves, it has always been this is going to be for so and so.

After the mint, we headed downtown Winnipeg to visit the Forks National Historic Site.  It is a huge park along the Assiniboine River and had lots of things to be entertained.  The kids particularly enjoyed watching the skateboarders do tricks at the skatepark.  I must say I was impressed with what they could do off some of the jumps.  Speaking of jumping, there was a young boy doing some jumps off walls and stuff (I know there is a name for that put it escapes me now) and he came flying off an 9 foot wall and landed right in front of Andrea.

He sheepishly ran back to his friends and said that he felt bad that he just scared a little girl, to which I replied “you didn’t scare her at all, in fact she was likely trying to figure out how high she could jump off.”  As we turned away, he was doing a hand stand on the walls edge and I figured we would have to tell Andrea not to do that later on - though she didn’t test us.

We checked into a really nice campground on the edge of town.  It was our first choice as we hoped to stay at a KOA which was recommended for the kids but when I called the guy on the other end said the park was closed because it was still under water.  We haven’t seen any of the flooding in person yet, except for a tiny piece of the Forks today, but tomorrow we may start heading across the Province.  We did see a photo in the paper and it was jaw dropping.

Time to get the kids ready for bed.  Goodnight.

Francois