Canada, Day 1

We left Minot for Canada on Sunday morning.  First stop was the International Peace Gardens.

 First, we checked out the playground.

 The left half of their body is in Canada, the right half is in the USA

 Our international smooch

 The flowers were all in full bloom.  I think these were my favorites.

 Jonathan checking out some of the quotes in the Peace Chapel

 The boys viewing the 9/11 memorial.  These metal beams are from the World Trade Center

 My daisies are not quite this abundant

 While at the Peace Gardens, we made small talk with a man from Winnipeg.  (He had a dog that the kids wanted to pet).  He told us we should stop at Spruce Forest Provencial Park on our way to Winnipeg.  So we did!  We were being spontaneous.   It was one of those educational hikes, where there little stands throughout the trail with information on various plants as well as the history of the area, which is Aboriginal.  In the above pic, Eric is viewing 'dwarf mistletoe', which is a disease that affects many of the trees in the park.

 This was at the beginning of the hike.  Since we were in Canada, the trailhead map was labeled with kilometers for distance instead of miles.  It was 1.6 km to the sand dunes (the big draw of the portion of the park we were at).  I had to do 'running math'...if a 5K is 3.2 miles, then 3.2 K would be a little under 2 miles...we thought Megan could handle it (she tuckered out quite a bit at the Peace Gardens).

 We chose to take the 'challenging' option of the hike, which included some steep climbs.  The kids all took the 'crawling' hill.  Don and I took the one that had some makeshift log steps placed along the hill.

 Finally made it to the sand dunes!  The sand was very soft.

It was a very worthwhile side trip.  After leaving the park, we connected with the TransCanada Highway #1, which took us to Winnipeg.  We ate a yummy supper at the hotel restaurant, then splashed around in the pool.  We had a kids' suite, so there was a separate bedroom with 2 sets of bunk beds and a separate bathroom for the kids.  They loved it.