We awoke to temperatures in the single digits this morning. Although I am glad that we are out of the hot and humid weather, it was colder than I expected when I walked to get our morning coffee at Timmy’s. After our coffee, we drove downtown to get breakfast at Fresh & Sweet. This was our 80th Food Network stop. We arrived about a half hour after the place opened and it was already busy – luckily, we were still able to get a table. I had the Buffalo Benny Bowl and Mum had the Bacon Chipotle Breakfast Sandwich. We both thoroughly enjoyed our food and I think that I would have to rank their hollandaise sauce in the top 3 that I have had. I mentioned this to our waitress and when we went to pay our bill, they had two mini cupcakes waiting as a thank you for visiting. I don’t normally eat sweets like that, but I enjoyed that as well.
We decided to drive by Wascana Park and the Legislature on our way our of town, only to be blocked by a group of protesters. We have no idea what they were protesting, but we didn’t feel like hanging around to find out. We pulled a u-ey and found an alternate route out of town.
Our first stop was Crescent Park in Moose Jaw. Mum and I visited here in 2010, when we drove across Canada. It had started raining just before we got into town and by the time we arrived at the park, it was a fairly steady drizzle. As Islanders we are used to rain, so we decided to go for a walk around the park anyway. We were surprised to see so few birds. On our last visit, we saw numerous species of waterfowl – today there were only Mallards and Canada Geese.
After the walk, we went to the Info Centre to get a picture of Mac the Moose – the World’s Biggest Roadside Moose. We also picked up a couple of souvenirs and Mum got a t-shirt that says “Saskatchewan. Easy to Draw Hard to Spell”. I was looking for the same thing in a keychain, but it appears that they don’t make them. I grabbed a Mac the Moose keychain instead.
By this time, we were ready to eat to we headed to Deja Vu Cafe – Food Network Stop #81. Mum had a bowl of Broccoli Soup and a bun and I had a Special 22 (2 wings and 2 fingers with fries). They have an insane number of sauces and I chose Buffalo Dill for my wings, Dawn of the Raspberry (Raspberry & Chipotle) for my fingers and Garlic Inferno as a dip for my fries. Yet again, we were happy with our choice of restaurant and I think my waistline is happy that we don’t live closer, as I would be trying all of the sauces.
From Moose Jaw, we headed south so we could drive by the bird sanctuary at Old Wives Lake. We found out that you can’t get to the actual lake without the landowners’ permission, but that turned out to be moot. We saw more birds today, along the side of the road, than we have seen in the last week. Confirmed sightings include: Swainson’s Hawks, Red-tailed Hawks, Western Meadowlark, Mourning Dove, Purple Martins and American White Pelicans. I am fairly sure that we also saw Wilson’s Phalarope and an albino Great Blue Heron. There were scores of duck-like birds as well, but at a distance, it is next to impossible to discern the exact species. Two baby mule deer also hopped across the road in front of us.
This was one of our shortest days, distance-wise; however, we spent quite a long time poking along. Thankfully the road was quiet and we were able to stop every time we saw a bird that we wanted to identify. We are also pretty sure that we saw other species of hawks, both accipiters and buteos, but we weren’t easily able to confidently identify them.
We arrived in Swift Current around 6:30 and instead of going out to eat, I went to Humpty’s to pick up a couple of salads and we had that with our leftovers. After some intense wiki-research on our birds, and other random things, Mum turned in and I sat down to blog. I am posting the bird and other roadside pictures below.
Thank you for sharing our adventure with us and I will talk to you tomorrow.
L
