Day Four
Today was what I expected what late April weather would be and it rained pretty much the whole day, I revelled in it and had to smile when we met people along the way grumbling. We stayed in Meadowlark Campground for one night and met a young couple, he is a singer/song writer and they are in the process of moving to Nashville with their two pigs, Bacon Bits & PigPen.
The morning was a breeze packing everything up and hit the road out of Brandon. The drive to Winnipeg was moderately windy and I seemed to manage a little better countering the wind gusts. As for those rigs flying down the highway, I have begun to moving closer to the shoulder as they approach discovering I am unaffected by their wind gusts as they pass…. Suck it truckers! This would be interesting course content for RV dealers like Bucars who have classes for new and experienced owners on how to manage their RV.. “How to handle your RV on the open highway” as I have discovered motor homes handle nothing like a regular vehicles out here.
As for the loss of my rainbows and unicorns perspective, I figured the day is not over so I stayed mentally prepared for any challenges that may come up, and it’s a good thing I did. On our way into Winnipeg we needed to dump the sewer, replenish the water, and propane, easy enough considering there is fair number of locations to select along the highway. We stopped just outside of Winnipeg that was advertised to be open all year round service and pulled in, only to find out they closed both the sewer and water due to severe cold this winter. As we slowly contacted and crossed off the dump stations that were closed around Winnipeg, we came across an RV dealer called GNR Camping World who instructed us to come on over... big shout out to them 👍
This is where it gets a little dicey, GNR was on the others side of Winnipeg, as much as I wanted to stay out of any city with the RV, that option was taken away from me. On our way to GNR, rush hour traffic was beginning to pick up and we had several scary moments trying to work our way to the dealer. Once we arrived, the dump site was easy to access and GNR did not charge us anything even when I wanted to pay in gratitude of being open. Once we had the tanks empty, we now needed to fill up on propane. Rush hour traffic was at its peak at this time and the best propane dealer was a small Co-op located in a very busy corner of two major roads. I made the call to unhook the truck and drive the RV into this busy section on its own, glad I did, the traffic was so thick I ended up getting caught in a few intersections and blocked the traffic going the other way, I apologize to any Winnipeg drivers I pissed off. Conclusion to this experience, do not take your RV into a city unless you have too! Especially in rush hour traffic.
In the evening we dropped anchor at our good friends Joe and Jodi Novak for a few days in Winnipeg. P.S. what the hell is up with the roads in Winnipeg?
