Pooh's place in 100 Aker Wood in Japan: Saskatchewan, Land of the Living Skies

July 7th I made my way to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan where Nick and Myrna picked me up. It was a pretty uneventful trip and all went quite smoothly. I have not been able to keep up much with the Pan Am games, but at the Toronto airport I was able to catch some of the highlighted races. Of course the ones that Canada won! Go Canada, Go!
I used to struggle a lot more with shopping in consignment stores. I have gotten past that and it can be fun to find treasures. Wednesday, I went to one of my tourist highlights in Saskatoon, PBR! It's a consignment store for COSTCO. You can get some pretty great clothes and other items for a portion of the price. You do have to look for the reasons why people returned items. Sometimes it's the wrong size, but sometimes there are flaws. Last year, they would have huge cardboard boxes that had lots of clothes just dumped in and you just go sifting through finding what you liked and your size, if they had it. It was something I enjoyed doing. I loved the surprises. This year, they have begun to organize it more. They have rods where they hang the clothes on hangers by size, so now you go to your size and look for what you like. It does go quicker and you have a better idea if there is something you like. They have just begun doing this and I noticed there were still cardboard boxes with piles of clothes in them, but they were not out for the public. Anyway, I did walk away with some clothes for at least half the price of what I would have paid if I bought them originally. It is one of my requests to visit when I go to Saskatoon. :)
Kim and Orisi have a puppy named George. George and I became fast friends. :)

You can just imagine he's saying, "Please, please, please, rub me!"

Standing guard

Wednesday afternoon we left for Jan Lake. It takes about 4 hours to drive there. It is a very peaceful place and a good way to relax and wind down. I am very grateful Nick and Myrna invite me to come, plus the fishing is fun!

My view as we were driving up to Jan Lake.

We went fishing every day we were there. One day the smoke from the nearby forest fires did change our plans in where we were going to fish. It got pretty thick and almost felt like we were in a fog. The winds blew in a different direction the other days and it was fairly clear skies.

Facing the front on a very smokey day.

The ride is pretty smooth on the pontoon.

Wind blown second mate

Captain and netter of caught fish!

Wind blown selfie

Myrna caught the first fish, a walleye.

There it is!

My first fish, a walleye also!

Next, I didn't get pictures of all the fish I caught, but of the fish I caught, they were just about all on the same day!

Cleaning and fileting the walleye.

A decent size fillet.

There is quite a bit of wildlife that can be seen. It's also very pretty. You'll notice that I love sun pictures. :)

Morning sun through my bedroom window

Almost sunset, orange because of the forest fire smoke.

Evening sun.

Loonie

Twoonie :)

Before you look at these next pictures, there's a bit of a story behind this. The day before, Myrna looked and saw something black in the water and said, "Is that a bear?" When we got closer, it was just a piece of wood. That evening while I was sleeping, I had a dream that I was on the pontoon and a black bear climbed onto the pontoon. I decided to swim to the island, wondering if the black bear could swim faster than me. I made it to the island with the bear following me. I turned around and swam back to the pontoon, started it and left the black bear in the water. So, the next day what do we see?

This bear was not interested in coming on board the pontoon. As a matter of fact, he was huffing and puffing so loud we could hear him. I think he was scared of us. I didn't catch him when he reached the island, but quickly ran into the woods.
The last morning there, I was sitting in the porch and listening to the birds and sounds around the cabin. I took this video.

Our time at Jan Lake was over and we headed back to Saskatoon. I went with Nick and Myrna to a wedding of friends of theirs. I taught Tammy when she attended Chilliwack Christian School! There were some other folks there who used to be students in my classroom and parents of students. Yup, it was like digging deep to bring up those memories. They were all gracious and I enjoyed reconnecting with them.
The last day in Saskatchewan I went golfing with Nick, Scott and Kim. It's been quite a while since I swung a golf club. It was still fun.