The 12th was Mama Day and Those Johnston Kids were so happy with anticipation that the usual sibling squabbles and morning grumpiness evaporated. We wanted showers so that we looked our best for the big pickup at the airport. Unfortunately the showers at Campland only take $2 coins, or 2 $1 coins, for 4 minutes of reasonably hot water. In any case, I had only enough silver for two showers. That would have to do because the office wasn’t open yet to make change. I gave Baby Girl half our coinage, and Short Pants and I resolved to do our best with the rest. She made out just fine. I, on the other hand, had to spend a considerable amount of time showering a voluble and squirmy 7-year-old. Once he was acceptably polished, I all but shoved him out of the shower and speed cleaned what I could. Mostly. With the shower timer counting down single digits, I frantically tried to get the soap off – too late. I stood there in dripping silence, foam sliding off my shoulders. Short Pants broke the quiet with, “Papa, you sure get a long time to shower for $2.”
I am almost embarassed by my own credulity, but there we were, leaning on Canadian Tire’s doors at 9 AM on a Sunday morning, waiting to be let in and blown off. Which is exactly what happened. Their mechanic, Pedro, or Alonzo, or something like that, was hung over and not coming in until after lunch. Not good. We had to pick Mama up at the airport at noon, and I wanted to show up in a gleaming, air-conditioned whip, not a deep fat fryer with wheels. In laughable desperation I called the CTire on the other side of Saskatoon, who said they could take us in immediately. We roared over there, but of course they had lied. We waited for more than an hour before they looked at it, then more than another while they tinkered.
If you’re doing the math, yes, we missed the pick-up time. Mama is nothing if not patient though, and she had a book to finish.
By this time the crack mechanics of Canadian Tire had determined that the air conditioner was broken and I needed a $600 part that they would have to order on Monday, the following day. Hours of labour would also follow, at somewhere north of $100/hour. I told them to put the car back together and that would be all. I barely escaped with only a $150 bill on top of 3 visits over a weekend and several hours of sitting around. I know they’re abysmal and overpriced, and that every internet review of every CTire store is unanimous in proclaiming their suckage, but what can you do when you’re in a strange city? You either go with the rip-off you know, or face a bigger one at the hands of some unknown mechanic. It’s a lose-lose more situation.
Defeated, we renamed the car the Sweat Lodge and went to pick up Mama at the airport just 15 minutes away. The benefits of living in a small town. There were big ups all around when we had her safely aboard. To kick off her vacation, we took her to the University of Saskatoon, where I attended summer school last summer. I was there studying property law with a class of indigenous students preparing for law school. It’s a lovely campus and the people were more than incredible, but I found it too challenging to be away from my family for so long. I was happy for the opportunity to show them now the places where I had spent my time then. Those Johnston Kids were most impressed by the natural history museum on campus (free! if you’re ever in town) and the surfeit of gophers all over campus. Cute little buggers. The gophers.
We swung by Campland RV Resort to pick up our trailer after the uni tour, as well as partake of the gratis ice cream offer put forth by Wes. We had a nice chat with him and his wife, and he reiterated his job offer. He must be having trouble with the help. I took a card.
To ease Mama into the whole gypsy life thing, we decided to try something off the beaten track and went to Manitou Beach, a little town about an hour south-east of Saskatoon. We had reserved a room at the Manitou Springs Resort and Mineral Spa for the night. The town is situated on the shore of a salty body of water called Little Manitou Lake. It’s not really a true lake in that it has no river exit. It’s just a depression in the prairie that collects run-off from the surrounding hills and holds it until it evaporates. A big puddle, in other words. Millennia of evaporation has resulted in the puddle collecting and concentrating the dissolved salts left behind by the evaporated run-off. The town is (or was, it’s hard to tell) a resort destination built around salty lake water, billing itself as the Dead Sea of Canada.
The Manitou Springs Hotel heats up the lake water and pumps it into a serious of indoor pools that range from merely hot to cabbage soup in temperature. The place has a real old European vibe and we were among the youngest guests in the place. In theory you’re supposed to float better in salt water, but I’ve never been able to feel the difference when swimming in the ocean. This was my first time in a salt pool and it really was astounding how buoyant we all were. You can honestly just lie there and float on the surface without moving, without even taking a deep breath. It is difficult to dive down and touch the bottom. Baby Girl and I found a whirlpool created by competing water jets and just floated in the gyre, spinning and staring at the ceiling. Paddling about, I also accidentally smacked some lady that my own mother would call “ma’am” on the butt. I was mortified while she pretended to be, between giggles. We stayed in the pools until we were all glowing pink, shading into parboiled.
Upstairs in our pleasantly appointed room, Those Johnston Kids found game shows on television and we all relaxed in a bug-free environment for a change. Mama was new to the road, but the rest of needed to absorb some cushy city living, even it was just a half-empty hotel in some tiny town in the middle of nowhere. No offence meant to the fine people of Manitou Beach. We enjoyed our stay!