December 3rd, 2006: We just got home from a great evening at Archerwill, where we attended the dinner theatre. The show was a hilarious production of “The Lady Pirates of Captain Bree”, a musical comedy, and what a wonderful job they did of it!

We were fortunate to be seated beside Myrna and Ray Tennant (of country music festival fame) and had a lovely visit. They are regular readers, and swear they are going to come over for coffee one of these days. If they show up and we are not there, give them the royal treatment! By the way, in 2007, the Festival is going to be from about July 25th to the 29th. If all goes well, we will be there with our motor home.

We worried about roads; on our way to Archerwill there was a stiff north wind and finger drifts were almost across the road in places. We thought they would be horrendous coming home, but the roads were clear! I suspect the highway patrol must have been out and cleared them. The only other possibility was that the wind blew them clear again, and that is a bit hard to imagine.

Snow, snow and more snow! We left for Saskatoon on Friday morning, and there had been enough snow overnight to warrant blowing the driveways, but we didn’t have time. When we got home Saturday evening, our driveway was clear – our neighbour, Regan Bernhard, had borrowed our blower and cleared both driveways. Oh, Joy!

We got lots of winter driving practice on Friday. It didn’t snow, but there was a high wind, and visibility was not good. The closer we got to Saskatoon, the worse it got. Highway 349 had lots of ice and packed snow but #6 and #5 were clear, except for right in Humboldt, where it was terribly icy.

Tuesday morning, we woke up to about eight inches of new snow, so out came the blower. It took two pulls to get it going this time but then worked faultlessly while I did our and the neighbour’s driveways. It kept on snowing, though, enough so that we cancelled the Tuesday night camera club meeting, and it blew all night. Wednesday, out came the blower again. I’m getting too old for that foolishness. It’s not fun any more.

Thursday was supposed to be terribly cold, but clear. It did drop down to -28° Wednesday night but was up to -18° by morning, and up to about -10° in the afternoon. There was a bitter wind with it, though. Then, in the middle of the afternoon, a blizzard came up from the south.

In the Park, our highways have a good layer of packed snow and ice on them, and I keep hearing reports of vehicles hitting the ditch. We got Dale Grona to put on a set of Michelin X-Ice tires, and what a difference! Our car, a Taurus, is excellent in snow and ice anyway, and with the new tires it’s like summer driving. We have to be careful not to get too complacent.

Deer like to come up to our north deck and clean up sunflower seeds and shells that have been spilled out of the feeder. From our viewpoint, we look down on them. They are remarkable this year in that they are extremely fat. I normally think of deer as not being very wide from side to side, even when in good shape, but this year they are just plain roly-poly! Not hard to understand, since there was not enough snow in the bush to affect their normal food supply, and a few people are feeding them regularly.

The fish don’t seem to be doing too bad, either. Vaughn and Mel have been fishing just off the Uskatik shore, by Vaughn’s cabin, and catching lots of jacks from three to five pounds. They started fishing two weeks ago, when the ice was only two or three inches thick. They were the first I heard of. Latest report is about a foot of ice.

Wild excitement Wednesday morning! Shirley Miller got up about 5:30 AM and looked out the window to see their car on fire. Weather conditions were terrible with snow and blowing snow so it took the fire department longer than usual to get there. In the meantime, Merv shoveled snow onto the car to try to protect the house, which was only about ten feet away. When the fire department got there, they dragged the car out into the middle of the yard where it couldn’t do any harm. They sprayed all their water and a bunch of foam onto it, and it still burned. I understand there wasn’t much left of it at all.

The same morning, there was a gravel semi tipped over in the gravel yard south of the Park. It was one of those things that hoists the box away up in the air to dump; either the wind was awful stiff or he got onto some unlevel ground, because over she went.

Brian Shuya was busy pushing snow in the tennis court Thursday. He said it already had a coating of ice almost two inches thick; a couple of floodings and it will be ready for skating. Not like last year, when he had to build up one corner of the rink about eight inches, and weather so warm the floodings wouldn’t freeze. That should work pretty nicely – the hockey players won’t have to chase their pucks too far.

The horrible walking conditions outdoors led a bunch of the locals to start a walking group. We meet at the Greenwater Hall every Monday and Thursday evening at seven PM and walk indoors for an hour. Everyone walks at his or her own pace, and there is usually musical accompaniment. There were eight of us the first night, and eleven last Thursday, people from the Park and from Perigord. Come and join us – you’ll enjoy it and get a good workout.