Blogosaurus Vex

July 2nd, 2007

Time for Saskatchewan, that most treacherous of provinces.

As you likely already know, pretty much nobody lives in the prairies. It’s just a big, empty chunk of land with only enough farmers on it to keep track of all the wheat (and canola, which in another life was called rapeseed). It’s so sparsely populated that the Trans Canada highway, our biggest and longest (coast to coast, westwise!), has flat, traffic-lightless intersections in Saskatchewan. If you are driving west and you want to get off the highway, you just turn left from the fast lane. Across the eastbound lanes. And you can do this without any fear of having to wait for the lanes you’re crossing to clear (they already are) or about vehicles coming up behind you at highway speed (no one’s there).

So we knew it wouldn’t be easy finding a hotel in Saskatchewan. But we’re clever, and planned our day’s driving to end in Regina, the capital city of the province. (Insert vagina joke here. It’s okay, we did it too.) Regina actually has people, I believe about 70,000 of them. It’s a proper city, and a megalopolis for the prairies. We arrived at about 10:30, after a scorching day in our car that does not have air conditioning. Turns out driving through the prairies is hot, dusty business. We were uncomfortable and exhausted from a long day behind the wheel. Because even if you love driving, as we do, you really just want to get the fuck out of the car by that time of night. Especially our car, which is tiny and has stiff suspension and vibrates like… well, you know.

The first hotel we tried was full. This was a bit surprising but not the end of the world – we just went to another. It was full too. And the clerk there told me that all the hotels in the city were full. I think you have to be a Canadian to begin to appreciate the creeping horror that started to come over me at this news. If Regina is full, that means there are probably no beds for hundreds of kilometres either side too, because the big smoke crowds out the littler villages. And at after ten at night, this is no laughing matter when your car is a two seater, and those seats don’t recline. I reported the news to Husband, who quickly dismissed it: “That clerk doesn’t have a monopoly on the truth. What does she know anyway.” Was it bravery in the face of impending doom? A little denial at work? Only his analyst can say.

Long story made short: the entire city was blocked up because – wait for it – a tractor expo was in town. That’s right. Every hotel room in the city was being occupied by a hay chewing redneck with a diesel pickup, fresh from the farm to look at tractors. Maybe not even new ones; who knows what happens at farm expos?

We were now faced with the choice of going back towards Alberta, or on to Manitoba. Alberta-side (west) would probably have hotels sooner, but “sooner” is relative in that desolate fucking place, and could mean hundreds of kilometres of travel. Canada is huge. We were going east anyway, so we kept moving. And this is when Saskatchewan must have started pinching her chubby flanks and gleefully cackling, “I’ve gotten away with it again!” We were about to drive into the Abyss of No Hotels, also known as Saskatchewan, the Anus of Canada.

Thank god Husband insisted on getting gas before we left Regina or we’d have been stranded on the highway somewhere. Along with no hotels, Saskatchewan has no gas at night unless you’re a trucker with cardlock access. We stopped at every butt-ass town for probably two hundred kilometres, and not one had a room to rent. Oh sure, there were promises of hotels. I grew to hate those friendly blue signs on the highway, with the little stick man in bed with an inverted V roof, because clearly they were placed there to mock us. Booming economy my ass. We’d pull off, following the advice of one of those signs, only to find nothing but a boarded up gas station, a grain silo, and a dark shack in the middle of approximately five million hectares of canola. That’s it. We probably found an actual hotel at ten percent of our stops. In each case they were full. Including the one that had a big neon sign declaring “VACANCIES!!!” visible from the road. Oh cruel, cruel province!

Eventually, we noticed an informal convoy had developed. There was us, a guy on a motorcycle, and some dudes in a pickup, all pulling off at the same places together, and driving around tiny, dusty villages together, failing to find a hotel together, and then getting back on the highway together. I might have found this amusing but I was crabbier than a venomous snake. I wanted to just go to bed, but failing that, I’d have settled for throttling a farmer. Since neither was available, I settled for being generally bitchy and sour. I don’t handle delay of sleep gratification very well. Nor was I particularly receptive to Husband’s attempts to be cheerful.

Finally, nearly three hours later, we got a room, at a place with no lit sign. We were directed there by the one decent human in Saskatchewan, a hotelier who was full but knew of the empty place. All three of us convoyers got rooms there, after some nervous discussion in the parking lot about whether there were rooms, and if so, enough for all of us. Husband and I initially dove straight into bed, but after about a minute of restless tossing Husband announced, “I feel like I’m covered with half an inch of bacon grease” which was exactly what I was thinking, so we got up for washing. Then, finally, the sleeping could ensue.

We decided, rightly I believe, to never stop in That Place again, and on the way home planned our driving to avoid sleeping there. But you can’t avoid it entirely, not without dipping into the States or driving up to the Territories, so we were forced to drive through The Anus. And it got us again, the fucker! This time it was with a lack of public toilets for about three hundred kilometres. Here’s the thing about prairie: there are no hills. And no trees or bushes to hide in. So if you’re a woman, you can’t just duck into the wilderness for a pee. If you’re doing it on the side of the road, you’re doing it in full view of everyone from you to the horizon. In daytime, this really only means truckers, but there are lots of them, and not one of them needs to see my ass in squat. Ultimately, all we left in The Anus was the money required for one tank of gas and I believe one meal stop, which was more than it deserved and more than it’s ever going to get from me again.

New Brunswick, the former anus, was thusly categorized because it’s ugly. Most of Canada is shockingly beautiful (Cape Breton and the Rockies are standouts), but not NB. It somehow manages to be even uglier than northern Ontario, which as far as I can tell is not much more than rocks and scrubby trees. But New Brunswick never did us any harm. It may be ugly, but it’s good natured. Saskatchewan is a nasty piece of work. Nowhere to sleep, nowhere to pee. That’s what I call nasty. And what better to call the nastiest province than an anus? We later found out that the reason all the hotels were full outside the city was that the department of highways has booked them all to house workers twinning Highway 1 (in places it’s only one lane each way). This is an explanation but not an excuse – nothing is forgiven! Nothing!

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