Nineteen of us followed our tour guide into Burrows Laundry for a glimpse of what life was like for Chinese immigrants in the late 1800’s. The rooms were all connected under Main Street Moose Jaw, where the “coolies” were greatly persecuted and it was thought better to keep this form of cheap labor ‘out of sight’.
Picture taking unfortunately was not allowed on the tour because of copyrighted scripting. Too bad, it was a sight. I managed to pilfer a couple of photos from the internet, but there weren’t many! Some of the characters were robotic and the tour took exactly 45 minutes.
Picture taking unfortunately was not allowed on the tour because of copyrighted scripting. Too bad, it was a sight. I managed to pilfer a couple of photos from the internet, but there weren’t many! Some of the characters were robotic and the tour took exactly 45 minutes.
The second tour was the Chicago connection and the 19 of us were bootleggers looking for illegal booze!
Fanny was our guide then later, Gus who threatened to shoot us with a Tommy gun a couple of times.
What a fantastic tour. Too much fun! We all agreed it was well worth the trip!
Thanks Arlene for booking us into this awesome Adventure!
Lunch in historic downtown Moose Jaw followed . . . I briefly made a stop at the Quilt Haven around the corner, then off we went for Saskatoon. The Qu’appelle Valley was the first scenery of note. . . . a beautiful lake at the bottom of a coulee. I managed to spot four white swans bobbing in the water right beside the land bridge we crossed.
Davidson was the first potty break, about halfway to Saskatoon. With such hot weather and trees being a rarity, we managed to find shade at a gas station. Dragonflies greeted us, which meant mosquitoes were plentiful, and no wonder! We saw water lying in fields and ditches everywhere. Too much rain for this huge agricultural area! I was informed at the Quilt shop that many farmers didn’t even get a chance to seed their crops with such a wet Spring. We saw water-logged canola, but what stands on higher ground looks like bumper crops for sure.
Our arrival into Saskatoon about 3:45 was easy as our hotel is right on Circle Drive, or Hwy 16. Nice and HOT here too. Ted and I have a first floor room that opens out onto the parking lot! Wow! We don’t have to lug our bags up two or three flights of stairs this time! We later headed to the Rally venue which is about 8km away at a curling rink. Right away we met other Edmonton Chapter members as we registered and got our Rally packets. So good to see everybody! There were just a few vendors here so far, and nothing planned for this evening, so back to the hotel and the search for a supper location began.
Just two blocks from the hotel was a restaurant, but no alcohol was served, therefore we started walking the other way, hoping to find something . . . 450m later we discovered Johnny Boy’s, a western buffet that could accommodate all thirty of us, for we have added at least four more bikes and their riders to the clan.
