Here are some random Saskatoon thoughts I wanted to share – mostly about driving!

• Saskatoon is north of Montana. It’s far enough north that the days felt longer because of the difference in daylight (about an hour and 15 minutes more of daylight when we were there).

I just remembered to put that pin in yesterday! (Black pins = places we’ve both been, red pins = places I’ve been, blue pins (not shown) = places Steven’s been)

• You can see the northern lights there. Some of the postcards we sent showed them. I didn’t believe it (thought it was photoshopped on the postcard) then saw this post when we got back – we could have seen them had we known to look. Sigh.

• We researched to make sure we could drive there, and that our insurance worked, but what we should have also looked up is differences in traffic signals and speed limits. The town is so small it was fine to learn it on the go, but next time, I will do more research. (For example, they had double greens and reds, and double arrows for left turns. I also didn’t know the speed limit in the country because there weren’t many signs.)
• People drive so politely. WAY more politely than Chicago, anyway. One bridge we had to cross a lot was under construction and had a merge sign before it and there were signs telling people to zipper in to the merge (YES!) and to slow down. And guess what? PEOPLE DID IT.
• There’s a bus system and they have Uber (no Lyft) but having a car seemed to be the way to go. It was so easy to get around – you could get from one side of town to the other in 20 minutes. I did most of the driving when we were there. I drove so much when Steven was in his conference I was used to it by that point and he was happy to be the passenger!
• There was sand everywhere. We wondered if that’s what they use instead of salt on the roads. (There’s also LOTS of sand near the river and in the conservation areas.) A lot of road lane markings were worn down, and we wondered if it was due to the sand.
• Everyone seems to drive the speed limit. There’s signs on the highway that say “speed enforced by aircraft” and signs in town that say “speed limit photo enforced.”

• As I mentioned, they are gung-ho about checking their parking meters! In the end of the trip, I downloaded an app “WayToPark,” so I could pay the meter when it ran out and we weren’t near it (I still worried that I would get a ticket for going over the time limit of how long the car could be parked there, paid or not).
• One of the first things we noticed was these signs. We thought they looked tacky (sorry, Saskatoon). We saw them all over town – this seems to be what they have instead of billboards (which are also tacky eyesores).

• SASK is the abbreviation they use for Saskatchewan (the province Saskatoon is in), and YXE is the abbreviation they use for Saskatoon.

This magnet is the shape of Saskatchewan!

• The Saskatoon airport (YXE) is tiny and has about eight gates. I LOVE small airports!
• I listened to the radio a lot while I was there and they kept playing Avril Lavigne (UGHHHH) and Pink over and over. I heard some songs that were new to me, too:

I liked the Mother Mother song enough that I downloaded it!

• They call their one dollar coins “loonies” and the two dollar coins “toonies.” This was very funny to me when I asked the hotel front desk how much money I needed to do laundry and they said these words (and I had NO idea what they were talking about).
• The people there were very friendly. Even the geese were more friendly!
• Saskatoon may not be THE Canadian town to go out of your way to visit, but we had a good time there, especially because of all the vegan/vegetarian options (the trip wouldn’t have been as enjoyable for us without that). And especially for me, because of all the running paths. Give me a town with many kilometers (ha) of trails and I will be happy there for days!
• Edited to add: because it gets so cold there, people have power cords coming out of their hoods for their block heaters. Some of the parking lots have power sources to plug your car in while you’re there!

Random travel thoughts:

• I feel like I might finally be recovered from the trip, a week later. Our travel style is low key – we like to do a bit during the day and chill at night – but the 3:00 am wake-up calls to get there and get home wore us out. And our final flight home, out of Toronto, sat on the runway for three hours before it took off due to weather in Chicago, so that made our last day of travel even more tiring. We were exhausted this week!
• For some reason, I was getting super slap happy at the end of our days in Saskatoon. Maybe because of the time difference, early wakeup to start the trip, all the running… and all the sugar? It was odd.
• Ha, so we haven’t done the whole customs thing in a while and I didn’t research it and wasn’t sure where we’d go through it (Canada or US – it was in Canada). We had about a two hour layover in between our final flights in Toronto and spent a bit of time talking to some random people in the airport then decided to meander over to our gate, which was in another terminal. Then we walked forever and ever and went through several different screening processes as part of customs. It was straight forward and quick, but because I didn’t research it or know the steps I kept wondering if it was over or not, then there’d be another thing to do. I’m glad we started the process when we did (our flight ended up being delayed before it sat on the runway, but I would have been nervous about getting there on time had we started the process later!).