to Winnipeg, Manitoba

We had a delightful show while we were eating breakfast. Apparently, we’re parked next to a prairie dog ‘town’. French trappers heard their barking sounds and called them little dogs so eventually; prairie dogs. They are small mammals; rodents, which makes them related to squirrels. Their lifespan is only 3 -4 years and they are the natural excavators of the mixed grass prairie. There are 5 dogs running and eating in the field beside us. They pop up and down into the burrow and are really fun to watch.
We’re going up I 29 and grains and elevators have returned again. Its flat land and you see crops and small farms dotting the route. We passed into Manitoba and see fields of canola, corn and flax. It is near the 'red coat trail' where the R.C.M.P. marched west.
The Europeans who explored Canada in the 18th century were awed by the multitude of hug furry cattle, as many as 60 million bison that swarmed across these plains. They were the main food for the Plains Indians and later Metis. This one is from Custer State Park. A Canadian Aboriginal food of bison meat dried, pounded and mixed with fat and sometimes berries became pemmican, which was packed in bags and stores. Hides were transformed into heavy robes that became the fashion in Europe and tongues became a delicacy. The buffalo became victim to reckless slaughter, carcasses littering the plains. White settlers realized they could starve the Indians by setting fire to the plains, killing thousands of the animals, driving the rest into what is now the United States. By 1885 the bison faced extinction in Canada and about 1900, the government protected the bison.
We topped our Diesel outside Winnipeg and were happy with 74.5/gallon. Not bad. We’re booked in Travelers RV , a Coast to Coast park for 5 nights. Beautiful sunny weather, no fuel shortage here.