Southern Saskatchewan has had a terrible time these last few months. Normally they get rain and snow melt early, then they get a hot fairly dry summer, aside from the occasional thunder storm. Climate-wise they are similar to Eastern Montana or Western North Dakota. Well this year it just hasn't stopped raining. The Trans-Canada highway got washed out and won't be fully repaired until fall. The Kawacatoose First Nation got hit with a tornado and are having to rebuild most of the town. Yorkton got a major flood and is recovering. The farmers have had to write off this years crop as the fields were just too wet to go into. Our neighbours, Penny and Dave were back there (they are from the area originally) and one of the kids (I use kids carefully as they are now in their 30s and have kids of their own) said to Penny "Oh I don't remember a lake on this side of town. When did they build that?" Penny just laughed "That's not a lake. That's a field." Some of you may remember the flooding in the upper Midwest in the mid 1990s when from space it looked like there was another Great Lake running from Southern Minnesota through Iowa, into Northern Missouri. That's what it is like in Saskatchewan. Penny said that in the two weeks they were there there were periods when it rained hard for several days at a stretch. Between these were occasional severe hailstorms. It has really been bad.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2010/07/23/sk-sask-weather-disasters-10723.html
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2010/07/07/sk-yorkton-flood-cleanup.html
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2010/07/22/sk-hail-storm-107222.html

The reason our neighbours (Dave and Penny) were there was, and those of you that follow us on Facebook may remember me mentioning this, that Dave's dad had been washed away in the floods. He and a couple of buddies had been driving around the local back roads checking on their friends' farms. They went to cross a low spot in the road. It did have a couple of inches of water over the road but it really didn't look too bad so they tried to ford it. (Whom of us hasn't done that one time or another). What they didn't know, because it was hidden by the muddy water, was the road had been washed out and where it looked like there was only a couple inches of water was actually a 30 foot gap where the water was 14-16 feet deep. They dropped into the chasm, and out of sight. The driver was able to bail out, the passenger in the back seats didn't make it. Dave's dad got out of the truck but the panic of the crash and the shock of hitting the cold water caused a heart attack. They found him a good distance downstream a week later.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2010/07/12/sk-river-accident.html

So our neighbours ended up in Yorkton with the rest of their family for nearly two weeks while they searched, and then made arrangements, and had the funeral. The arrangements were complicated by two factors. First as I mentioned previously Yorkton had been flooded. Most of the businesses were closed, the restaurants were closed, only one hotel was running, the florist was barely functioning and many of the main roads were closed. Yorkton is a town about the size of Marshall Minnesota but  over 1000 houses had water damage, even the city water supply was contaminated. So arranging things was limited by what was actually functioning. Secondly when they called the Priest to set up a time there was a problem. Seems that Dave's family is Ukrainian Orthodox. As luck would have it there was some kind of major convention of Ukrainian Orthodox clergy that week. Every Ukrainian Orthodox minister from BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Yukon and Manitoba was in Winnipeg and no provision for any 'fill in' staffing had been made. I guess they figured that people would be polite enough to not get born or die while they were gone. Fortunately one Minister came back Monday evening so they had the service EARLY Tuesday morning and everyone went directly from the church to the airport.

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

D&M


Saturday was a nice day and we had no plans for work in the house so we took a walk down at Neck Point Park.  The pictures are from our walk.


Even thistles can be pretty





It was so clear that we could see Mt Baker Washington from the beach