(Day 4) Mosasaur

In southern MB, you have to look for fun, as it might not find you when traversing the acres and acres of farmland, as far as the eye can see. Today, we looked as far out as we Altonians are likely to, and decided to head to Morden to explore the “dinosaur museum” (as my Mother called it.) I was incredulous that there was even a museum in Morden, so after lunch we started on our journey.


Looks like we are in the right place…

The first thing the girl said to us in our intro the museum was that it was not a dinosaur museum. lol. I didn’t mind though, we roll with the punches, be they dinosaur or not. The museum is actually called the ‘Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre’ and it had just that – discovered marine reptile fossils. You see, in the Cretaceous Period, there were air, land, and sea reptiles, but by far, dinosaurs are the most famous. Manitoba was covered in water known as the western interior seaway. Long story made short/cool, some nasty-ass reptiles lived in the body of water over my homeland and were as fierce, though less notorious, than their dinosaur cousins. The nastiest one of all was the Mosasaur. He’s ugly, too.





Here’s Bruce – he’s the largest marine reptile skeleton (though I’m sure it’s a plastercast.)




Ps, I would have totally given him a cooler name than Bruce. Probably ‘Death from Below 1979’ or something.

Here’s his fat turtle cousin (I think.)



Morden has…grown, I guess. They now have a Boston Pizza randomly in the middle of a field outside of town.



There’s also this bizarre store called “Saban & Company” next door.



I don’t know who Saban is or why they needed to add the “& Company” part, but I can’t imagine why someone decided to name their store that. Here’s my little rant on why clothing stores in the middle of shit-nowhere don’t appeal to me. 1) The items in store don’t have a overriding theme or even relation to one another. This store carried dresses for $150 AND fake Guess bags. They also carried some cheap looking pleather belts, Spanx, and Sketchers. 2) The prices are outrageous compared to what you can find at better stores elsewhere. I did find an item or two I didn’t mind, but the prices were absurd. I guess they think they have a captive audience in small towns and people will buy? Ah, no. And finally, 3) I guess I’m pretentious and don’t want to shop where farmer wives can pick up their sensible sandals, black capris, and floral-printed polyester shirts under one roof in the middle of a field. I love you Mom.

We then forwarded on to Winkler where I got to go into the Southland Mall. This place was the pinnacle of my childhood – this mall was crazy-full of awesome stores like Stylerite, Reitmans, and Warehouse One. I remember Santa drawing ridiculous crowds at Christmas and shopping for hair dye (Blondissima!) at Pfahl’s Drugs. Over the past fifteen years, the mall has slowly withered into a ghost town. The only remaining relic is Warehouse One…and the play pit area.



The reason we showed up here was to visit Jonny’s Java as all my friends had been raving about how awesome it was.



Yeah, it was dece.

We did a bit of a drive around Winkler and went to the site of the old hospital, the one I was born in. It’s now a park and so I looked into the air…the space of earth I came forth into! This is getting weird and hard to explain.

Once we had arrived back on the farm, I set out for some enjoying of the landscape. They’ve installed all these windmills in the fields near our house that my Dad calls a “scurge on the land”. lol, how dramatic.








Personally, I think they are freaking cool. And sustainable!






After the mini photo shoot starring the windmills (trust me, I have many, many more), I went to visit my cousin’s sons grave, about a mile from my house. I’ve actually always really liked that cemetery (we used to play there as kids – how morbid!) and now I know someone buried there.




I don’t know what that stuff pushed into the dirt is, but I guess its teenage guy stuff.







Just another day on the prairies (and I still have difficulty spelling “prairies), and I love it. Tomorrow we are heading into the city for some shopping as there is an Armani watch I can’t get out of my head that I saw at Costco. Of course.