We started off the day by finding the car wash we noticed yesterday.  The result of our having to Travel the Gravel on our car was a dusty bug splattered mess!!  We figured out the system at the car wash with the help from a lady ahead of us.  Pretty simply really.  Because you have no loonies, you put your $20 bill into the change machine and get about a pound of loonies, then you select the option you want, like bug wash, soap, rinse etc.  We selected the bug wash first as the front of the car and front of the side view mirrors resemble a Jackson Pollock painting.  Lots of multi-coloured bug guts.  We let the bug wash work for a bit and load another loonie in once we change the selection to soap, we do a couple of loonies worth of soap before we go for a loonie of rinsing.  We leave with a cleaner car, not a perfectly clean car, but a cleaner car 🙂

We head north towards Moose Jaw.  It is only about an hour away so we get their quickly.  We find the hotel we have booked.  It is quite impressive.  It was built in 1928.  It operated as a hotel until 1990 when it was closed for renovations that lasted 13 years!!!   Ka-ching, ka-ching!!  They are still doing some renovations today.  This is the inside of the elevator.  You don’t see this style of panel very often these days.

This is a photo from their web site.  It looks exactly like our room.

We had heard before we arrived that Al Capone spent a lot of time in Moose Jaw in the 1920’s.  There was a rail line that took him from Chicago right to Moose Jaw.  There are tunnels below this city that he is purported to have used to hide from authorities.

There is a company that does tours of the Capone tunnels, with cast members that play characters from the time of Capone.  They made the tour a lot of fun and gave us a glimpse of what Moose Jaw was like in the late 1920’s.

After our tour we headed to a cute little bar called Rosies on the River.  It is on River Street which used to be the Red Light District in Moose Jaw in the 20’s.  We initially sat inside as it is very very hot here today.  We were chatting with some local residents at the next table.  They had some great insights into the Bad Lands of Saskatchewan, which Willow Bunch and Fife Lake are part of.  They left and a couple that were on our Tunnel tour invited us over to sit with them outside.  There is now a nice breeze, so it is quite pleasant out there.  These people are from New Zealand and have been travelling in North America for a couple of weeks.  They purchased a Dodge Caravan van in Quebec for $1,700 and have travelled a long way in Canada.  About 7,000 kms so far.  They sleep in the van and find parking/camping spots in lovely Canadian National Parks and other beautiful wild spots.  It was a great afternoon.

Another interesting thing about Southern Saskatchewan that we didn’t know before a few weeks ago.  No photos were allowed, so not many images today.