Nice Day Trip

Yesterday I was able to take a nice day trip up to North Battleford to attend the Royal Canadian Legion's District meeting. Originally there were going to be 3 or 4 of us taking the trip, however, due to some unplanned for sickness there was only myself and the bro-in-law Ron who made the trip.

We departed at 09:30 a.m. and arrived in North Battleford just in time for lunch. As I haven't really been back to the city for going on 11 years, I had no idea what was or was not a good place to stop for lunch. We decided on Humpties, however, when we got to the location it look liked the parking lot was fairly full. Glancing across the road at the Tropical Inn we saw their lot wasn't too bad so we pulled in and headed for Smitty's.

It was fairly full in Smitty's due to a hockey team just arriving, but we got seated within 5 minutes and had a coffee within a minute or. We didn't order anything spectacular and within a reasonable time frame we had out food which was fairly tasty.

After the lunch we headed for the Legion to get registered for the meeting that was to commence at 1:00 p.m. We found a seat near the head table and got seated in. As I was sitting I looked around to take in the changes that had been made in my absence. Of course I was a member of the North Battleford Legion for 25 years or so. I really didn't find a lot of changes made in the place. It looked darn close to what it looked like the last time I slipped in for a wobbly pop about 11 years ago. The interesting part was it appeared the same faces that had been running the local Legion for the last 20 plus years were the same faces that were seated in the audience. It is like any organization, some folks are always stepping forward and taking charge and others sit back and don't take part at all.

The meeting was fairly informative and Ron and I were able to capture the Zone golf for the Hanley Legion for 2007 (June 10th, 2007) and the District curling for 2009. We were going to try for the District golf for 2009 but thought better of it after a moments reflection. We figured we have our hands full trying to put on the Zone golf this year and the District curling next year let alone trying for a third tournament.

After a quick bubbly on the conclusion of the meeting Ron and I got back in the truck and pointed it southbound. On departure from the Legion I took a different street than our arrival just so I could get a look around the city that I called home for 21 years. Quite honestly there is not a lot of change from what I could see. The same businesses (more or less) were still open for business and the same empty lots were still there. On doing some checking afterwards I found the population has stayed about the same. It just doesn't seem to go up or down too much which I would say is probably attributed to a lack of any large industry in the area.

We arrived back in Hanley around 7:30 p.m. and other than being a bit stiff from sitting all day found it was a fairly nice day all in all. Still it was a nice visit even though it was too short. Hopefully Sam and I can point the new truck in that direction this summer on our way north and take a little longer trip through the city and get to visit a few of our long time friends that are still residing in the city.

We'll see.