The Ambitious Odometer: Winnipeg

Monday, July 7, 2014

{Road Trip} Day Five - Winnipeg and the Center of North America

We decided to spend most of the day in Winnipeg and started out downtown in and around the area called The Forks.

We walked across the Esplanade Riel...

and dined on traditional French cuisine in the Saint Boniface area of the city...

After lunch, we crossed back over the bridge and drove a short way over to Assiniboirne Park to spend a few hours at the Nature Playground.

I initially planned to stop at this playground because it included a statue immortalizing Winnie the Bear, a real bear cub that inspired A.A. Milne to create his character, Winnie-the-Pooh!

It's a neat story that you can read more about here, but it could actually be said that Winnie-the-Pooh's name was derived from the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada!

The park and grounds are absolutely beautiful, and the playground is fabulous...

We absolutely loved spending our afternoon there...

We left Winnipeg and headed south into North Dakota and the center of our continent...

We traveled on to Bismarck to spend the night, cruising through Minot on the way...

Minot... BOTH Hubby and I had heard of it before... Hubby, because he'd met people stationed at the Air Force base there through his work with the Army and me, well, I knew I recognized it for some reason... It's the home of actor, Josh Duhamel, my favorite... Yes, I know... Hubby humored me and drove around looking for a sign to honor old Josh as I'm like - "If there is a sign with like..."MINOT - Hometown of Josh Duhamel", we HAVE to stop and take a picture!", and Hubby is like - "If there is a sign like that here, I'd be really surprised..." Way to crush my excitement... :)

Well, he was right as far as we could tell, but we did find the restaurant that he owns with a couple of his childhood friends, 10 North Main...