Sask-bound

New adventures are good for the soul.  I have the joy of embarking on two new adventures in these recent days. One, the adventure of marriage, which for me at this moment is less than a month old and already full of both joys and challenges.  Secondly I have the adventure of leaving my home province to create a temporary home in one I am much less familiar with; moving to Saskatchewan for the summer to work on what is now our acreage.  This second adventure might be a bit of a stretch for a travel blog, but expand it to adventure and it's a perfect fit.  So off we go!
Many people we have told our plan to sigh a bit and express how wonderful they think it all sounds. There is a certain romanticism to the idea, but so far let me tell you that it has been a lot of packing and loading and unloading and shuffling both things and boxes between houses and vans and garages. Dirt and sweat. And we certainly have not seen the end of those. So now we have  driven a van full of tools, furniture, clothes and other possessions the distance to Melfort.  We got a late start, and so arrived late, after midnight.

The drive was flat, an ocean of green and yellow on either side of the highway.  It always takes longer than I think it will to actually cross into Saskatchewan.  And we pass a lot of towns that I always expect will be bigger than they are.  The sunset was lovely and took a long fade from oranges to those deep blues of night. 

Today our mission is to start to figure out a plan of attack. It's a warm breezy day here and so the mosquitos aren't bad, but I have already discovered a tick, and I am trying not to be intimidated by the mouse droppings and the mess at the house. We'll need to make the place livable unless we want the increasingly less desirable option of tenting among the ticks. This means a lot of cleaning and disinfecting, sorting out water and brushing out the cobwebs. 

And then we need to figure out what needs to be done to the house reno-wise. I am tempted to jump in and do some of the apparent tasks (like paint the siding), but it's not helpful to do that because there are bigger changes we're considering and if we decide to do those, there's a proper order to attack things in and it won't start with the siding. There are also some things to be tested and calculated and mulled over, and unknowns to figure out.  Especially for me, knowing so little about all this stuff.

The place is beautiful though, and if it can be made more hospitable, that would be golden.