On a Sunday afternoon in August, the idea of driving to Humboldt for some McDonalds fries seemed like a perfectly acceptable premise for a road trip. We piled into the car as a full family (also know as: taking the dog along for the ride) for the one hour drive east for our first visit to Humboldt since moving to Saskatchewan more than four years ago.

Perfectly blue prairie skies were the backdrop, making some highway construction delays tolerable as we looked over the vast fields which make up about 98% of the scenery between Saskatoon and Humboldt. We didn’t arrive in the town with much in the way of plans other than to get out of the car and explore the downtown area.

Along Main Street (really 8th Street but also known as Highway 20… not sure why a road in a town of 6,000 people needs three names) there were some interesting murals on the sides of a number of buildings. The works, “Art by Urban Lukan” showed prairie vignettes, and were a nice touch to the picturesque centre of town.

We leisurely walked along Main Street. Our dog was interested in all the new smells, and while she lingered on a patch of grass, I was mesmerized by standing in a railway crossing just east of the station in town and watching the rails disappear over the horizon.

Last stop was for those McDonalds fries, and oddly, our dog wasn’t at all interested in what we were eating. She looked exhausted by her walk and ready for the drive home. Not a bad way to change up the scenery in the middle of a pandemic on a summer afternoon.