June 25 Brandon Manitoba is the destination of the day

We started out today just after 11:00am today. I have to be in Brandon between noon and 3pm for two shops and the other is anytime during business hours. I figured we would be in Brandon just after 1pm if there were no delays.
Winnipeg has two seasons, Winter and Construction. We were going to take Inkster right to the West Perimeter and get out of town fast. It didn’t end up that way. We knew there was a bit of construction on Inkster, but it turned into a long line of single traffic, slow congestion. We decided to cut our losses and turn North on Brookside and hit the Perimeter Hwy from that angle because the construction was extended down Inkster past Brookside. We got onto the Perimeter, and took it around to the West leg, and found more construction. It was good that we left early. We didn’t get out of the construction on the Perimeter until just after 12pm.

The highway through Headingly and as far as the White Horse was quite congested as well. It’s Friday, and I guess people are heading out of town for the weekend.
We stopped at the White Horse and took a few pictures.

One of the plaques at the statue explains the significance of the statue.
It says "White Horse Plain. A Sioux Indian Chief wished to marry the beautiful daughter of an Assiniboine Chief. The Assiniboine, however, gve his daughter's hand to a Cree Chief with whom she was in love because the Cree offered a rare snow-white horse as a gift. The angry Sioux pursued the Cree and his bride whose father had returned the horse to help them escape. The Sioux killed them both but the horse escaped. For years it was seen roaming the surrounding plain and in memory of the young lovers this part of Manitoba became known as White Horse Plain."
It's interesting how places get their names. This has always been a landmark to denote the start of the Old #1 Hwy. It’s a great little twisty road to take from The White Horse, through the town of St Francis Xaviar up to Portage La Prairie.

Then on to Brandon. We hit a stretch of construction between Carberry and Brandon. It looks like they are widening the highway. It almost looks like they are making it a three lane highway in each direction. What an odd thing to do on this stretch of the road. That’s our tax dollars hard at work.
We made it to Brandon in good time. I have been there before, so it was fairly easy to navigate around to the different shops I had to do. One was on Victoria Ave and then two were on 18th Street. We went to the mall as well and checked out a great little restaurant. It’s called Five Guys Burger and Fries. When you step in the door you can smell the fresh French fries cooking. The portions are large and the taste is superb. But why does Brandon have this burger joint and not Winnipeg? Is it because Winnipeg already has several exceptional burger joints? Or will we be getting a Five Guys sometime in the near future? Hmmm. When we got our food, the burger was buried deep in the bottom of a paper bag stuffed full of hot, freshly made, home-style fries. Oh my!

After our great meal, we headed back to Winnipeg. We stopped in Austin to take a picture of the Threshing Machine on top of a post at the entrance to the town.



Then we went down the road a bit to the entrance of the Museum. There were two thresher machines at the entrance to the museum. We decided not to go into the museum. I just got a few pictures of the machines.

After that it was straight on to Winnipeg. Nothing much happened on the highway home. We got home around 6pm, and I entered the information for my Mystery Shop reports.

June 24 A Quiet Drive to Selkirk

I got an offer to drive up to Selkirk, MB to perform a Mystery Shop. It’s a 45 minute drive there, which is not too bad for a single shop, if the money is right. And the money was right. I had a specific time I had to perform the shop, it had to be at Noon. So we loaded up the van and headed North.
The road to Selkirk can become quite boring if you drive it too many times. Luckily there are alternate routes. Today we decided to turn off Hwy #9 at River Road. We went past a great looking golf course, and had the Red River with us all the way to Lockport.

We stopped at St Andrews on the Red. It’s a historic Parish along the Red River, the oldest church in Western Canada.

The plaque reads “ St Andrew’s Anglican Church - Beginning in 1828 the Rev. W. Cockran held religious services in the homes of settlers in this area. In 1829 he established a permanent residence at Grand Rapids on the Red River and by 1831 had built a small wooden church. His growing congregation required a larger building and the present stone church, the oldest in Western Canada, was begun in 1845 and completed in 1849. This simple but beautiful building became the centre of missionary activity in Rupert’s Land and continues to be the focus of an active parish life.”

Historically I have always known this place by a legend. It was known in these parts that if you visited the location at Midnight on Halloween Night and walked three times backward around the Church you would disappear. It is something I have never tried. What if there was something to the legend.
There is a sign up in front of the Church prohibiting visitors after Dusk. It has attracted many a late night visitor to test the legend.

The graveyard was also a popular place after dark for teens.

We took care of the shop in Selkirk, then went down Main Street to find the Catfish. Selkirk is known for its Catfish.

The plaque on this huge statue says “Placed to Honour the memory of Chuck Norquay who through his love of fishing the Red River, successfully promoted Selkirk & District as the Catfish Capital of the World November 10, 1955 – August 18, 1993 God Rest His Beautiful Soul”.

Then back to Winnipeg to finish a few other shops inside the City.

June 21 On The Road Again ....

Who started the idea for this trip?
Well, its complicated. There were several Mystery Shops available in Rural Manitoba. But I hate to take a shop if I cannot get a bonus or extra money to pay for my milage and my time spent travelling. A few different companies had a few different options. And then there was of course a bit of a bonus I could get for a shop in Morris, MB. Then I got an email telling me I could get a travel incentive bonus for a few shops. There it was. The opportunity to put a trip together. I applied for the incentive and got it. I now had Morris and Morden scheduled. I applied for three other shops located in Morden, Carmen and Portage La Prairie. That was all I needed to complete the trip. I had five shops scheduled, and I could pick up another two on my way home in the West End of Winnipeg. That would make the trip a total of seven shops. Not bad for a days work.
On this trip only one shop at a specific time range I had to hit. It was an afternoon range and in the middle of the trip, so that was easy enough to accomodate.
When we got to Morden this trip, one of the shops I was to do had a sign on the door stating the business was closed. And it was a shop I was getting an incentive for. The good side of the story is I still get the travel incentive. The bad side is I do not get paid as much for a shop that is closed. Instead of the regular fee, I get $5.00. That is pretty standard for Mystery Shop companies to pay $5.00 for locations that are closed. Then when I completed the second shop in Morden it was poring rain. I mean it was really coming down. As we left town the sky was a very dark grey and it got really dark for a while. Luckily that bad weather did not last long, and by the time we reached Carmen, it was no longer raining.
We got to Portage La Prairie in good time and then headed for home along the Trans Canada Hwy. It rained a bit more, off and on, all the way to Winnipeg.
We still had a bit of energy left when we hit the city limits, so we took care of the two other shops we had planned for in the West End area.
I had more shops I could do along the way home, but you can only do so many in a day. The shops still had to be entered online when I got home. And that could take several hours, depending on the type of shop it was and how much information the company requires.

June 20 Fathers Day and a trip to Gimli

We had to go north of Winnipeg on Fathers Day and I had a Mystery Shop that needed to get done in Gimli, so we combined the two.
This shop had a bit of flexibility in dates. I had a few days to choose from, so I took advantage of a trip we were already taking along Hwy #9. We left early in the day and went up to Gimli for the shop. We got a few pictures while in Gimli. There is a Viking statue located in a park along the water. There is also a plane mounted on a pillar, and a cute fountain with frogs spitting water.
While in town, we looked up an old friend and had a visit. Then we were headed back down the Hwy for a Fathers Day BBQ, and then home.
It's nice when we can combine personal visits with the Mystery Shops.

June 18 'Three Hour Tour' through Stonewall

This trip started with an invitation to Mystery Shop a location in Stonewall, MB. Of course I accepted. I also added on Woodlands and St Laurent to the tour.
Our itinerary this time around had us in Woodlands before noon but we had to be in Stonewall after lunch. That worked out fine. It was a three hour round trip adventure. We left just after 10:00am and were in Woodlands by 11:00am. Then a quick trip up to St Laurent and back again as far as Warren and on to Stonewall. We got into Stonewall in good time. Its good to plan the trip keeping in mind the time one arrives at each location. If you get there too late, you don't get paid for the shop. If you get there too early, then you have to entertain yourself. So plan the entertainment stops along the way. You don't want to get stuck in Boring-Town for two hours, trying to kill time.
The road up to Woodlands and St Laurent has always been quite a rough road. The last time we were on Hwy #6 we saw some construction to the side. We didn't pay a lot of attention to it, but wondered what exactly they were up to. Then we were on the highway, going along #6. And it was smooth, very oddly smooth. We were on a new stretch of highway, the one we saw on April 29th. Even when we travel the same roads, sometimes they are not the same.
We didn't get any pictures on this trip, sorry.

June 17 Destination Kenora Ontario

I was asked to go to Kenora to perform a Mystery Shop, so of course I went. I was able to pick up two other shops along the way. One was in Lorette, MB and the other was at Prawda, MB.
Some of these shops are time sensitive. That means I can only perform the shop between specific times of the day. I was not able to perform the shop in Lorette until after lunch, so we did not get going until about 11:00am. I was also able to take advantage of the direction in the city I was travelling in, and perform one of my Winnipeg shops along the way. It was close to Fermor and Lagimodiere, so we did a quick stop there, then headed out of town.

When doing these shops, over the course of a day, its important to make very good notes on each Mystery Shop I perform. I will have to enter the shops online at the end of the day, when I get back home, and I will need to remember the details of each of the different shops. For some of the shops I make notes in a notebook, and staple the receipt to the page. I make sure I have all of the information needed to complete the report. For other shops I will make a printout of the form I need to fill out, and hand write the information onto the form. Then later when I get home, I transcribe the information into the online report.
When we were in Kenora, we found a statue of a fish. It was along the lakeside of beautiful Lake of the Woods. The sign reads "Husky the Musky says 'Prevent water pollution' in Lake of the Woods, Kenora, ON". The trip out to Kenora was wonderful. The Canadian Shield starts a little before Whiteshell Provincial Park, and Kenora is at the start of Lake of the Woods. This is a 'must see' part of Canada.

I was asked to go to Killarney Manitoba

So, I was asked to go to Killarney, Manitoba for a Mystery Shop. These companies will pay bonuses or provide extra incentive to travel, if there are no Mystery Shoppers in the area to perform a shop they need done. I was asked to go to Killarney and paid to make it worth my while. So I decided I was going on June 12. I hade a look at other available shops I may take advantage of, to add to the trip. I found two other shops. One was in Portage La Prairie, and another in Carberry. So, given those locations, we headed out Hwy #1 West to Portage, then on to Carberry, and then south to Killarney.
Along the way we decided to start collecting pictures of those wacky statues found in so many of the small towns. We should have started this earlier, but you know what they say about hindsight.

May 2010 trips I have taken

In May I had the opportunity to take three trips while doing my Mystery Shopping. The first trip was on May 16th and took me to East St. Paul, then Oakbank, and finally to Beausejour.
My second trip was May 26. We took the motorcycle on a ride through a bit of Southern Manitoba. We went to Steinbach, then over to Morden and Carmen. It was a bit windy that day, but still a great trip. The farmers fields were starting to come up, and the crops looked like they were going to produce a great yield this year.
The next trip was to Lockport, then Selkirk, and finnished by going to Headingly.

Travels in Manitoba during the month of April

To do this properly I am going to have to back track a bit. I have already done some travelling since beginning my Mystery Shopping career back in February of this year.
The first trip I took was April 11-12. I started off going to Gimli, Manitoba and staying overnight at Winnipeg Beach. The next day I went on to Grandview and Gilbert Plains. I took the scenic route over the narrows.
The next stop was Neepawa. I was there the day after a murder took place in that small town. The police were still parked around the "crime scene" and police tape was surrounding the house.

After Neepawa, I went to Portage La Prairie, then back home.
The next day I was back out. I went back to Neepawa to grab another Mystery Shop. Then I stopped off in Portage La Prairie again for a few more shops.
To round off the month of April I took two more small trips. The first was on the 18th when I went back to Portage La Prairie. The second was to the town of St. Laurent.