Manitoba South and West of Winnipeg Part 2

We travelled from the Winnipeg area south on HWY-75 which runs directly south to the border with North Dakota. We were planning on going to Altona to see the largest easel in the world.
Altona, the community is home to the largest replica of a famous painting by Vincent van Gogh. It was named ‘The largest painting on an easel by The Guinness Book of World Records in 1998. It was the first of three works in the Big Easel Project by local artist Cameron Cross, based on the painting Sunflowers. The base (easel) stands at 76’6″ and the canvas was made by laminating together 24 sheets of 3/4″ plywood and splattering it with 17 gallons of paint to create the picture. (Wikipedia)

As we were looking for the giant easel we came across Gallery in the Park, it was like a museum inside the house but the garden had a Park like setting with some very interesting pieces of art scattered throughout the yard.

There was also a couple of other items in another location.

We eventually found what we were looking for.

From Altona we travelled northwest to Carman, this is where we would stay the night at the Fairground, there is a campground which is attached to the facility. Our next destination would be Souris, but not directly.

Next morning, we continued on towards Souris. But we would stop in Elm Creek first to visit the World’s largest Fire Hydrant.

From Elm Creek it was on to Portage la Prairie, here we would find the World’s largest Coca Cola Can.

Continuing along we turned off the Trans-Canada highway and travelled up the Yellowhead highway (HWY-16) to Gladstone, here we would find Happy Rock.

From Gladstone we continued west on HWY-16 for about 20kms/12 miles then turned north on HWY-352 to Arden, this is where we found the World’s largest Crocus plus other items of interest.

We turned around and headed back to HWY-16 continuing west until we reached HWY-10 where we turned south towards Brandon. We thought we may stay in Brandon at the Walmart, after checking the location we decided against this and continued south on HWY-10 to HWY-21 where we turned west to Souris. We checked out the local city campground in the river valley and settled in for the night.
Next morning, we ventured back into Souris for a quick tour of the local sites.