Trip review - Manitou Resort & Spa

A bonus post as it is too long to include in my weekly post.

Our weekend at Manitou was short but fun. When I was about ten minutes out, I called S to see where she was at. Funny thing, she was in the same small town at the local thrift store! I caught up with her there, and she found a vintage "Family" cribbage board with the deck of cards and the pieces. The board was made of cardboard, the pieces were like those from a Sorry game, and surprisingly the deck of cards was complete. The reason it was a family board was eight people could play as singles.

Since we were in town, we decided to stop for lunch. The gals at the thrift store recommended the cafe across the street, "Lost Aviator Coffee Lounge." S had the beef sandwich with a pasta salad and we ought to have shared it, but I chose the sausage roll. Both were good, but pricey. 

We arrived at the resort around 2 p.m. and were able to head up to our room. We chatted for a bit before heading to the mineral spa for a soak. Later we had dinner at the Water's Edge restaurant (again pricey but good), before we settled in for a drink or two and a few games of cribbage.

S's friends, B & B showed up the next morning. We expected them about 11:30 but were returning to our room after a soak in the pools at 11:15 and met them at the elevator! We quickly changed and we all headed to B1's van for our lunch. She had picked up sandwich meat, bread and condiments. B1 drives a Pleasure-Way camper van with a kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. Lots of storage - it's very nice.

There was a flea market happening down the road and as we couldn't get into our cabin/suite until after 2 p.m. we decided to visit it. Basically it was a garage sale at the drive-in theater. This one fellow was set up with a sound system and sang for us. :)

Back at the spa we were able to use our room from the night prior to change to use the pools. After another nice soak, we were able to pack up and move to the cabin. It was quite nice, with a full kitchen, living room area, two bedrooms with queen beds, a large bathroom, and out the back door a large deck and a BBQ. 

Once we had settled in and had a drink, the other gals headed back over to the spa. I'd had enough so stayed behind to relax. I chatted with my brother, my daughter, and my son before I started putting dinner together. I used the BBQ to roast vegetables (potatoes/carrots/onion), to reheat a loaf of garlic bread, and to grill the chicken skewers. The latter two weren't put on the grill until the gals returned from their soak. They were pretty happy to find dinner was nearly ready.

On one trip out to the grill, I spotted two deer in the backyard. I called to the others to come look, but they weren't nearly as excited as I was. 

The evening was spent visiting, having a couple of drinks, a few hands of cribbage and another card game. I can tell you, that I was skunked in cribbage and was in last place in the card game.  We were all ready for bed and in our beds by 10:30 p.m.

We had our breakfast at the Water's poolside cafe...slightly less pricey than our previous meals at the resort. After packing up the cabin, we went back to the spa for our last soak, as we had to check out by noon. I headed out before lunch and grabbed a sandwich at the Subway in Watrous. 

About a half hour before I reached Regina, I checked in with my brother and found he was home. Since he's only a 15 minute drive off the main highway I told him to put on the tea pot. While we waited for the kettle to boil, he showed off the fence he's built around the garden. I assumed it was to keep out deer, but no, it's meant to keep the neighbour's dog off the plants. Apparently Wally likes to visit when someone is working in the garden and tends to lie down on the plants. That might be fine if she was a wee dog, but she's massive! I have no idea what her breed(s) might be but she'd be taller than I am if she stood on her back feet. (I'm 5'1")

I was pulling in the driveway just after 3 p.m. and ready for a long shower. I had rinsed off at the spa, but those minerals do a number on your hair. It needed some serious conditioning! 

We've already decided this needs to be an annual event. Last year it was just S and I, we doubled our group this year, maybe we'll add a few more next year. Should we do it again, I think we'll rent the cabin instead of doing the move from one building to another. Although the hotel was kind enough to let us use the room until we moved over, we were locked out briefly when we went to pack up for the move and had to get a new room card. In addition, it was nice to be able to prepare some of our own meals, and a lot less costly. Though we will need to plan our meals a little better as we ran out of some items and had far to much of others. 

It was a great weekend get-away!