Orille Haugan, Linden Zinn and Bob Bamford sit around a table in their makeshift campsite, chatting jovially and relaxing after a full day of travel.Whereas most people who take a trip away from home during the summer jump in a car, or take an airplane to get to their destination, Haugan, Zinn, Bamford and company are in the midst of a very different type of summer trip.The group of Métis adventurers have been traveling the old-fashioned way to St. Victor over the past month.The appearance of four horse-drawn wagons in the Macoun area raised a few eyebrows on the afternoon of Aug. 4.Shortly after 4 p.m., the wagons came to a stop and set up camp just south of the Macoun hockey rink. From out of wagons, adorned with the Manitoba provincial flag and the blue-and-white Métis flag came 14 vacationers from different parts of Manitoba.The expedition took off from Beauséjour, just Northeast of Winnipeg on July 1, with the plan to reach St. Victor, near Assiniboia, by Aug. 17.Altogether the horses are able to travel between 15 and 20 miles a day, and every six days, the group takes a day off to allow the horses to rest Bamford said.Bamford said the travelers were accompanying a couple who had recently retired and were returning to St. Victor.In order to get the couple's horses all the way to the South-Central Saskatchewan town, the group thought it might be fun to make a trip of it and have the animals pull them the entire 800 km.When asked why exactly the group decided to make the journey, the resounding answer was: "for fun."Jazzmin Cameron and Brandon Bamford, high school students from Winnipeg and Oak Point, respectively, were travelling alongside their grandparents on the journey.Cameron, who's heading into grade 10, said most of her friends were making trips out to their cabins during the summer, so she thought it would be fun to tag along with her grandpa for a few months of adventuring.For Orille Haugan, the trip has been a great way for the youngsters to spend time with the older folks - something they might not have a whole lot longer to do. It's also a way of passing on certain Métis traditions to the younger generation, he added.Aside from a broken axle on one of the wagons that set the group back a day, the trip has been smooth sailing up to this point they said.To best accommodate the horses and their hooves, the travelers stick to as many mud- and back-roads as they can.If all goes according to plan, the Métis adventurers will reach their destination by mid-August, having set up camp in 48 different sites along the way.
