A Trip West in 1934....Not local photos but a local family!

We complain about a few potholes in our paved roads and getting a little dust on our prides of joy, but we never had to encounter anything like this in our travels....well not in my memory anyway.
My friend Bob Gill loaned me these next 6 incredible photos from 1934 showing his aunt and uncle Doris and Alfred McFarlane as well as his grandmother on a road trip from Fort William and Port Arthur west to a little place in southern Saskatchewan called Arcola. The best photos and stories are from our own family photo albums and this was obviously quite the trip.

Starting on a dry road on the ever-so-flat Canadian prairies in 1934...looks like just west of Winnipeg, it got a little greasy.....

Then it got REAL GREASY......, as Bob's uncle is trying to get the cars past each other. I guess a mud road would be OK if you didn't have to encounter any on-coming traffic.

Finally driving on by and on their way to Arcola.... Here's what Arcola's Main Street looked like in 1934.

Here's how Arcola looks today with a 2006 census population of a whopping 504 people(probably not that many more were there in 1934). Arcola's claim to fame was that it served as the location for the Allan King film feature of W.O. Mitchell's "Who Has Seen The Wind", and the town also has the distinction as being the place where Canadian author James Sinclair Ross wrote his 1941 novel "As For Me And My House". You can read about the film stated above by clicking here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076919/
The following two photos are also from Arcola but taken about 20 years earlier that Bob's pictures(1914 and 1915). I found these following two photos on the Arcola museum web page.

This one is titled "A. R. Carefoot's Garage 1914" and the last one is titled "Main Street Arcola 1915"
Thanks to Bob for the great photos and story. There are literally millions of stories out there like this, but the family connection to Fort William, Port Arthur and old cars make it a great piece. Hope you enjoyed this.
Click on photos to enlarge!