The hydro dam at Grand Rapids - the reason for the town's existance

Pelicand hang out at the dam, waiting to pick of the food rushing past.

After Grand Rapids, we headed back south, towards Selkirk.

Along the road, our van hit a milestone - 200,000 miles!

We went through Gimli, which has a beatiful beach. We had planned to take the kids swimming, but after the night we'd had, and knowing that we'd be getting in late even if we didn't stop, we decided to press on, to the dismay of all the kids. As it was, Mike and I had spent the day trading off behind the wheel, taking turns sleeping and driving. I wanted to get in as early as possible. So we grabbed some burgers by the beach for dinner, and pressed on to the border.

Ontario at last! After this, it got too dark too fast for pictures. But we joined the Winnipeg cottagers into Ontario. We'd never seen the road to Kenora so busy! But we rolled into town just shy of 11 p.m. or so.

It had been a fun, but greulling trip on the road. Our game of avoiding the Trans Canada took us through some pretty neat places. But everyone was very, very glad to finally stop moving!

Day 6

Ah, sweet sleep.

We woke up ready to take on Saskatchewan! We had a few things we wanted to see, but we were behind even our loosey goosey schedule, so we didn't have much time.

The kids were getting restless by Saskatoon - particularly Dave, who seemed to be getting road-weary. So we stopped at the big river-front park for a run-around break.

The boys, digging in the dirt. Saskatoon was as beautiful as ever - Paris of the Praries, I think they call it. I've only been there twice that I can remember, and I always think we should stop and stay a while. There's lots to do there. But we didn't have time to do anything but chill at the park.

Our first major stop was a national historic site at Batoche. It's the site of a battle between the Metis and the Canadian government, basicly over how the land should be subdivided - the settlers did strips, like in France, but McDonald, who wanted to survey for the railroad, wanted them to do blocks. The Metis dug in their heels. A battle ensued. Many died. The whole park was very pro-Metis. The woman running the admission building was Metis - and very obviously biased. But it was pretty interesting, and the kids enjoyed it.

Ask any of them their favourite part, and they'll say the golf cart! Because the park was so huge, they had golf carts you could sign out. Because we had so many little kids, and it was such a hot day, we snagged one. It was the only way to see the park - there's no way we could have seen the far reaches without it. (And it was super-fun!)

Joan, hanging out in the military tent with her flowers.

The kids explore a Metis rifle pit at Batoche.

Batoche was pretty neat, but they were closing up the park, so it was time to go. When Mike returned the golf cart keys, he got a nice surprise - when we arrived, there was an elderly couple visiting from Edmonton, whose battery had died. So while I was slathering everyone with sunscreen, he gave them a boost. As a thank-you for being a good samaritan, they gave him a Metis cookbook. It's a pretty cool book - it's almost all wild game recipes, so I'm not sure we'll ever do any recipe as its written, but he was really tickled to get it.

We had decided early on that we were definitely camping that night, so we set off. But on our path, we saw something I didn't even know existed - a ferry on the praries! 

This is the road leading to the ferry, which crosses the Saskatchewan River. It's just a platform, which runs on two cables, so it diesn't get swept away. The operator saw us coming, so he pulled the ferry over - it's that little platform you can see on the other side.

This is looking back over the river, while we're on the ferry.

After this, we headed way up north, and wound up camping by the side of the road just outside Flin Flon.

Day 5

We used Oyen as a recharge base. We did some laundry at the hotel - enough to have everyone back in clean clothes. While we did that, the kids gorged on the continental breakfast. We brought plate after plate of muffins, waffles and eggs up to them. After such a light dinner, they were starving. I think all told, we ate a dozen hard-boiled eggs alone. Then we headed into town to finish our laundry, and get John a haircut. This picture is of the kids playing "choo-choo" -Dave's favourite game. Although it looks like they're having fun, they were largely bored, and were at each other for hours, and they each spent most of the time in time-outs just to keep them apart.

 I took John for his haircut. This is his "before" - at least the closest he'd let me get to a before - or an after for that matter. As I said, it was a rough morning, with a bunch of bored, grumpy kids. He got his haircut in a girl's basement - the salon downtown was all booked up, so we looked online, made a few calls, and found a girl named Darcey, who had turned her basement into a studio. She was nice until I mentioned we were going home to Ontario. I had forgotten I was still in Alberta. To thaw her icy glare, I spent the next few minutes explaining how we're NOT southern Ontario, and we're actually closer to Calgary than Toronto. She warmed up a bit after that, but she never treated us the same again.

Oyen is pretty close to the border - another province down!

Straddling the border is a town called Alsask. It's an old army base, with a radar tower, shown here. It's a relic of the cold war - it formed an early warning system to search for Russian missiles headed for the US. The town that grew up around it nearly died when the bas was closed down. It went from 800 people to its current 150 or so. A lot of the buldings rotten away and were torn down. But instead of just letting it be, the town errected signs to commemmorate where each building once stood, and what business or family home was there. It was really eerie. There were ghosts of old city parks and playgrounds, and it once had a busy little downtown. Now there's just a few houses, and signs to mark the rest, with an abandoned base with barracks and offices nearby. 

Just inside Saskatchewan, we saw a point of interest, and decided to turn in. We found...a rock. According to the plaque, it's a buffalo rubbing stone - the buffalo would rub on this rock, to shed winter fur or just scratch an itch. They used it so heavily, a trench has been worn around it, and the rock has been polished to a smooth sheen. John was inspired to try it out, too.

After that, we were off to check out The Great Wall of Saskatchewan, just outside Smiley - a must-see for anyone following this route. It's a rock wall, built from stones pulled by a farmer from his field over the course of 30 years. Now, it's a half-mile long, ranging from 6-12 feet wide and tall. He's built a road along it, so people can see the whole thing. At the end, he built a little sod house that you can go inside, and he's filled it with antique stuff. He has a quest book you can sign, that's just a 3-hole school exercise book. People from all over the counrty had signed it.  It took us a while to find it. There wasn't much signage, but there was one sign directing us to the Johnson's farm, cafe and stone wall. So we headed up and found the Johnson's farm. We went on, but saw no wall. We wound up prowling all over their farm, looking for this thing. In the end, we went back to town and asked a local. She said it was on the left, "you can't miss it," she said. "And if you don't see it, well, there must be something wrong with you all." We went back, and there it was, plain as day - we hadn't gone far enough. It is a real site to see - it's really worth the trip off the beaten track to see it. This guy built this entire thing entirely by hand.

This is inside the soddie he built at the end of his road. The kids thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Exploring the antique kitchen stuff he'd moved in. He had an old ringer washer, too.

He put in an old water pump too. It was non-functioning, but the kids had fun trying to get water out. You can see the soddie in the back - he'd faced it with his stones.

A view of the Great Wall of Sasatchewan. No photo can do this thing justice. It really needs to be seen.

Dave decided to add a few rocks, by picking up pebbles from the road, and sticking them in the holes

Dave, perched on top

All of the kids by one part of the wall.

Sadly, we didn't make it far past Smiley. It was a small town called Rosetown. When Mike suggested earlier in the day that we stop there, I laughed at him. In the end, he quessed it right. There weren't many good camping spots, unless we wanted to squat in a flat field, so we actually ended up getting another hotel. Not as luxurious as the first, but it let us all get another good night's sleep, to hit the road early the next day.

Day 4

The morning of day 4 was rough. We'd been camping for a while, and were getting weary of all the work involved. So as I made breakfast, Mike wandered off with his cell phone. I fantasized that he was phoning to book us a hotel that night - and in reality, he was! He'd booked us into a hotel in Oyen, AB, which is right near the border of Sask. We needed to recharge, and have a good night's sleep, and make good time, and it was just the carrot we needed to cover Alberta in one day.

Our frst stop was Bar U Ranch, just south of Calgary. We lived there for more than two years,a nd never knew it was even there! It's a national historical site, of what was a HUGE ranch. It's bread and butter was cattle, but they became famous for breeding these ginormous french horses. The owner was never able to find a good horse, capable of the heavy work of an Alberta ranch, so when he found this breed, he decided to breed them for his neighbours. I forget the name, but they're called the gentle giants, because they're HUGE, but have really nice temperaments.

We totally lucked out on ths one - when we arrived, we were told the wagon was in use by a camp group. But as we were looking at one of the old horse barns, it pulled around the corner, and the group's leader invited us aboard, and we got their tour. The camp leader took this photo.

Part of the special tour was being able to see one of the horses bred there up close. It's hard to tell how big it is from this photo, because we're up really high. This horse wasn't born at the ranch - they bought it from a woman with five kids. On weekends, she would load all her kids on this horse, and set it loose on the farm. Now and then, a kid would fall off, and all they had to do was lead it to the nearest fence. This horse would just wait patiently while the kid climbed on the fence, and scrambled back on, whether it was on its rump, or over its nose and down its back.

Joan on one of the displays

Dave and Joan, checking out some horses in the coral. Dave loved this ranch! He's definitely our biggest animal lover, and ran around yelling "horsey! horsey! horsey!"

After the ranch, we burned through to Calgary. We entered the city through the south, so we took the kids to see thier old schools, and then to see our old house. it was kind of bittersweet - especially seeing Joan's school, which was our biggest reason for staying in Calgary.

We headed north to Vic's neighbourhood, and had a good visit. William is an alert, happy, not-so-little guy. We did tghe obligatory baby swap:

Vicki with Tom

Mike with William

After a short visit, we headed to Drumheller, to see the Tyrell Museum. I wanted to show John that museum the whole time we lived in Calgary, but we'd never gotten around to it.

People often ask us how we manage so many kids. We do stuff like this, which is unloading at Tyrell - we pick a spot, and make each kid sit still there until we're finished unpacking everyone. They're learning to listen - they don't run around as much as they used to.

Mike and John.

The kids are looking at a carp pond - the museum has a cool garden display, to show what the vegetation would have looked like.

Billy and Vicki - with little William

I probably should have taken this shot at Vicki's place. between too-dim museum lighting and too many distractions, it didn't work out terribly well. But it's the Walchuk kids, with all their Walchuk kids!

It was a cool museum, and John loved it, as we knew he would. I'm glad we were able to take them. They had a lab, that you could see behind glass, and the coolest water display - it was a plexiglass floor, so it felt like you were walking on water. It freaked the kids out. Joan actually fell, because she couldn't tell where the floor was. Dave was just completely freaked out, and got through it by shuffling his feet the whole way.

There were a lot of Japanese tourists. One group of very bubbly girls asked to get a picture of Tom. I'd be a little weirded out, but I'd been through that before - some Japanese tourist went home with pictures of a young John by the reflecting pool in Washington. Not sure what they do with babies in Japan. I know our Korean convenience store ownder in Hamilton said it was considered dangerous to take babies outside until they're about 6 months old - maybe they do the same.

After the museum, we parted ways with Vicki and Billy. We tried to continue up the road to Oyen, but were low on gas, and being evening in rural Alberta, we weren't sure what we'd find, if anything. We pulled over and asked a local farmer, who told us we'd have to turn back to Drumheller, so that's what we did. But it was a smaller town than we expected. The Shell was already closed, so we couldn't use our AirMiles gas certificates. They didn't even have a TD, where we could deposit a paycheque. So we scraped up enough pocket change to put some gas in at a PetroCanada, and raided the cooler for supper. As I recall, it was yogurt and peanut butter on celery, with oranges for dessert.

And that's about where the bugs began. It's been so wet on the praries, the whole place has exploded with mosquitoes. There were so many, it sounded like it was raining, even though there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Our windshield degraded into a big greasy streak, despite constant washing. It was so bad, we had to stop at a gas station along the way just to scrape them down. I got out to look, and the front of our white van was literally black. Ewww.

Despite all the setbacks, we got to Oyen, at about 11:30 p.m. It was just a Super 8, but after camping so many days, it felt like the most luxurious hotel in the world. We had a hot shower in our sparkling white tub, climbed into our clean, crisp white sheets, and Mike said "that was one of the best experiences of my life." I couldn't had agreed more.

Day 3

The van, in our campsite at dawn

the brook our site overlooked

We slept well, listening to our babbling stream. I woke up first, and got breakfast going. We actually brought our grain mill, to make buckwheat pancakes on the road. The kids love them, and once you get used to them, white pancakes have no taste, and just don’t cut it. Because it was daytime, we let the kids out of the van to explore, but not without plenty of “GET AWAY FROM THE EDGE!” from us.

The kids, nom noming on pancakes and bacon. Mmmmmm....

After breakfast, we headed for the showers. It was a bit room with a shower stall, so we all went in together, so we could clean the kids too. It was a coin shower and we only had five loonies, so we had to do a bit of juggling. Whoever was in the shower had to give the next in line warning, so one could jump in as the first was finished, so we wouldn’t waste valuable shower time. We did the kids all together. Joan doesn’t like showers, John doesn’t like having his hair lathered and Dave just hates water period, so with all three of them together, the screams were deafening. But we all got through, and back to the camp for pack-up. The first thing the kids did? Play in the dirt, of course.

a bridge, built from embalming fluid bottles

Our first stop was a roadside attraction called The Glass House. It was a house and landscaping build by a retired mortician, out of 600,000 empty embalming fluid bottles. It has, to date, been our most expensive tourist trap, at $25 for the whole family. But it was kind of cool - it was built in the 50’s, and while the owner was alive, he gave tours himself and did magic tricks for the kids who visited.

Joan stops to smell the flowers

A tower of the Glass House

Some more local handiwork, we spotted down the road

 

After that, we were still so hot, we stopped down the road in Creston for an ice cream cone, where we picked up perogies and cabbage rolls for that night’s dinner.

We stopped in Cranbrook for lunch, and were mauled by a flock of very socialized geese. They were so relentless, we not only had to move to another picnic area, but we had to send John to scare them away occasionally. He was good at it – he’d run, flapping his arms, screaming like a maniac.

Day three was largely a day of missed opportunities, when our gypsy lifestyle caught up to us. Seems not everyone respects the gypsy lifestyle – they have these things called “closing times”. We missed out on a railway museum that Mike really wanted to see, and the fort steel turn of the century town. We thought Joan would enjoy that, with all the costumes. Maybe another time.




By that time, we were getting weary of BC and the heat. Knowing that there was cooler air on the other side of the mountains, we pressed on, determined to cross the border. But on the way, we saw a sign, advertizing “the Biggest Truck in the World!” and we just couldn’t resist.

Despite all the delays, we DID manage to reach the border that night – a momentous occasion, after three days in BC! We slept near the border, on an old sideroad that looked like it was in the middle of nowhere, but in reality was overlooking the town of Crowsnest Pass. But it was gloriously cool. It was so nice to feel cold again, we slept with the back hatch open.

Alberta, at last!

Day Two

Ruf Ruf wakes up, to face a new day

This was our campsite, in the light of Day 2. It was a closed road, beside a field which had been used to store logs for an old sawmill. The mill had long since shut down, but the road remained. We had our first taste of Gypsy life, as we got our cool new camp stove fired up. It has two burners on top, with a little oven below, all powered by little propane tanks. The night before, we had been running so late, we grabbed a pizza on our way out of town. For breakfast, we had eggs and back bacon on the cooktop, and used the oven part to heat up our pizza. The eggs were a hit, but the pizza was so hard, it went largely uneaten by the kids.




Everyone had slept well. The night was cool, and virtually bug-free, thanks to the dry weather near Osoyoos. But our morning was…slow. It took forever to get the van re-packed, because to make enough sleeping room, we had to dump everything onto the side of the road, in a tarp. Making breakfast, eating, letting the oven cool. All told, we woke at the crack of dawn, but didn’t leave until 11 a.m.

Mike's "shortcut"

To save time, Mike decided to try a “shortcut” to Grand Forks. The roads there wind around the hills, but on the map, this dirt road plowed right over one, and promised to turn a 45 minute drive into 15. Our shortcut wound up taking an hour, as we got lost in the maze of back roads and dead ends. We stumbled into a junction of three roads, with no markings whatsoever, so stopped to get our bearings. Right there, in the middle of no-where was a little cenotaph for a fallen WWI veteran from the area. And luckily, as we were there, a local fire warden passed by, and stopped to see if we were alright. He gave us directions, and we were on our way.