NORTHERN ONTARIO

Now on to Ontario, the province with thousands of lakes.  Our day was spent at a tranquil place called Laughing Water Trailer Park which was about 60km south of Kenora.  Wow, what beautiful country so peaceful.  We went to sleep to the sound of loons and whippoorwills last night - truly magical.  We spent the day relaxing, fishing, swimming to the floating dock, and generally doing nothing but relaxing.  The girls had a lovely time making small boats out of bits of bark and twigs.  We had a campfire and watched the beautiful sunset.

 Girls on floating dock.

Katrina caught the only fish today.

Sunset in Lake of the Woods.

After a perfectly relaxing day we were on the road again this time hoping to make it to Thunder Bay.  We spent the night at the KOA campground where I was able to do laundry and the girls had a swim in the pool.  Sunday morning we went to Allan and Lynda James' for Sunday morning meeting and it was such a wonderful surprise to see Willa Ross there with her mother.  Following a short drive through the waterfront of the city we went out to the Terry Fox Memorial.  They have done a wonderful job of this memorial for a truly remarkable young man. 

Then we took the girls up a very treacherous road to an amethyst mine were the girls had the opportunity to dig for their own gem stone.  The girls got to search through the discard pile and take home whatever stones they wanted for $3 a pound.  The girls, especially Juanna, truly loved this excursion and came out with lots of treasures. 

Girls looking for gems.

We made it to Pukaskwa National Park for the night and could not leave as early as we planned because we were so bewitched by the beauty of the place.  The campsite was lovely, once again a campsite with lots of privacy and lots of lovely big trees.  We took a small walk along a boardwalk through the sand dunes to a beach covered with driftwood on Lake Superior.  Kent could not go any further on these trails so Juanna and Victoria went with him to explore else where and Katrina and I went on a small half hour hike through some lovely forest trails and another driftwood covered beach.  We had a picnic lunch down the the water then rented a canoe and I took the girls on a half hour canoe ride around a little cove.  I must say these last few days searching for precious stones and beaches full of driftwood I have often thought that I would love to have Anita here with us, she would love all these beauties of nature.  Once again this was very hard place to leave but if we don't we will not see everything else there is to see.

We went on down through Lake Superior Provincial Park to Sault Ste. Marie.  Wow, what beautiful country this is every time we see something new we are floored by the beauty we are surrounded by in this fair country we live in.  We stopped and ran down a breathtakingly beautiful bay called Old Woman Bay with beautiful sand beaches and steep cliffs coming down to the pristine waters of Lake Superior.

Again, another beautiful campsite at the KOA in the Soo.  This campsite is a true delight for the children with a dog walk, a dog grooming space, a dog agility course and a small dog agility course for beginner dogs, as well as a playground and pool for the children.  The only disappointment is that the K-9 agility course is only for professional dog handler, this is truly a disappointment for the girls and they hope the owners will allow Daisy to go in  because they have her doing a very good job of the small course. 


Daisy in the dog agility course.

Today, August 16th, we took the Agawa Canyon Train Tour.  This was a full day train ride up into the Agawa Canyon where we got off and enjoyed 1 1/2 hours hiking to some waterfalls and having a picnic lunch with a clear view of the Bridal Falls and then returning by train back to the Soo.  The train ride was fun with breakfast in the dining car and wonderful scenery past lakes and over trestles high above rivers.  Upon exiting the train we took a small stroll down by the water looking at the locks and the bridge linking Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.  As you can tell we are having a lovely time and our days are full.  We are all well and look forward to all that is yet to come.

 Agawa Canyon

Bridal Veil Falls

MANITOBA

Today, August 16th, we are in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario but I will go back to where we left off and tell you about our days in Manitoba first.

Okay, so Sunday, August 7th, we left Saskatchewan and headed to Tim and Adele Pizzey's and Garth and Annabelle McDonald's to see where they live.  The only unfortunate thing was that on the way we got late and it was dark before we made it to their home and everyone knows the greatest hazard of driving in the dark on the prairies is running into a deer.  Well, we did just that, I hit a deer about 6 miles from our destination.  After this small blimp we made it to the farm around midnight to enjoy some catching up until 2 am.  We all had a very good day on the farm.  The girls got some great prairie experiences even going gopher hunting with the boys.  For supper we all rode quads, dirt bikes, or gators to the creek where it meets the Assiniboine River and had a wiener roast on the banks of the river.  It was a truly wonderful day.  The next day we went on to Grand Beach but not until Adele had washed off the motor home - oh, I forgot to mention that the boys even fixed my headlight that had popped out because of our close encounter with the deer.  With this kind of treatment it was hard to leave such kindness.

Well if you have never been to Grand Beach on Lake Winnipeg I would highly recommend a visit.  The campsite was beautiful with lots of trees and the beach was incredible with sand as soft as powder.  The white sand beaches and sand dunes go on for miles and the water stretches on forever.  We had an absolutely sublime day at the beach with crystal clear blue skies and high temperatures.  The girls had lots of fun in the water which was quite shallow so they could venture out a long ways and not be above their heads.  Once they were tired of playing in the water they went over the dune and collected frogs from the swampy waters on that side of the dunes.  They were quite convinced that they should each keep a frog and take them on the trip with us to bring home and show Makinna.  (Sorry to say the one frog we kept the longest died two days ago.)  I let them keep the frogs in an outside storage bin because I refused to have a frog loose in the motor home.  We planned to bike to the West Beach after supper but we got about half way there and a young man coming the other direction warned us that there was a black bear on the road, so we turned around and went back to the campsite.  The next day we went over in the motor home to check out the West Beach which is the more popular beach.  It was also a beautiful beach with a boardwalk and vendors.  If we weren't trying to get all the way across Canada we would love to have spent more time here.

 Our first look at East Beach.

Collecting frogs. 

 More East Beach.

 Beautiful West Beach

Thursday we made our way into Winnipeg to pick up Kent, he was flying in from Kelowna.  We had agreed to meet at Costco so I would not have to drive the motor home to the airport.  But, my mistake, we went to the wrong Costco, thankfully the right one was close by and we got Kent. :) We were so happy to have daddy back with us.  This puts an end to our days in Manitoba, for now.

SASKATCHEWAN

On August 3rd we made it to Saskatchewan.  We went into Cypress Hills and took the very rough country road to Fort Walsh.  Whenever you go to Fort Walsh think of me driving the motorhome up that steep, twisty road, yes, I did question my sanity as I was driving.  There is a warning sign at the base of the hill claiming you could park your trailers there and it made me second quess my decision to show the girls this part of the country, but I am stubborn and I continued on, I must say it was worth it.

This picture is looking down to the Fort. 

We went into the fort which is not original but an exact replica or close to it.  The guides there were dressed in period costume and gave us a very informative tour.  The girls went and joined the children's tour which meant they play acted being young North West Mounted Police recruits and they arrested some of the adults in the group and of course the girls chose their mother to arrest.  All in all it was a fun experience.

We left Fort Walsh at 5:00 and tried to make it to Swift Current in time for meeting but we arrived there at 8:00 with no name or phone number of any of the friends so we missed meeting.  I had wanted to take the girls to the Great Sandhills of Saskatchewan but time did not allow.  We looked on-line and found a campsite in Moose Jaw for the night.

After a morning to sleep in, do some house cleaning and laundry we were very excited to meet Mom and Dad.  They came down to Moose Jaw and we did the two Moose Jaw Tunnel Tours with them.  The tunnels were very interesting and highly recommended for anyone coming through the area.  It was very interesting to see how the Chinese immigrants were received and treated in our country years ago, definitly not a bright spot in Canada's history.

We met the Roy Howden family down at Echo Lake and had a birthday celebration for Laura at the campsite with fireworks to follow out at the farm.  It was great to see everyone and the girls even got to go for a tube ride.  We left the lake and went on a tour of Fort Qu'Appelle and Dad showed us the hospital he was born in, where he went to school and the home farm.  We even took a little side tour through the Fort Qu'Appelle museum.  While in the museum we found the grad class photos of Joe, Alex, and Norman - fun to see your dad in the museum. :) 

The school were Dad started grade 9 - this school was built in 1911.

The Hudson's Bay building in Fort Qu'Appelle.

We went on to Weyburn and Mom showed us all around her home country.  We had the privilege of seeing Brad and Deanna and Nona and family, we really enjoyed seeing family we don't have the oppurtunity to see very often.  It was amazing to see the flooding down in this area - normally such dry country and this year we saw roads covered with water, ditches full and little lakes in the middle of what should be fields.  Devastating to see the fields barren where no one was able to even plant seed because of all the moisture.

This was a dirt road we drove down in the morning to get to Weyburn from Uncle Brad's there was a rainstrom around supper time and this is what the road looked like when we tried to come back that evening.

We had a wonderful Sunday morning meeting at Shawn and Tammy's and the girls had a grand time playing with the Howden children.  We have been treated royally everywhere we went and each spot is hard to leave because all the people are so great.

As we drove down the roads we enjoyed seeing the BIG sky.  The prairies definatly are unique and really beautiful. 

SEEING THE DINOSAURS

Sorry I am very behind on this blog but we only have Internet connection when we are stopped .  I have been on my own for the last 10 days and we have been busy visiting family, I have been too tired after driving or else when I have had time there was no service.

After dropping Kent off at the airport in Calgary the girls and I headed off to Drumheller and arrived at the Royal Tyrrell Museum before it opened.  I was pleasantly surprised how much we enjoyed the museum.  The girls laughed because we made it through the museum and gift shop in less than 2 hours (and probably spent at least 20 minutes of that in the gift shop) and most people spend 4 hours going through the museum.  We had a good time and took in some of the extra features which made the visit to the museum even more exciting for the children.  We took a 60 min hiking tour into the Badlands called 'the seven wonders of the badlands' where they explained to us the soil composition and the formation of the land.  I also signed the girls up for a 45 min fossil casting experience where they learnt about fossils and got to do a casting of a fossil to take home.  We also took in a 15 min film on behind the scenes at the museum where they explained what happens to dinosaur bones and fossils before they are put on display. 

We left Drumheller and headed south to our campsite at Dinosaur Provincial Park.  We were driving along through the wide open prairie, in true farming country when all of a sudden we came to a valley that was like a whole new world.  The hillside was barren but as we continued down we came to a green oasis at the bottom with a creek meandering through.  It was a beautiful campsite and we took a little self  guided tour of the John Ware cabin that was down in the valley bottom.  John Ware was the first African-American cowboy in Alberta. 

It was a beautiful day and beautiful country with lots of sunshine and lots of beautiful blue sky.

This dinosaur was found by some high school boys out fishing and has been named Black Beauty because of the unique black colour of the fossilized bones.

These are hoodoos which are the only non-living thing that keeps growing. They actually do not grow but they give the illusion they are growing because the top layer is solid and the soil underneath is sandy so the sandy soil erodes from the sides but it is protected by the top so is stays standing and looks like it is getting taller.

Incredible landscape looks so surreal.

Calgary

 We had a beautiful Sunday morning meeting at the Bye's home in Calgary and a lovely lunch to follow.  It was so nice to spend sometime with the Bye family they are all doing very well and all very happy.

 Yes, this is a real dog.  Jonelle showed us how they dressed up their family dog Myla and played meeting with her and the wee dog did not seem to mind at all being dressed up. Too Cute!  :)

The Bye girls joined us and were excellent tour guides to help us get around the Calgary Zoo when we hadn't allowed ourselves very much time to get through.

This adorable bear was posing for us so we had to take his picture, isn't he cute.

We got  a chance to go up the Calgary Tower and enjoyed the aerial view of the city.

Looking down through the glass floor to the street below.

Monday, we spent the day enjoying the rides at Calaway Park.  The only disappointment was that Kent could not get on most of the rides.

Beautiful day in Lake Louise

What a beautiful site to wake up to - the majestic mountains surrounding the Lake Louise campground!

 We went up to Lake Louise where we walked by the lake and toured around inside the Chateau Lake Louise.

We had a lovely relaxing day enjoying the beauty of our surroundings.  Jason, Pam and girls came down from Rocky Mountain House where they were camping and had a quick supper with us before they went home and we headed off to our second night on the road at Calaway Park campground.

HERE WE GO!!

Yah hoo!! We got out of Kelowna yesterday around 3:00 pm but we did not get to our campsite in Lake Louise until 2:00 am.  Yes, there were a few little hiccups before we finally got on our way.  I was to drop off Kents truck at the airport so I picked up groceries and went to the airport, but when I carried all the gorceries to the motorhome I left the new camera in the truck. :( Sadly I never discovered it was missing until we were at Beachcomber saying good-bye to the Melvin family.  We continued to the Log Barn (outside Armstrong) before we decided that it would be better to turn around and find the camera instead of worrying about whether it was lost or if it was indeed in the truck.  We called Dennis and he went to the airport for us while we  filled the motorhome with gas and made some sandwiches for supper.  Finally 6:30 we pulled out of Vernon.  We made a quick stop at The Last Spike (because we were so late getting here the gift shop was closed so the only souvenirs we took with us were mosquito bites) and continued on to Lake Louise for the night.  So we are on our way and we are looking forward to a great trip.