This is our last chance to see all of our family in Edmonton area this weekend. We are getting all cleaned up and packing an overnight bag so we can stay over at Lorin's (Leslie's sister) house tonight. Thanks Lorin for letting us stay over. So much easier than driving home tonight. Lorin and Leslie had done a bunch of organizing before the weekend and we had picked up a tray of ready to eat turkey and a ham from the butcher in Bonnyville as our contribution. They had divided some of the other items between the family and we are having a Thanksgiving feast for sure. Lorin wisely told people to bring plastic storage containers for leftovers because there was a ton of leftovers. Good call Lorin. Leslie's brother, Dave, and his wife Kerrie were the first to arrive and then everyone else poured in after that. With all the hugs and handshakes plus getting all the food set up it was a happy busy time.
Leslie, Dave, Kerrie & Lorin
Ryan, Sam, Jessica & Ashtyn
We had invited Graham & Brittany as well but Brittany had just gotten some bad news from her family and Rylan wasn't feeling up to it either so Graham and Katelyn came over from Ft. Saskatchewan to join us. Too bad that we can't see Rylan and Britt. Sorry guys. We'll see you hopefully in Phoenix this winter. Graham brought a homemade dessert and apple pie, good work buddy!
Leslie, Katelyn & Graham awwww.
Squish the kid haha !
We didn't get pictures of everyone unfortunately but it was a great evening with family. Lots of laughs and a chance for hugs and handshakes before we leave. Another "good for the heart" evening.
Oct 13 - Lorin had promised me waffles for breakfast and sure enough after we all had a coffee she got started on a fantastic breakfast. Leslie's keto plan doesn't involve waffles but there was bacon and scrambled eggs for her. Thank you Lorin for everything!
We gave Lorin big hugs and hopped in the car for a trip to Sherwood Park where we can get a chance to say good bye to my sister Donna and most of her family. We were told that everyone is at her daughter Kerry's house so that's where we are headed. They were just having brunch when we got there so we just had a juice while they ate. What great timing to see everyone: Donna & Dennis, Kevin & Lisa here from Calgary & of course Kerry, Byron, Brody & Jetson. There was also a special new addition that Leslie is very excited about. His name is Bentley, Kerry & Byron's new puppy!
Bentley! He's only 12 weeks, gonna be big lol.
Sitting down for a visit after brunch.
It was great to be able to visit for a while with everybody. We stayed for an hour or so and then with hugs and handshakes we got back in the car for the trip to PGR. Margaret was waiting in the car as she wouldn't want any part of that energetic puppy action lol.
We relaxed for a little bit when we got home and then decided to tackle hanging our new TV wall mount and upgrading to the 50 inch TV from the house. I'm excited to see if it fits and who doesn't like the bigger screen? We took the 42 inch off the wall and measured and mounted the 50". The new mount that we bought says it is for RV's and it has a latch to lock it back but the whole TV moves quite a bit back and forth on the edges. It's bad enough that we can't leave it up there without some sort of modification to stop it from moving so much. I'm very disappointed as you can imagine and I may have cursed a bit at the manufacturer for building a heavy duty wall mount with zero lateral stops! We took it off and remounted the 42" for the winter. I'll figure out a fix next spring but we just don't have the time to play around right now. Dang!
42" off the wall and ready to hang the new system.
The 50" from home fits perfectly! Moves 3" on the edges :(
Putting the 42 back up, not happy.
I had to wrap the 50" TV in a sheet and store it for the winter unfortunately. So the next day that was one of my tasks was to find a good spot in the shed for that. I'll get that new mount fixed in the spring. Today we are focusing on cleaning out the closets and dressers to just what we want to take with us. You tend to add stuff all summer that you don't need. Leslie made a big pot of turkey soup from the leftovers of Thanksgiving. She makes great soup and we are having that for supper. I worked on blog catch up and that was our day.
Margaret being cute again. Warm and happy
even by Leslie's foot lol. Too cute.
Oct 15 - I continued with the blog while Leslie made a batch of keto muffins this morning. We need a few groceries so we are driving to Evansburg today. Add to that list truck fuel, propane and oil/ filter for the genny and we have a good list. Evansburg is a small place but they have everything we need for today and it's only 18kms/11mi away Easy run.
Oct 16 - Getting so close to our departure day, we're getting antsy to just go already. Today we washed and vacuumed both vehicles. We took all the recycle to Wabuman and then drove to Stony Plain so I could drop off some beer for the folks at Crystal Glass for fixing our globes. We had lunch there and pressure washed Leslie's car to get the layer of bugs off the front. Just a quick damp cloth wash back home had it shining and ready to store it. I backed it in the garage with Leslie helping and disconnected the battery. We have a cover from the Mustang that we saved so we put that over the car and it should be good all winter. Now that we have that in place we moved the bike and put the cover on it too. The battery is already disconnected on the Harley. Pull down the garage door and lock it, plywood screwed on the inside of the windows because I am kind of anal about security and we are done with that.
Time for showers and change clothes because we are meeting Ryan, Ashtyn & Sam for dinner in Spruce Grove at Brown's Social House. One last hug before we go.
Rough pic with the backlight but all smles.
Taco got to say good bye to Margaret. He loves her!
It was a great dinner and it's good to get to say good bye again because this time we are actually leaving! Leslie doesn't enjoy being away from her kids all winter. Hopefully they can come south at some point this winter to see us. We drove home and just kicked back watching our small TV!! So disappointing.
Oct 17 - Today is the day!! Finally we are leaving PGR and heading to Okotoks for a couple days to visit Kevin & Lisa. It's not a long drive so we didn't push our morning. Our neighbour Vera walked over to say good bye until next spring. Vera & Bert are spending extra time in Alberta this winter and only staying a short time in their place in Casa Grande. See ya next year guys. So with hugs from Vera we headed out of PGR with big smiles.
Ready to roll, beautiful day for a drive!
The view west from Hwy 22. Good road.
Looks like a field of marshmallows! Plastic wrapped bails.
Okay for big rigs but rough gravel roads.
We got a pull through 30 amp, water, sewer. Lots of room door side.
My nephew Kevin and his wife Lisa came over for drinks that night which was great. Lisa is flying to Ontario for the weekend so this is our only chance to see her. They got locked in at 11:03 pm and had a tough time getting out of the park lol. They found an exit and got out after driving around for 20 minutes. Now we know to be out before 11 pm haha.
Oct18 - Kevin has today off and works on Saturday this week so we made plans to meet for lunch. We chose a nearby Montana's Restaurant which worked really well. I need a new water filter for the rig and there is a Woody's RV World very close to Montana's. Expensive filter at $36 for a flow pur 8 micron. I'll be getting those online after this. We drove back to Kevin's house for coffee and some visiting. He has 2 new cats that we have never met so Margaret got a chance to say hi but that didn't go real well. I took her back out to hang out in the truck, her favourite spot really. After coffee and a great chance to chat and catch up with things we headed back to our site. Leslie has a massage appointment for 6 pm tonight to help her sore back. Margaret and I get to hang out and watch TV. We're good with that.
Oct 19 - It's a cool but beautiful morning and we spotted a trail system along the Bow River yesterday that is real close. I want to get in a run along the trail this morning and Leslie is going to make some keto treats to put in the freezer. I got in a 5.5 k run and Leslie made her treats plus a batch of dog food for Margaret. Pretty productive morning for her really. She also built a salad for tonight's supper with Kevin. Look at Leslie go!
I took advantage of our location and parked the truck to block the view to the front of the trailer. I changed the oil and filter on the genny at our site so that I am confident about running that this week if needed. We dropped the oil at a tire place later on and they will recycle it. Nice.
We had a quick lunch at the Save-On deli which was surprisingly good. I had messaged Andrew, who I used to work with, and he lives almost in the same neighbourhood as Kevin. Andrew & Abbi are very close to welcoming a new baby boy to the world and they will be home this afternoon so we are going over to say hello. We haven't seen them since their wedding in Calgary a couple years ago. They moved from Cold Lake to Calgary and both work here now. We could only visit for a little over an hour and then we had to get back to the rig to get supper ready.
Leslie, Abbi, Andrew& me. Great to see them again!
Their beautiful dogs Nala & Bruce (in front)
Enjoying a glass after dinner.
Oct 20- It was below freezing overnight for sure. How do I know this you ask? Our water hose is frozen at the pedestal and my windshield is pretty frosty. I had to pour a bowl of warm water over the water valve to be able to close it and then kind of fold the hose into the belly so it could thaw. The sun is out but it's crisp this morning. We are now officially "on the road" in my mind. We're actually leaving Alberta now so it's official. We got packed up and pulled out of Riverbend by 9:30. We have a fairly long day ahead of us driving to Shaunavon, Saskatchewan. Another young work buddy was from there and it's almost on our way so why not check it out. The weather warmed up nicely as we drove which was nice. It's pretty flat and we're on highway #1, the Trans Canada.
Worlds largest teepee at 215 feet tall. Was built for the 1988 Olympics
then moved to just outside Medicine Hat.
Crossing the provincial border.
Looks like this for a long ways.
No longer in service but a cool old bridge.
We borrowed a really cool picture from Facebook tonight. Kent & Rachelle's son, Nathan, has been trying out his first year of football. He got a chance to play in a game this weekend that his team won by a mile! Good stuff Nate!! Glad to see you getting in there.
Nathan & Kent after the game, he looks pretty happy!
Oct 21- Today is the Canadian Federal Election and the polls opened at 7:30 am. We knew this from the many vehicles at the community centre next door pulling in and leaving before work. We are crossing into the U.S. today east of here so we want to get up and get going anyway. Mufflers are an option in Shaunavon I think? Lots of trucks and a few cars were missing theirs this morning. All good. We made a good breakfast and packed up the rig to hit the road. I had to let the truck run a while to thaw the windshield from the frost last night. Cool pattern though. My windshield scraper is packed away. Imight have to bring it out again.
Cool frost pattern on the window. Good furnace in the rig!
We pulled out just before 9 am and headed north just a few kms and then turned right on Sask highway 13. Lucky 13!! Here's the start of my snap show.... First of all I am behind a farm truck hauling grain. That's okay I think because of where we are. I'll never be able to pass because this road has no shoulders and is too narrow. Maybe he's not going far? We're trying to hold 75 km/h or about 40 mph but this poor excuse for a back road which they labeled a highway is killing us. It's just beat to death with the edges falling away and huge potholes all over the place! I'm on the edge of losing it and then I see a road sign: 217 kms/ 128 miles until we are supposed to turn off this piece of crap! The trailer is dancing around behind me and I'm trying to go slow but c'mon man I have a long ways to go!! Thankfully we came to a crossroad, highway 4 south and all the roads got amazingly much better. Whatever county we just came through needs to do some road work. Never use #13 east of Shaunavon. Enough said.
The rest of highway 13 was not bad at all and we saw absolutely the most migrating geese that we have ever seen in one place. The fields are filled with flocks of thousands of geese! The sky is full of them too, we tried for some pictures but it just didn't capture the magnitude of birds around there.
Hard to capture with a phone.
Thousands of birds in the air!
Our destination tonight is Glendive, Montana. There is one more Co-op Cardlock fuel station we can hit just before the border to fuel up and then cross over. Just when you think you have seen all the terrible road, bam, they hit you with another section, highway 36, going south outside of Cornach, Sk. to the border lol. Luckily Montana knows how to build a highway and that was the last of the bad stuff today. Phew!
We crossed at the Scobey crossing with only a short delay while the border guard checked our rig. He took a tomato that was missing the label and wished us well for the winter.
Scobey, Montana is hidden behind the bar.
Waiting a few minutes for our turn, no bustin' through here!
Gaining altitude as we head south.
Much like the badlands around Drumheller.
The train station in downtown Glendive.
Yeh you know....
Yellowstone River.
We tuned in to CBC radio to hear the election results before bed. It's a Liberal minority government as predicted before the election. Another tough 4 years for Canada in our opinion. Tough to get anything done with a minority government. We'll see I guess.
I'll stop here for now. We have another long day and then we stop for a couple days with some RV friends we want to get to know better. We'll try to keep hammering these out, getting closer to caught up! Cheers everybody.
Glad you made it safely down ... a tomato geez. I make sure I have no produce at all before crossing and no booze that way no problem. Hope your roads get smoother ...
ReplyDeleteWe would have been fine if the sticker was on so they knew it was a commercial tomato lol. We were over on the booze count though. He just put it back and gave us a sheet on what is allowed. Nice guy.
DeleteWoohoo, you are finally on the road! Now you can head south where the weather is warmer......or is it?
ReplyDeleteIs it really warmer in the south?? Depends on how far south and how high in elevation south is.... stay tuned lol.
DeleteLooks like lots of fun with family and friends. Too bad about the TV.
ReplyDeleteSafe travels!
We got to see almost everyone before we left, glad we were able to see them all. I'll get the tv figured next year when we have more time to play around. Thanks guys.
DeleteI use a pool noodle on the edge of our TV. Just along the front edge. That way in a hard stop the tv moves forward and is cushioned by the noodle. We'd be hard pressed the accelerate fast enough to get the TV to move backward so we don't place anything on that side. I guess suffering through the winter with 42" isn't the end of the world. This is the first RV we've owned that even has a tv! How our expectations get out of whack, huh.
ReplyDeleteYes our expectations have changed for sure. No cell signal? We have to move lol. I had a piece of foam in the garage to try but just didn't have the time before leaving. We'll get it figured out but for now the 42 will do.
Delete