From the short busy streets

To the long empty highways,

From the small skinny trees

To the tall thick trees,

From the tiny paved hills

To the magnificent Rocky mountains,

From the gross murky ponds

To the beautiful clear lakes,

From the little rough backyard lawns

To the vast manicured prarie fields,

From my little house in a little city

To a tiny trailer in a big world.

by Sam

From Canmore we drove straight to Calgary, arriving at 8:30 am.  We found an rv shop no problem and at first the guy said he’d have it done by the end of the day.  All the bay doors were closed, by the way.  Then he wrote up the work order and said, it’d probably be done by 1:00.  So we asked for a sightseeing suggestion and prepared to unhitch the truck and make some lunch to take along.  Then he came out and said, Don’t bother unhitching, we’ll do it in the lot and you’ll be outta here in an hour.  Love that!  So we sat in the truck for an hour playing on electronics (I can now facebook from my phone!!) and then we were off to Drumheller.  (By the way, E&H is footing the bill!)

The Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller is amazing!! So much painstaking work goes into all the fossil studies that they do and their displays, its astounding.  Also, of course, it definitely started some interesting discussions with Sam especially.  He’ll probably tell you more about that.  The museum was kind enough to let us stay overnight in their parking lot, so in Sam’s words, we spent a “Night at the Museum”.  Just not in it.

So now we’re heading to Saskatchewan where we’ll learn a lot about Canadian history and spend 2 nights in Prince Albert National Park and actually camp, with fires and eating outside and playing outside and hopefully seeing some wildlife.  And we’re back on track in terms of our planned schedule.

We’re off!  We left at 6:15 am, an hour & a quarter late.  Which isn’t bad, really.  Our plan was to be finished packing Saturday night (I’m not really sure how much I believed it was possible) and spend Sunday visiting mostly.  Which we did, until 7 pm and then we finished packing.  Sarah & Sam stayed up with us till after midnight and then crashed and Karl and I each got about 2 hours of sleep.

Unfortunately, our late start meant we missed the Tuininga’s but we waved to them from across the highway at least.  There was nowhere to pull over. But that put us back on track to be in Vernon for lunch so there shouldn’t be any further disappointments.