Home, Home on the Range - Drayton Valley, ALberta until September

A long time ago, in Chatham, I met a wonderful gal, Rachel. I met her when we were both two wild single gals. But now, both her & i have new additions in our lives since I last saw her. She and her hubby, Chris,  moved up here from the Chatham area  started their own business, Wolverine Heating & Mechanical and spent the last two years renovating a foreclosed drug house into their little piece of heaven in Drayton. Turns out they needed some extra man-help and luckily enough, I just happened to have a man with me, so we have decided to stick around here for the next few weeks to make some extra loot, until we have to make the big push for theYukon in the first week of September.

Our Uncle Bert from the Tee-Dot-Oh invited us to join him in Calgary as he had to fly there for work. So, we did. We hadnt seen him in three months and swe hadn't seen Calgary yet, so let's kill two birds with one stone!  Funnily enough, our best day in Calgary was spent outside of Calgary. We took a trip out of the city, found a small lake and followed the rural, dusty roads there. We had to stop at one point, because they were driving cattle along the road, there they were : real friggin' cowboys. Molly had been asking where all the cowboys were in Cow-town, so we finally had some to point out to her. AT one point, as they led us through the mess o' cows and because i wasn't paying attention, I forgot to stay close to the rv ahead of us and two cows dodged infront of the van at last minute. Just about had us a steak dinnah.

So, we will live simply for next few weeks, adventures limited to fishing and maybe a Jasper camping trip, get Molly into doing some homework and city splash padding. Not to mention, clearing out Cara the Van, and getting her ready for the next leg of this trip, which will be a doozy.

Staying here and working with Chris, Oscar is learning some new skills, I am finally getting time to work on our blog & plot our next moves by getting copious amounts of emails out there into the great wide interwebz to see what boomerangs back at us. And Molly, well Molly gets a chance to strut around in her boots, play with the ponies, do some school work, watch some cartoons and just be a kid livin' in a house. We are meeting some great people including a real live gold mine owner, Kevin Eliason, partner in a mine up near Dawson City that started the show, Yukon Gold. How great is that. You can check 'em on their show: Yukon Gold.

The Taylors have welcomed us into their home and hearts, so it's a pretty great place to be right now.

We are sad that we are running out of time before winter is upon us here and there isn't an option of heading south, like some full time travellers. We are going to head back to Thunder Bay, we think, to work for the winter then continue on trippin' in the spring... but being that we still have two months left until that point, anything can happen! We still have to make our way to the Yukon and our next workstay along the great Pelly River, then we plan to make our way along the west coast and spend some time on Vancouver Island for some quality ocean time for a few weeks before we head back to Ontario.

Stay tuned folks & thanks for reading! Let us know your thoughts!

Alberta

Carstairs, just north of Calgary - The Johnson Family

We were received warmly, late at night by the Johnson family. They lived in a small town and we set up our tent in their front yard, steps from the house and the hustle and bustle of this family of seven, plus two other workawayers. It was a great home, filled with laughter, screams of joy and little brothers, great food and great company. We went to Drumheller for the day with the family, then Oscar, Molly and I went to a ghost
town in Wayne, with an old saloon. It took crossing eleven bridges to get to it, nestled in between the sand mountains, in cowboy country. I loved the landscape and scenery of this area, some of my favourite so far.

3 night stay at BNB in Hinton, Alberta, along the Athabasca River

Well, this where we took a wrong turn. After Banff, you have the option to continue up to Jasper or move west along the Trans-Canada and into British Columbia. We missed the option to continue up to Jasper, because well, we missed the turn off. When we finally realised that we were actually in Golden BC, Oscar ran into the tourist info center. We were miffed. Oscar told them what had had happened and the little guy at the counter pulled a huge book from under the counter and said "you should sign this then.". It was a book
entitled "Oops, I can't Believe I missed the turn off to Jasper." It was signed by hundreds and now Laguanwiththewind was now added to the list.

We knew we couldn't drive another 5 or more hours to Jasper and our booked accommodation, so we had to bite the bullet and stay in Golden, and that would come at a fee. A hundy ($100), but that's okay for the place we got. A hostel on the edge of town at the base of the mountains, which some great roads to drive on and explore. You gotta do whatcha gotta do sometimes.

The next day, we drove the last bit through Jasper National Park. We were so happy to finally made it to this part of Canada and see this majestic, magic place. We had a fright when we could smell 'burning' from our engine and we could see a bit of smoke wafting up through the hood. We stopped, did a full check and discovered it was our brakes, smoking from the work they had to do, slowing down on the declines. We let Cara the Van rest for an hour, right in front of an ice field, so that was as good a place as any to let the brakes cool down.

We made it to the bnb and camped out alongside the Athabasca, while horses roamed free on the property, For three days, we relaxed in our hammock and screamed as we dumped icy Athabascan river water on each other to cool down.