Friends have asked what was our favourite thing on the trip and we mostly answer that this country of Canada is big and beautiful and full of interesting places and things to see. However, we can say some specific favourites when given a moment to think. I must also remind you there is a page in this site (only the original version, sorry) that is called Favourite places in Canada. This list though could be considered the final favourites:

Province: Nova Scotia, Canada

City: Ottawa, Ontario

Town: St. Andrews-By-The-Sea, New Brunswick

National Park: Gros Morne, Newfoundland

Provincial Park: Cypress Hills Interprovincial, Alberta & Saskatchewan

Walking trail: Barnaby Head, New River Provincial Park, New Brunswick

Historic Site: Fortress of Louisbourg, Nova Scotia

Museum: Museum of Civilization, Hull, Quebec

Public Garden: Butchart Gardens, Victoria, British Columbia

Ferry: Chi Cheemaun, Georgian Bay, Ontario

Restaurant: D’Orsay, Old Quebec City, Quebec

Event: Canada Day, Ottawa, Ontario

Performance: Macbeth, Stratford, Ontario

Campground: Birds Hill Provincial Park, Manitoba

Beachcombing: Shore on West Coast of Newfoundland in Gros Morne

Scenic drive: Saskatoon to Winnipeg … okay that’s a joke, we can’t narrow this down to one … a list of good drives takes you across the country! Just do it!

Ice cream
Biggest – Kejimkujik National Park, Nova Scotia
Best soft ice cream – Prince Rupert Ferry (Island Farms Dairy)
Most expensive – Baskin Robbins, 17th Ave. Calgary, Alberta
Best hard ice cream – Bancroft, Ontario (Kawartha Dairy)

Is this enough already? We think so.

We both spend the next few days moving stuff around until mostly everything is put away and relocated to its normal place. This is way more work than we ever expected. Finally by the weekend we can just relax and start to mentally prepare for going back to work on Monday. Sigh!

And the weather forecast is often wrong, but not today, they called for snow and guess what it is doing … snowing. I could exaggerate and say it was a blizzard, but I won’t, it is just coming down in a steady all day type of fall. The road is not in nice driving shape, so Lawrie is taking it easy at about 60 to 80 km an hour. A few hills get the four wheel drive treatment and finally at noon we arrive in Watson Lake. We make a lousy choice for lunch … they still let people smoke in this restaurant! Yuck! However they do have a unique forest.

Shortly after Watson Lake is the turn down the Stewart Cassiar Highway. This is the highway we took when we started our trip. That means we have just completed a circle inside Canada, travelling mostly south on the way east and mostly north on our way west and now on the last day making the connection and closing the loop. The snow fall gets lighter and lighter, until we get to Teslin where it quits completely and the sun shines. We stop for gas as we have been running on fumes for the past while. Unless something goes terribly wrong with the fuel system, this should be our last fill up and we will have managed to never run out of gas. This is another good thing! And while we are counting our blessings, we haven’t had a single flat tire, nor any mechanical malfunction that has left us stuck anywhere. More good things!

The scenery is wonderful on this highway, but as we travel towards home the feelings are mixed. We are looking forward to being home, but are very sad that the time exploring Canada has come to an end. In the gathering dusk, at the end of a very long day, we arrive at home, happy and sad at the same time.

The section of the Alaska Highway (its original name was Alcan Highway), from Ft. Nelson to Liard Hotsprings has some of the best scenery in Canada. It differs from the highways through the Banff/Jasper area in two ways. One, there is not the volume of traffic and you have more time to gaze rather than concentrate on driving. In other words it is less stressful. Secondly, you are right in the mountains. There is no big ditch or distant vistas, you are literally driving right on them. This is great country!

Oh one hazard you should be aware of are the caribou and stone sheep that are on the highway licking at the road salt. Watch out around the bends!

The hotsprings area is famous around these parts for its springs of course, and its resident herd of bison (okay buffalo, whatever you like). We manage to find a herd of about fifty just before we arrive at Liard Hotsprings Park. Unfortunately, we manage to botch the pictures and not one turns out very good … sorry. The B.C. parks branch is keeping half of the park open so we have a campsite for the night. It takes us no time at all now to set up and in the gathering dusk we find ourselves off to the hotsprings for a great soak! Well into everyones life a little rain (in this case – snow) must fall. We are expecting to have the springs all to ourselves but there are about twenty people already in the pool when we arrive. There’s a road crew working on the highway and they are camped just down the road and believe it or not, they too like this natural hot tub. Can you believe that! Also, it takes me about fifteen minutes to find Lynn in the crowd and the steam and the dark, as we didn’t arrange a rendezvous point once we left the change rooms. It is still a great soak though as we manage to find a little corner all to ourselves. Do not miss this place if you ever find yourself driving to Yukon!

There is one other couple in the campground, (in a tent – we used to do that) so the dogs are let loose to ramble about at will. They are very happy about this as they have not been getting the amount of ‘free time’ they have been used to. Our trailer is nice and cozy and is handling the cooler weather very well. After a great supper, a few games of Rummikub and a quick walk with the dogs, we pack it in for the day. Next stop, home, we hope.

The day and the road was lovely until Dawson Creek, then for the worst part of the road, the weather got ugly. Fortunately Lawrie knows how to drive in these conditions and we arrive, nerves intact, and in one piece.

The Ramada gets our business tonight as showers are a must and we want an early start tomorrow. The fact they have high speed internet is a nice bonus and the only reason I’m sitting here composing an update! Hopefully we make Liard Hotsprings tomorrow and perhaps Teslin or even Whitehorse the following day.

The week is quickly by as there isn’t a dull moment to be found. Mom has some projects waiting that need a bit of extra muscle. We build bonfires and roast our last marshmallows ever. Mom takes me to find a swift and some lovely cotton chenille yarn (the swift is so Lawrie doesn’t have to help me wind balls from skeins, he’s very tolerant but there are limits!). We also go off to make tuffa pots at Mike and Gail’s (friends of Mom’s from Timmins, Ontario). One of the highlights of our activities for the week is a visit and dinner with Murray and Tracey (we did forget to take pictures after all). But, by far, the Okanagan Symphony in Vernon on Sunday tops the highlight list. Prior to the Symphony we went to Davison’s Orchard (more friends of my mom’s) to get apples to take home, then off to dinner before the performance. Wonderful music, we all agree. Youth and genius is the theme so we hear soloists that are in the 16 year range. Totally amazing and dedicated young people. I hope they are inspiring other young people! The guest conductor is Rosemary Thomson from the Calgary Philharmonic and she is wonderful with her explanations of the music we hear.

So Monday, a week later, arrives very soon and we find ourselves packed up and back on the road to Calgary. Thanks for the great time Mom!

Of course the weather isn’t going to hold and it is snowing by the time we get to Revelstoke. In spite of that it is a pleasant trip. The new truck tires are wonderful and provide a skid free trip. Tomorrow we plan to start off at noonish so as to avoid the ice on the roads north of Calgary. We think we will just take our time on the way home but you could cross your fingers, say a prayer, send good wishes our way for a safe last few days. I highly doubt we will be preparing a blog update until we get home, bringing this wonderful trip across a great country to a close.

We have spent a week here camped out at our son and his wife’s house. We can’t believe that it is the second week in October, the weather is so warm, blue sky and sunny days. Michaelea and Jon take us to their favourite restaurant upon our arrival. Our other son, who lives downtown, the trendy guy that he is, has to wait for the next day before he is blessed with our presence. He treats us to a wonderful meal at a Vietnamese restaurant he quite often frequents. Everyone is doing fine. Finally, our jobs are done! The truck gets a new set of tires and the dust we found on that one grid road that wasn’t paved, gets washed off the trailer. We visit Mountain Equipment Co-op and do a little other necessary shopping. If that isn’t enough there is also a little road trip to Bragg Creek and Turner Valley. Then there is Thanksgiving supper squeezed in before our departure on Monday October 11, destination: Banff and Lake Louise. Thanks kids with putting up with the parents for a few days. We apologize to those who we didn’t get to see, we just couldn’t find the time, sorry!

The first sight of the badlands is impressive. We stop and take some pictures of one of the many abandoned coal mines in this area. There are hoodoos with their caps of harder limestone protecting their softer sandstone supports and of course, dinosaur fossils.

There is no better place to see fossils and get a feeling for the work of paleontology than at the Royal Tyrell Museum just out of Drumheller, Alberta. Actually, there haven’t been any fossils discovered in the Drumheller area, most of the finds have been further south in the badlands, but who cares! This is a great place. There are dinosaur models, interpretation panels, and some really neat displays. We both particularly liked the Devonian Ocean display and the garden full of plants from around the world that existed in a prehistoric time and are still with us today. If there is one complaint, there is so much information that towards the end you begin to suffer from sensory overload, so plan on spending two days here if you ever visit!

It’s a short hop on the Bleriot Ferry (yes another one) over the Red Deer River to our campsite for the night. This is a really peaceful campsite beside the river and at this time of the year, it is all ours. There are geese flying overhead and mule deer in the field behind us as we enjoy a very relaxing campfire before the next days’ hustle and bustle of big city Calgary.

September 11-19 We spent the first few days visiting with family and catching up on the news. The weather was cold when we arrived, but true to form, improved substantially after our arrival. My sister and her partner, my brother and his wife, and Lynn and myself all headed up to the family cabin at Little Bear Lake for the weekend. Now you have to know a little bit about our cabin. You see no matter what the weather is anywhere else, you can count on it to be raining there. So on our way up on Friday the weather was great until we got to about sixty miles from ‘the lake’…rain. My brother arrived about six o’clock the same day, great weather to about a mile from ‘the lake’… rain. Oh well, it was a great weekend with just us ‘kids’. We even got to cut down a few trees!

September 20-26 There’s a lot to be said about vacationing at your parents’ house. There is lots of time to visit, eat, snack, play games, and well, you know, reminisce about the past, discuss the present and dream about the future. We did a lot of that this week. Lynn, our niece Kimberley, and sister-in-law Jean, went on a mini road trip on the weekend to a twisted poplar grove near Spier. This twisted grove thing is really quite erie. All of the other trees in this area grow as normal poplar do – tall and relatively straight. This small clump for some reason do not. They are all mature trees but have grown up gnarled and twisted into some of the most bizarre shapes. This could be a fun place at Halloween!

Then they went on to Fort Battleford National Historic Site in Battleford. Fort Battleford was prominent during the Riel Rebellion in 1885 and, as most forts do, served to protect the citizens of Battleford and surrounding area in the meantime.

While Lynn and the girls were galavanting around the countryside, I and my brother, Mark, spent a quiet and relaxing day fishing at my brother’s secret fishing hole. It would have been quite a soothing day if not for the two fish that interrupted our quiet reverie. These fish were way too exciting for me to handle! After all, trolling around and around a lake with a fishing rod in your hands and nothing else to do is quite hypnotic!

September 27-28 This next little bit is about goose hunting, so skip this if that doesn’t tickle your fancy. I have been out several times ‘spotting’ (looking) for feeding spots of geese. After several attempts I find one and so we set up a shoot with my brother and several of his friends for the next day. The day is lousy for goose hunting – sunny and will eventually turn to about 70 degrees. But we manage to take a few from about 25,000 total birds. The next day I am able to hunt with one of my best friends Rick Stilling and manage a few more birds from the same field. So all told not a bad two days.

September 29-30 We are now making preparations for our departure on October 1st. These past three weeks have been a great break and a wonderful visit. It has been filled with a few tears, great Boggle games, laughs, great conversations and some heated debates. But the urge to travel is once again upon us and we do have a few other people and places to meet and see. We’re getting very good at saying good-bye, but this one hurts just a little more than all the others, so through teary eyes we say goodbye to Saskatoon, family, and friends.

L to R back Ellen, Dad, Mom, Jean – front Lawrie, Kimberley, Mark