September 24, 2008 by Rae

Fort Edmonton Park

Today was the best sort of day!

First off, the weather was just beautiful; crisp but not too cold, with a bright blue sky that contrasted sharply with the emerald and amber foliage of the park. It was the kind of day meant for strolling outdoors.

As it turned out, Fort Edmonton Park isn’t closed during the week in the fall! It just runs on a very reduced basis: most buildings are open, but there are few interpreters and no concessions are open. There are also wagon rides available that go through the park and give the history of it.

While I was disappointed that the first Rutherford home was not open today, the atmosphere in the park more than made up for that. It was quiet and empty, and it was an absolute luxury to tour at my own pace, unhurried and without having to push my way through crowds.

Normally, there is a train which takes guests from the admissions building to the Edmonton Fort, from which guests can amble back chronologically through the exhibits. I did my tour in reverse and I actually much preferred that, as it felt like I was slowly making my way back in time, from a 1920’s street, to one from 1905, to one from 1885, to the old fort circa 1840.

At the fort, I took the the wagon back to the entrance, then back to the fort again, from which I took a slightly less beaten path back so that I could snap pictures of the few buildings I’d missed which had been pointed out on the tour.

I wound up spending four hours at the park when I had expected to spend just one. Admission for today was just 8.75$!

The entrance to the park is supposed to be inspired by the shape of a boat and that of a fort wall.

I collect(ed?) blue willow dishware and snapped a picture of this enamel piece as I’d never seen one that was so pale. I came close to buying this dish in the gift shop but showed remarkable restraint. 🙂

The first mosque ever built in Canada (and possibly North America) looks Ukrainian; guess the nationality of the architect and builder. 🙂

Private toilet facilities at the fort have only three holes!

The round barn is an original building that was moved to the park. The design (a 20-sided polygon) wasn’t very popular, but made for an efficient use of space as it could hold more cattle per square foot and allowed for a common feed area in the centre that could be supplied by a hay loft on the second level.

September 24, 2008 by Rae

Wild Rose Country

I’m posting from Edmonton, Alberta.

Edmonton

Driving northwest out of Saskatoon on the Yellowhead (16), the landscape begins to ripple and the vast golden expanses of wheat give way to green pastures interrupted by dense poplar copses. By the time you truly enter Alberta, after you’ve passed Lloydminster, you’d think you were back in northern Ontario. But the trees betray your true location, as Alberta along this route has more poplar than it does spruce.

My first night in Alberta was spent in a zoo of a shopping complex in Lloydminster. I was very technically set up in front of a Wal-mart, but, truly, home was squeezed in between a Kelsey’s restaurant and a bank. It was very noisy, crowded, and busy, but provided a good lesson in how far I’ve come in the past few weeks. My first times in such locations, I couldn’t relax and absolutely had to leave the coach. This night, I just got a few groceries to make dinner at home, and then I plopped down with a book for several hours.

I made it to Edmonton around 12:30 on Monday. It had been a miserable morning; rainy, damp, cold, muddy, and windy. Keeping Miranda in her lane had required all my energy. I wanted to go somewhere warm for the afternoon, somewhere I wouldn’t have to think too much, somewhere I could have some exercise.

So, within a half hour of arriving in Edmonton, I was on my way to the West Edmonton Mall.

Now, I have no love for these insane orgies of consumerism. When I went through Minnesota in 2005 I purposely skipped the Mall of America even though I went right by it. But the West Edmonton Mall promised an indoor water park with a wave pool which sounded like just the thing I wanted….

I found the water park and was dismayed by the admission cost of 32$, plus 7$ for a locker rental. I just wanted to swim! I took a chance and asked the lady at admissions if there was perhaps a special fee just for the pool. Not during the week… because access to the whole facility is 17$ since not all the activities are open!

And that’s why I am really beginning to love this life, folks. I woke up Monday in a miserable parking lot, went to bed in a quiet setting surrounded by firs, and in the middle of all that, I spent three glorious hours swimming, body surfing waves, and taking too many exhilarating rides to count down waterslides. Monday was a Good Day.

Yesterday was okay. Everything I really wanted to see in Edmonton is either closed for renovations, closed for the season, or has a drastically reduced program. I did the Royal Alberta Museum in the morning and had mixed feelings about it. The 10$ admission fee felt bloated when I compared the museum to the RSM (2$) and I found the exhibits disjointed and badly organized. But I was able to fall in love with an absolutely adorable little guy (Australian stick bug) and learn about the shipwreck of the Empress of Ireland, which happened on the St. Lawrence River, and which I’d never heard about even though it was comparable in tragedy to the sinking of the Titanic.

I finished up my day early by going to Rutherford House, home of Alberta’s first premiere.

Rutherford House, Edmonton

Admission was 4$ and got me a private guide who was fantastic. I enjoyed touring this Edwardian home, comparing it to Victorian homes I’d toured before. The Edwardian style is a lot more simple, but the paint colours are shockingly bright.

Today, I’m not sure if I’m doing anything touristy. I had wanted to go to Fort Edmonton Park, but it’s shut down for the season and the only thing going on during the week are wagon rides. Later today I’ll go check out if those are worth doing since the park is just minutes from here. I also need to visit an Elections Canada office to get a special ballot to vote by mail as we have an election coming up on October 14!

I’m very tired and the cold I woke up with last Thursday has hardly abated. So, I’m reconsidering my plans for the rest of the week. I was supposed to go to Calgary tomorrow and stay through to Sunday. I think I’m going to blow off the city and come back in the spring.

So, my new tentative itinerary is to make it as far as the Wal-mart in Red Deer tomorrow, the Wal-mart in Calgary on Friday, and then stop in Canmore for a full seven nights as I found a park there that offers a free seventh night for six paid up (making the average cost per night almost reasonable). From there, I could take a day trip into Calgary (1 hour) and day trips into Banff, similar to what I did in Regina. And then from Canmore, I’ll drive, up and down and through the mountains until I reach the Okanagan valley. It’s getting colder up here (there’s frost on the grass outside!) and the Okanagan Valley is starting to sound like the promised land. 🙂

I must also confess that I’m getting too settled into this semi-retired-type routine of mine and that it won’t hurt for me to start making some income again to remind me that there is still a big old world out there. 🙂

September 20, 2008 by Rae

Moose Jaw

Moose Jaw is an easy fifty minute drive from the campground where I stayed, so let’s say about forty minutes from Regina proper. I’m so glad I did the town as a day trip rather than moving on to it with the coach. Those five nights I spent in one location really helped me recoup some energy!

I left for Moose Jaw around quarter to 8, getting into town just before 9, only to learn that the town opens late! Thankfully, I found a coffee shop and was able to kill some time there before 10, when the Tunnels of Moose Jaw ticket office opened.

Moose Jaw’s tunnels are the stuff of legends. Please visit the website to get some more information on their history. They were originally built as a way for steam engineers to easily access the boilers that provided the steam which heated the city, but they soon became the domain of sweatshops and bootlegging. These two topics were the subject of the tours available.

The first tour I went on took me on a Chinese immigrant’s journey upon arrival in Canada at the turn of the 19th century. The Chinese immigrant experience at that time is a true black mark on Canadian history. The tour very effectively conveys the exploitation and degradation these immigrants were subject to. There wasn’t a dry eye in the group when we got back to the surface.

The second tour is about Moose Jaw’s connection with Chicago during the Prohibition era. This tour was very entertaining, but was based on conjecture (that Al Capone might have sought refuge at times in Moose Jaw) and didn’t really provide that much historical information other than to set Moose Jaw as being the place for debauchery at the time. It was nice to finish up with that one, but if you can only take one tour, I recommend the Chinese one.

There’s a small heritage museum at the library, which I toured, then I bought a brochure outlining the steps for a self-guided tour of the town. The temperature in Moose Jaw on Tuesday was torrid. I can only compare it to my experience of Las Vegas in June. A real 30 degrees, not a 30 degrees with humidity. I couldn’t keep myself hydrated, so I knew that I was going to be cutting the day short.

Every single street light in downtown Moose Jaw has a voice that in tones: “The WALK light to cross XXX Street is now on. The WALK light to cross XXX Street is now on. The WALK–” It got to be very annoying, especially in the afternoon when I was trying to take photographs of various buildings and the heat was sapping all my patience. It reminded me of the annoying elevator voice at my job that calls out each floor.

There’s an extension on the back of the building for the police station. This addition perfectly matches the style of the old post office.

Moose Jaw came off as a charming, but faded, town. It had a grimy, sun bleached quality to it. Downtown is just a few blocks square and is very walkable. There’s a lovely park called Crescent Park, right in the middle of town, with a casino and spa on its edges. There are a lot of things to do in the environs, so if I’d had more time and had gone to Moose Jaw with the coach for a few days, as I’d initially planned, I would have had plenty to do.

Why ‘Moose Jaw’? The accepted theory is that the town is named after the Moose Jaw river, which has a bend that looks like the jaw of a moose!

September 12, 2008 by Rae

Sweet Home Manitoba

I am presently in nowheresville, Manitoba, somewhere between Winnipeg and Brandon (closer to the latter), taking a much needed break. It has been a long, long journey from Nipigon to here. Now, it’s time to slow down and spend a couple of days at various strategic locations.

So, last you heard from me, I was about a 100 klicks shy of Thunder Bay. There isn’t really anything of note between Thunder Bay and Winnipeg, so I decided to do a short haul to Thunder Bay to recharge my batteries, then undertake the very long haul to the Winnipeg area, from where I could slow down.

Since I was in no hurry on Tuesday, I decided to follow the signs promising Canada’s longest suspended bridge. The road there was a bit scary in a motorhome, but the signs said that there were RV sites at the end of the road, so I took a chance taking Miranda down there and it turned out fine. I wound up on the bottom of gorgeous Eagle Canyon where a path took me up to the first of two suspension bridges.

I couldn’t cross them. I have a touch of acrophobia and these bridges were too much for me. I made it a quarter of the way across the shorter bridge before I started to see red. I don’t let my fear of heights stop me from living and I challenge it regularly, so I go easy on myself at times like these. I took some pictures, then followed the path down to the river at the bottom of the canyon, enjoying a brisk hike around a lake before returning to Miranda. It was a fantastic forty minute detour and well worth the 18$ access fee that is easily explained by the impeccable installation.

In Thunder Bay, I picked up two items that would make my life easier. The first is a coffee press. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to discover these fantastic devices. I don’t think I could go back to drip coffee!

The second item is a speaker dock for my iPod. This enables me to now have music or podcasts on the road. Radio stations have been far between and satellite radio is as huge a monthly expense as would be satellite internet! I can also listen to music in the evening without having to start up the iMac or use headphones. I went into FutureShop not really knowing what it was I was looking for and the clerk figured it out in two seconds flat. Ah, it’s so lovely to be able to have something to listen to other than the cats meowing. 🙂

I slept amazingly well in Thunder Bay, waking up refreshed and relaxed. It was cold in the rig (13 degrees) and it was great to get up around 6 to use the bathroom and be able to turn on the generator to get the furnace going, crawl back under the blankets, and just doze with the kitties for a half hour until the temperature inside rose to a comfortable 16.5 degrees!

Speaking of cold mornings, the temperature fell to zero the night I was in Nipigon. According to Environment Canada, that’s the worst sort of night I can expect in the Okanagan Valley. If that’s the case, I have nothing to fear this winter.

So, I was bright eyed and bushy tailed in Thunder Bay and decided to head back east for a minute to the Terry Fox memorial, which I’d skipped the day before.

One of the reasons I felt I could do an almost 800km day, as I was ‘gaining’ an hour.

Tabitha spends our driving time in the overcab bunk, staring out the window. Neelix, however, likes to be right in the midst of the action (he is SO CUTE!).

Just outside of Kenora, I stopped at the Dixie Lake rest area.

I stood in that spot three years ago almost to the day, overcome with emotion. Back then, I had left Winnipeg about two hours before, knowing that from that moment on, my life was about to take a very different path. These first steps back onto the Canadian Shield cemented my decision for me. The next time I would go through that way would be heading west, hauling all my possessions and aiming for a new life in Winnipeg. I gave myself a deadline: March 2009. And then I went to work making this dream a reality. That dream died the first week of this past May, leaving room for an dream so much grander that I couldn’t have even fathomed it that September day in 2005. But, I did accomplish part of that initial plan, and six months early to boot. I felt almost like a traitor to Winnipeg today when I drove by her without stopping, hauling all my worldly possessions and zooming west, as though I was thumbing my nose at her and being ungrateful for all that she gave me these past three years. But I visited her in April and I remain convinced that she will one day be home to me. So, goodbye, but not farewell. I’ll be back this way again.

At any rate, the rest of yesterday leaves me with mixed feelings. After ten years of driving Ontario’s roads, I was pulled over by the O(ntario) P(rovincial) P(olice) for the first time, an hour from the Manitoban border, for going all of seven kilometres over the speed limit. Soon as the cop told me that, I relaxed, realising that he just wanted an excuse to pull over the young chick in the big ass RV. He spent about 10 minutes asking me questions about my rig, where I was from, and where I was going, and then he sent me on my way. Looking back, it was actually pretty funny. I need to get Miranda’s odometre checked, though. According to it, I was doing 94 in a 90 zone, not 97. Okay, speeding is speeding, but who the frell gets pulled over for doing 97 in a 90 zone? LOL!!!

I hit Manitoba soon thereafter and that’s where the day went to hell. I stopped at the tourist information kiosk to get directions to a dump station since I was planning on doing the Walmart thing again and was (am) still having issues with the black tank. I followed the woman’s instructions to the letter. They were wrong. I took the turn she told me to take, on a paved road, and promptly came to a dead end. No way to turn around without making major damage to both the car and Miranda. No way to unhook the car. No cell phone service to call for help. No help to be had on foot for ten kilometres. Result: one crunched RV back bumper (merely cosmetic damage), one crunched front car fender that is causing a noise that makes me suspect I’ll need to take it in for proper fixing, and one very disheartened and exhausted driver who isn’t exactly sure yet how much of that was her fault and isn’t convinced that she made the best decision.

Let’s just say I was in a foul mood (depressed and tired, not angry) when I got to the Walmart in Selkirk. This store was out of my way compared to, say, the one in St-Vital in Winnipeg south, but I was trying to avoid Winnipeg. 🙂 They had never had an RVer stay overnight before! The manager was quick to give me permission.

Back in Nipigon, I had met some semi-timers who RV 6 months of the year, who said that they gave up on doing the Walmart thing because they feel they have to spend at each one, and end up spending more than they would have had they gone to a campground. What I’ve been doing is making a list of the things I actually need and picking things up bit by bit at each store. This way, I have a bag of merchandise to hold up when I ask for permission to stay, but I’m not spending money I wouldn’t have needed to spend. Yesterday, I finally picked up a water pressure regulator, so tonight I’m hooked up to water for the first time (and to sewer also).

So, this morning, I took off in pea soup fog and stopped off at the first RV park advertising wi-fi (not free) and full service 30AMP sites. It’s a nice spot in the middle of nowhere (60 klicks to the nearest grocery store) and motivation to stay home tomorrow and get some things done around the coach.

I got settled in quickly (backing up is so not an issue!), then took off towards Brandon to visit the reptile zoo I’d been hankering to see. The map to get there sucked and the GPS was no help, so I’m really glad I went in the toad. When I arrived, I didn’t know what to think. The outside of the place looked like a dump! But it was open, so I went in, and paid the very reasonable fee of 5$.

The zoo turned out to be amazing and WELL worth the detour!!! I saw pythons and boas and anacondas, Nile crocodiles (the only ones in Canada, apparently), all manners of toads and frogs and turtles, big ass roaches, tarantulas, scorpions, geckos, and lizards, oh my! The owners need to do some major professionalizing of the place (especially when it comes to signage), but I can tell that the animals are very well cared for and that the owners are working on making the place look less amateurish.

Then, I made it to Brandon, where I got gas and groceries, then I headed home feeling absolutely exhausted. I immediately revised my plans for the next few days. I’m staying home tomorrow and will visit Brandon on Saturday (overnighting at the Walmart if I get permission).

Next, I’ll be moving on to the Regina area. I’d like to find a location somewhere between it and Moosejaw to hunker down for four or five nights so I can do day trips with the toad.

I’m a week into my journey and have but three left to go. It’s time to start pacing myself!

August 22, 2008 by Rae

I Can See!

No pictures tonight, but I’ll have lots and lots next time I go to Miranda!

Unfortunately, Mr. Wonderful and his son ran out of time and weren’t able to install a second battery since they would have needed to run a load test on the first one. But that’s no biggie, really, since they explained to me how to install the second one. It’s something I know I can do myself since it’s no different than is using jumper cables.

The back up camera is unbelievable. I bought it on eBay on the recommendation of several RVers. The seller is interceptinc and I strongly recommend him. The system was a bargain price and is of very high quality. It included absolutely everything you need to get set up, except mounting screws for the camera. I have a huge colour monitor that can even be hooked up to a DVD player and it has sound and a remote control. I can see almost two full car lengths behind the coach and the tip of the tow bar is evident so I know how far to backup. What a difference this is going to make!

The solar panel mounted beautifully. It’s flush with the coach, so I won’t be able to angle it to catch the maximum number of rays, but I knew that going in (the gimbled mounts are pricey!). There is a new controller on the wall that tells me whether the solar panel is charging or not, and if the battery is full.

Finally, the inverter was mounted onto the bookcase between the two arm chairs. Unfortunately, I’ll need to run an extension cord from it to the back of the coach, so my setup isn’t ideal, but it’s the best that could be done with the time and resources available. I’m satisfied and thrilled with the quality of the work that was done.

Since I can’t tow yet, Mr. Wonderful’s son had to follow me behind the coach all the way to North Gower so that he could bring me back to my car (we did the reverse on Tuesday). Tonight was such a nice night, he decided to use his motorcycle. So, I got my first motorcycle ride! It was an absolutely exhilarating experience!!! I must have made quite the picture in my giant sunglasses, helmet, leather chaps, and biker jacket! That experience alone made the financial outlay on the electrical work worthwhile. I’m still grinning from the thrill of it.

A Life By Design

"Sometimes in life, we reach to a right place by departing from a wrong port with a wrong ship!" ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Experiences

Fort Edmonton Park

Wild Rose Country

Moose Jaw

Sweet Home Manitoba

I Can See!