Cruises/Ferries

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Crossing the Yukon

Last week, I crossed the Yukon on the Dawson ferry for the first time. The ferry runs 24/7 during the summer except for a 2 hour shut down for maintenance in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. During freeze-up in the fall and break-up in the spring, residents are trapped on their side of the river for about a full month. During winter, the ice is thick enough to drive on and there is an ice bridge. Crossing on the ferry is free and the boat can accommodate very big vehicles, including RVs. The ferry is small and wait times for RVs can be long since locals have priority.

waiting to get on (I crossed over on foot)

waiting to get on (I crossed over on foot)

heading across the Yukon

heading across the Yukon

Dawson is getting to be pretty small :)

Dawson is getting to be pretty small 🙂

the ferry

the ferry

The beginning (and the end) of the Top of the World highway

The beginning (and the end) of the Top of the World highway

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Heritage Park

Scary moment of the day: I had to scrape a thick layer of frost off my car this morning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Driving into Calgary today, I had to take this picture:

That’s not a lake down there. It’s a fog-shrouded town!

Preamble to my day:

1) Yes, I was a history major and am still a history buff.
2) The days have been way too lovely and sunny to spend them cooped up in museums!

So, today, I went to Heritage Park, which is Calgary’s Fort Edmonton. It’s quite a similar set up, only I got to see Heritage Park while it was fully running. It was a much more hectic, but richer, experience.

Entrance to Heritage Park is 15$ and then you pay 3$ per ride you want to take or 10$ for unlimited rides. Rides include a steam train, a paddle boat, a wagon, a trolley, and a variety of midway attractions. I suspected that the 10$ option would be the best value, so I went with that.

Guests who arrive before 10AM are served a complimentary and surprisingly hearty and delicious pancake and sausage breakfast with juice. So, I started with that and then began my tour of the park.

My first stop was the blacksmith shop where I stayed for almost a half hour watching the blacksmith turn a piece of iron into a meat fork. He gave me a lot of information on the trade and how one learns it.

After that, I wandered through the village, taking pictures of random things that caught my eye.

The Two Storey Outhouse:

This outhouse was attached to a bar with a hotel over it. Bar patrons used the ground floor holes while the hotel guests used the upstairs ones.

The Reservoir’s Water Colour:

The ride on the SS Moyie was an incredible value, affording me a half hour cruise of the Calgary reservoir.

Rugs I Wouldn’t Have in My Home:

I was startled just walking into that parlour. Imagine wandering around the house in the wee hours of the morning while half asleep and stumbling onto that thing?!

Fan Etiquette:

That Oh-So-Gaudy Victorian Sense of Style:

I wish I hadn’t been shy and had taken a picture of the interpreter in this house. My first thought was that her blouse matched the wallpaper, but I didn’t say that out loud. When I commented on the decor, she said “A lot of people are impressed that my blouse matches the wallpaper.” LOL

My Favourite House Style:

Some people, including the interpreter, call this a Queen Anne Cottage. It’s actually a rare type of Victorian that followed the Queen Anne Cottage, which has more ornamentation, and is a Gothic Victorian. If money were no object and I could afford someone to ensure the upkeep of such a home, this is what I would have built for myself. I love the square tower and the general layout of the rooms inside without there being all the Queen Anne ‘frou frou.’

Before having lunch, I decided to try the midway. I rode the whip, which was fun, but very tame. I then decided for some unfathomable reason to ride the ferris wheel. The second to last time I rode a ferris wheel, I told myself ‘never again’ and six years later I found myself riding it again and being stuck at the top for an unfathomably long time due to a mechanical problem (how reassuring). But this wheel seemed tiny! Yeah. Let’s just say I didn’t have much fun and I was really, really, really glad when the ride was over. This video makes me queasy all over again:

I walked around for a bit after to settle my stomach and decide what I was going to do for food. I carry snacks, but was getting a bit tired of my usual lunch of a granola bar, cheese, nuts, and fruit. I avoid having lunch in these sorts of places, but when I saw the prices at the most ‘upscale’ restaurant on site, I decided to treat myself to a nice meal. Prices would have been considered reasonable anywhere and were a bargain in this sort of location. 14$ (including tip) netted me a huge gourmet sandwich of provolone, turkey, and vegetables, with a side of fresh french fries and a bottomless glass of apple juice.

Add a steam train ride, tons of walking, and an extremely bright sun, and I was wiped by about 4. What a full day!

I really liked Heritage Park and suspect that even if Fort Edmonton Park had been running full swing it wouldn’t have been quite as much fun. My only major complaint about Heritage Park is that too many of the exhibits are actually stores. For example, you walk into a period drug store and are accosted to buy all manner of goods before you can walk to the back and see the actual museum exhibits. Otherwise, HP offers really good value for the money.

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Saskatoon

I wish I had time to share all the pictures I took of Saskatoon, but I have to be out of this site by 11! 🙁 Every other place I’ve stayed, checkout has been a much more civilized 12 o’clock.

At any rate, let me take you back to Regina one last time, to the set of ‘Laundry Day On the Prairie’.

Even though I haven’t blogged about it since I bought it, I’ve been using and absolutely adore my Wonderwash. I use it to keep on top of the cleaning of small items like dish cloths. The machine cleans things beautifully. I should have taken a before and after picture of one of the cloths I cleaned; it was so filthy after washing a BBQ grill that I thought it would have to become a rag. My Wonderwash got it back to brilliant white! At any rate, I woke up Thursday to discover that Ms. Tabitha had been sick all over the bed. Yay. Not. I decided to wash the sheets in the Wonderwash. This was not as tedious an endeavour as one might imagine even though it took about an hour. The sun was shining so hard that I barely had to wring anything out; within an hour everything was bone dry.

The owners came by at one point because someone had told them that a tenant had strung a clothesline, an apparent no no. They laughed when they saw I’d strung the line from one of Miranda’s mirrors to a utility pole. That was fine; the no no is to string a heavy line between their precious tiny poplars. I can’t believe that I can believe that some idiots would have done that. Me, I’m good at improvising. 🙂

Croft will be happy to see a white hose in this picture. I had to use my green hose for black tank related matters back in Manitoba, so since I needed a new hose anyway, I made it a point to look for a white one. I hate it, it leaks at the connection where it screws to the tap and Canadian Tire won’t take it back. I’ll have to fix it next time I stop; thankfully I have the parts to do that.

So, Saskatoon. I’m going to have to move here since it hosts my dream home!

I decided that the only thing I absolutely had to do in Saskatoon was the Western Development Museum’s ‘1910 Boomtown’.

It’s fantastic!!! The museum is a recreation of a street in a circa 1910 Saskatchewan town.

You can go into each building and see a typical commerce, service, or home from the period.

That took up the entire morning. As I was coming out, the lady at the admissions counter ‘had’ to introduce me to her other colleague as ‘the gal RVing across Canada with her two cats.’ Without prompting, she then told me I had to visit the University of Saskatchewan campus and pulled out a map showing me a walking route I could take. That sounded fantastic. I needed the exercise and I wasn’t in the mood for more museums.

The walk was quite long, about 7.5km, if I reckon correctly, and was breathtaking. I started at the Saskatoon Weir (dam) and climbed up to the CPR Bridge.

I discovered here that there is no way I am ever going to be able to make it up the Eiffel tower. The stairs are metal mesh that you can see through. I barely made it to the top, and that’s because I finally had the smarts to close my eyes. The view from the top was breathtaking, but I couldn’t get off that bridge fast enough. If a train had come by as I crossed, as one did an hour later when I was safely on the ground, a rescue crew would have been needed to get me moving again!

Once I got across to the U of S campus, the daring bridge crossing was all worth it. I got some fantastic shots of Saskatoon.

It was past lunchtime when I got back to my car, so I decided to head to the ‘trendy’ Broad Street area to scope out a place for a nice lunch, which I found at the Broad Street diner, where they have some amazing fries. Just off Broad Street I found a used bookstore with an owner who is quiiiiiite the character. He talked my ear off about how people today, especially politicians, know nothing about our history. I’d picked up a book on ancient Egypt and he told me I could have it free if I bought the autobiography of Nellie McClung, a suffragette, which he had seen me pick up (and put back down because it was pricey). I hesitated just long enough for him to offer me an even better deal, so I walked out with both books. In my defense, there were so many books on my ‘wish list’ in that store that if I was still living in a real house I could have easily bought a couple dozen!!!

Since I still have that nasty cold (better today, thank you), I was pretty exhausted by this point, so I went home to do laundry and come up with something fun to do in the evening.

The Saskatchewan activities guide mentioned boat tours, but that these tours stop on Labour Day weekend. That said, I’d found the launch for these tours on my walk and a sign there seemed to indicate that there would be a tour at 7PM. A quick phone call confirmed that, so off I went after dinner for a 1 hour cruise up and down the Saskatchewan River. It wasn’t a particularly good cruise in that we had to get any information we wanted from a brochure that was given to us. The brochure was great, but it’s hard to read and look at the scenery at the same time! That said, it was a lovely hour on the water and the weather was mild. Unfortunately, my pictures didn’t turn out.

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I have to be off within the next hour. I’m Alberta bound! Tonight’s destination: the Walmart in Lloydminster, a border city of which one part lies in Alberta and the other in Saskatchewan! Tomorrow, I’ll get to Edmonton.

Day 2
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Day 2

My feet tell me that I definitely over-extended myself today…. 🙂

Unfortunately, I’m still not used to the whole picture thing, so I have tons of pics (and movies) from my morning, but that’s it. I’ll get them on Flickr… eventually.

Here are the day’s highlights, and only highlights because if I put down everything I saw and did, no one will believe that I actually did and saw all of that. It’s been that sort of day. You try to see San Francisco in only two full free days there!

So…

From Neil’s, conveniently located in Russian Hill, near Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39, I trekked to:

1) the famous Lombard Street, touted as the crookedest in SF. Apparently, the locals know that’s not true, but the real crookedest street is in an unsavoury part of town…. At any rate, the crooked part of Lombard is beautiful, paved with bricks and immaculately landscaped. I have no idea how residents of this part of the street manage to navigate in and out of their driveways. I’m no photographer, but I think this pic is pretty good!
2) Pier 39. There, I used my CityPass to visit the Aquarium of the Bay. I got a stamp on my hand that would have given me in and out privileges for the day, but I saw everything in one visit and didn’t return later for shows. Highlights included a tunnel surrounded by water in which we could see sea stars, leopard sharks, bat rays, skates, big sea bass, and much more. Very cool. I walked through twice. A highlight of this walk was a display where there was an open skate pouch (‘mermaid’s purse’) with a live developing embryo in it. Followed an awesome touch pool where I got to feel leopard sharks, skates, sea cucumbers, sea stars, urchins, etc. I have to say that except for the sharks, I could have been at a similar establishment on the east coast, the species are that similar.

3) After the aquarium, I had time to catch the 10:45 Bay Cruise, also courtesy of my CityPass. When I got on, I thought it was going to be a bit hokey, but no. We got an awesome tour of the bay, going all the way under the Golden Gate Bridge and then circling Alcatraz (which I’ll be visiting on Saturday with Neil). I took some awesome pictures of the bridge from many angles and most of Alcatraz. The weather was beyond cold and I was so glad I’d brought a sweater. One lady had just a tank top and I swear she was turning blue, until a gentleman took pity on her and handed her his jacket. Some people are just silly. A highlight of the tour was seeing the sea lions of Pier 39 who used to be chased away but are now a tourist attraction (as is just about everything in SF!). The narration (by Jules Verne’s character Captain Nemo, believe it or not) was pretty funny and very informative.

Here is the underside of the Golden Gate Bridge (choosing that one because it’s not a view you often see of this bridge!):
and here is Alcatraz (I can’t wait to be able to remove the people in the foreground from all my Alcatraz pics!):

I was surprised by how beautiful and lush the island is. Saturday’s visit can’t come soon enough!

4) It was noon when we got back and I had just one more stop to make at Pier 39. My CityPass had a bonus ticket for the Boudin Bakery, which produces the most famous sourdough in San Francisco using ‘mother dough’ that’s been fed since the 1800’s! This museum was fabulous and really set the history of the bakery into its historical context. The thing I’ll remember the most is the story of how during the earthquake of 1906 the owner of the bakery had just enough time and presence of mind to scoop the starter into a bucket before running to safety as her business burned to the ground. Saving the starter meant that she could restart her business and, essentially, lost nothing. Now bad for some flour and water! The self-guided tour ended at a tasting room where I got an amazing snack of sour dough, ciabatta, and chocolate and raisin breads, with various toppings like marinated parmesan.

5) My traitorous map made it seem like the Exploratorium was close-by, so I decided to hike there next. Let’s just say I arrived an hour later extremely footsore. 🙂 I hadn’t spent any money yet today (!) so I decided to not look for lunch and just ate at the museum before exploring. The Exploratorium is so much fun. For those in Ottawa, just think of what the Science and Tech museum used to be like, and then multiply the fun factor by at least 1,000. Every single exhibit is interactive and teaches you something about a different branch of science. One of the cooler exhibits were a ‘shadow camera.’ I have no idea how it worked, but a flash of bright light would capture our shadows. Really, really cool effect. There were also some developing chicken embryos in the same style as the skate pouch. I spent a full three hours at this museum until I’d had my fill of fun. I’m such a kid. 🙂 A final note regarding the Exploratorium is an hysterical find at the gift shop–an Einstein action figure. Love it! Coming out, I went around a lovely lagoon bordered by ‘palace’ ruins. I’m adding this so I can mention the only moment I regret not thinking to pull out my camera. A family of mallards was swimming close to shore looking for handouts. In the middle of the family, nonchalantly trying to fit in, was a sea gull. I’ve never seen a gull behave like that and I wasn’t the only one to find the sight pretty damn funny!

6) I was completely burnt out by this point, but I had a rogue ticket left in my book for a downtown attraction. The other two were for Golden Gate Park. I wasn’t sure I’d have time to see the downtown one any other day and it was open till 8:45 today. Since it’s something I wouldn’t have paid to see, I decided that a half-assed, ‘been there, done’ that tour would be sufficient. Which it was. You see, I’m not a fan of modern art, as in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (or SFMoMA for cute). Now, there were some things I actually liked and I really enjoyed the Martin Munkasci photograph exhibit, but, otherwise, modern art exasperates me!!! The big going on today was the ‘Matisse as sculptor’ exhibit, but I just breezed through it since I’m not a huge fan of Matisse. At any rate, I did the SFMoMA in 45 minutes flat and I can’t imagine I would have spent more time there had I not been so burnt. I’m embarrassed to admit that the best part of going to the SFMoMA was the LONG bus ride from the Exploratorium. Hey, I can’t like everything!

7) After dinner at a nearby diner I realised that I wasn’t going to be able to walk home, so I hired a cab. Now, that’s exhaustion for you.

My left little toe is currently double its normal size thanks to an impressive blister and my SPF 60 failed me around mid-day, so I’m a tad cooked (but not burned, thankfully) and very footsore. What an amazing day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ll just add that Neil came home with an impressive earthquake survival kit, given to him by Google. Obviously, Google knows something we don’t know, and I’m quite nervous. 🙂

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Glen Nevis to Edinburgh By Way of Oban

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12:28 pm

I just passed (on the way to Oban) the castle used in the ‘cow-throwing’ scene in ‘Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail’!

12:49

I saw my third stop sign in more than three weeks!

My fourth in Oban!

My fifth in Edinburgh!

7:31 pm

I’m in Edinburgh. Where else but at Yvonne’s would I be greeted with a cup of hot tea and shortbread cookies?! I’m sorry I was unable to stay in Oban; it sure was bonnie! The Scots sure know how to reuse, reduce, and recycle! I had a veggie burger and chips for lunch. Reuse: the newspaper the food was wrapped in. Recycle: the outside paper, which wasn’t greasy. Reduce: the amount of time it takes to eat; you get to read the comics at the same time! Later, Yvonne’s offered me some supper!

8:01 pm

That had to be the best meal I’ve had since getting to Scotland! Lots of veggies and pasta, yum!

 

Today I’ve only spent £11.85 on meals and board. Try to get that anywhere else!

I went to the tourist info centre to get, what else, info on buses to Stirling and other places that interest me. It looks like getting to Stirling might be long, but not too complicated. I’ll check out other companies, but I get a 30% rebate with Citylink… (It’s too bad I hadn’t yet discovered that trains are quicker and cost almost the same as buses!)

Right by Oban, directly under the bridge, there’s an honest to goodness whirlpool! Supposedly, it’s caused by two opposing tides and it’s treacherous. Oban, unlike Kyleakin, actually has a (albeit minor) smell of the sea. What I wanted to do in Oban was catch a ferry tour to the islands, Mull, Iona, etc., but I discovered that the ferry broke down today and many people were stranded for several days—without their packs!!!

Glencoe, I’m told, isn’t nearly as bonnie as it’s made out to be. I saw Inveraray Castle, albeit out of the corner of my eye!

In a way, I’m sorry to be done with Haggis since they brought such security and less hassle to my travels. I was disappointed with today’s driver, William, who didn’t yak it up much. I think that John was my favourite, although Claire’s accent made her jokes and stories all the better! Craig never shut up, but he said tons of cool stuff. As for Malcolm, I think he was a happy medium between all… 4, was it? Haggis was great in that instead of just taking us from place to place, they told us about the stuff in between. I never once had to ask: ‘What’s with that castle/ruin/tower/cairn/plaque, etc.’. And the stories were always told in the liveliest of fashion.

So, now I’m in Edinburgh, sitting at Yvonne’s kitchen table while her daughter (Mhari, pronounced Ma-ri, like the French but with a Scots accent) is drawing me a picture. Now that’s a souvenir I won’t mind ‘dragging’ home with me (I still have as of posting in 2016!). That’s enough for tonight, tomorrow!

11:30 pm

I’ve come so far in these past two weeks!!! I went into a pub all by my lonesome, ordered a beer, sipped it, and stayed long enough to see Yugoslavia (how the world has changed…) score a goal against the U.S.A. I’m now in a room with three African girls who are great. It’s very late, so good-night. Oh, and I had fun getting thoroughly misplaced in Edinburgh at 10:00pm !