Last day in the Kootenays

We have had a real mix of weather here today. Hot & sunny to cloudy and thunderstorms!
In the morning we walked down to the Farmers Market and Craft Fair and on the way Rick found $5.25 in the grass. Just catching up to Jorja's $20 find at Drumheller!




On weekends here at Christina Pines RV there is a
couple Ilse & Paul Emerson that do pancake, sausage and coffee breakfasts on Saturday and Sunday all summer. She is 85 years old and has been doing this for at least 15 years. Then on Sunday afternoon she comes back at 2 with freshly baked pies with ice cream! Yum yum! She told us she baked 20 pies and was sold out within an hour. We had gone to Grand Forks with Mark & Willy for a Russian lunch and never got back until 2:45. All she had left was german chocolate cake and ice cream which was delicious. She gave each of us 1/4 of a 9" round cake so we have some left for tomorrow's dessert.

We spent a relaxing afternoon with Mark & Willy and then finished it with a swim. And then the thunderclouds hit again!

Bike rally in Washington

We took a ride down to the town of Okanogan, WA yesterday as that is where our International rally for UMCI was being held this year. It was great to see a lot of friends and also see a few of their new bikes. Looking in Omak for a place to have lunch we found a little dinner called Magoos. There were a lot of people eating there so that was a good indication that the food would be good. Yep they were right it was. Just as we finished eating Gary & Wanda our International reps came in for lunch. We had a great chat with them and caught up on everything that was going on. The rain and thunder storms were very prominent all day, it was a good thing that they had some nice big shelters at the campground for all the bikers.

Today we drove down to Greenwood for lunch and just look this little historic town over. Most times we just drive through and never stop. It sure has a lot of history here as an old mining town.

If you want a good place to eat look for the bikes outside, well at least we found a trike.

When some people retire their bike they just make a flower stand out of it.

If you are ever in Greenwood be sure to stop at the Copper Creek General Store. It is one of those old stores that "if they don't have it then you don't need it".
On our way back into Grand Forks we came across a sign that led us to a local dairy.

Your choice, locally made Ice Cream or fresh made cheese. Which one do you think won out? Temperature around 32C and only 15 minutes to the campground which gave us lots of time to eat the Ice cream and then get the cheese and milk into the cooler. Mmm good!

Welcome home to BBC

That's Beautiful British Columbia of course! Well we got away from Drumheller at a good time around 7:30 am.

What a great feeling to see the Rockies start to appear, it gave both us a feeling like we were really close to home.

We got into some construction and we came upon a car from Sask. with a plate called IRENE.

Even BC has some Hoo Doos near Invermere.
Good thing we picked up an hour on the time as we were real tired when we arrived around 5:30 p.m. local time.

Dino Digs

What a fabulous 3 days we had with Jorja. We didn't need to worry about keeping her busy, we needed to fiqure out how we could slow her down.





Our two visits to the Tyrell Museum, then Fossil World, the Water Park with the giant dinosaur to climb inside, the Hoo Doo's, Suspension Bridge, Horse Thief Canyon, entertainment and swimming pool in the campground, climbing trees, playing frisbees with other kids she met and whole lot more kept us and her plenty busy.



We had a pancake & sausage breakfast at the campground. It was all done by the volunteers here at the Resort. What a nice yummy treat.

The three of us drove up to Red Deer's gasoline alley to meet up with Brian and Brenda and Glenn's Tea House for lunch before she went home. On our way back we drove up to Stettler for a different way back. Yippee! we found a Timmies just had to stop and get an Ice Cap.

Do we trust the weatherman?

Prairies: Year of the Thunderstorm

Thunderstorms keep rolling across the Prairies bringing rain to some of the driest areas. For many farmers, it is too late to save their crops.

This was from the weather channel!!

We managed to have a great last few days in Lethbridge before moving on to Drumheller. Got here and it is hot hot! or are we just not used to it? We have a nice spot nestled around the trees, both for shade and perhaps a wind break if we need it. Brian and Jorja arrived from Edmonton and the 4 of us went out for dinner before Brian headed back home.

Time for a family bingo game in the rec hall.

Jorja won $5, Irene won $2 and Rick had to pay $3 for us to play. Seems like something is wrong with this picture. What a nice guy says Irene.

Setting up Jorja's cot in the add-a-room works out fine.

During the night we got lightning, thunder and rain, but the weather today has been great.

We went to the Tyrell Museum twice and out to climb on the hodoos after lunch.

Then the three of us went to the pool at the campground for an hour or so.

Happy Days!!

The forecast is for better weather! We went out for breakfast as our kitchen area was a disaster area after the storm. Had a great breakfast and then back to camp to start and put things together. All in all the only damage was the screened room was torn in a few places and a pole was bent. All fixable! Irene's needle and thread works wonders.

We met Dennis, Dorothy and Cal and their son for lunch at McLennan's Pub in Coaldale. Irene's nephew Clint came over for dinner and we had a great visit with him. Even though it was still cloudy we had no rain and managed to sit at the picnic table and eat dinner.

Highest Winds in 25 YEARS

Well the day started out great with lots of SUN. We did a little bit of the tourist thing before the skies turned black. The horse is at City Hall.


This is the 100th year celebration of the high bridge here in Lethbridge. Don't know why but we sure seem to be setting records for ourselves. The thunderstorm here in the late afternoon set records as having the strongest winds in the past 25 years, oh yeah! We thought the winds in PEI were strong but not like this storm. It tore our screen room off our tent trailer.


The bungee cords just couldn't take it. Irene stood in one corner of our add a room and I stood in the other holding onto the poles to try and keep it from blowing away as tree limbs and other peoples awnings were crashing down around us. I have to hand it to Irene she has been a real trooper on this trip, I believe a lot of women would have said " pack it in I want to go home". It looks like the weather will be good in the next day or so, it will give us time to have everything dry before we pack up for Drumheller. Jorja is going to meet us there for a camp-out.
Dennis Leonhardt is here in Lethbridge for a few days and he was a real life saver when he phoned during the storm and said he would bring us dinner. He arrived with Kathryn Seymour who we hadn't seen for some time. When they did arrive the wind had died down a little so we all managed to sit in the corners and have a bite to eat. Thanks again Dennis.
We had to go look for our rubber bucket as it had blown away in the wind and Rick spotted it between the pool fence and the office building!

Lethbridge, Alberta

It's always a good feeling for us to be back in CANADA. When we got to Bridgeview campground the staff were very great and they had saved us a spot on a nice grassed site close to everything, couldn't have been better. The road construction around the campground is basically all done so it was much easier to get into.
My first stop on Sunday morning was to get the car washed and also get the oil changed. Had to do a lot of scrubbing but got rid of most of the bugs. Irene stayed in camp and caught up on the laundry.



We came across a car show downtown that was very interesting to just wander around at and look at all the "old" cars. It was a good day for relaxing.
We have found the best place to get fast internet service is at Safeway in their hot-spot area.

Also we get to relax with a coffee as we check our e-mail etc.

A long day

We got away at a good time at about 8:30 am as we new we wanted to cross over North Dakota.

For lunch we decided to stop and have it in the geographical center of North America at a little town called Rugby, ND. The food was good, there was also some rocks near the monument that had a foot painted on it by Indians apparently thousands of years ago. Hence the name of their home made jam as Toe Jam.

Our day turned out to be longer than expected due to construction and also once into Montana there were no campgrounds that we would want to stay at until we got to Glasgow. The Shady Rest Campground was rustic looking but had very clean facilities.

On what looked like Indian reserve land we saw a lot of fields that must have been wild rice. The natives were in boats that it looked like they were harvesting.
Leaving this AM at about 9:00 we decided to stop for coffee at the Hitchen Post Cafe in Malta, MT. What a great little cafe talk about a place for the locals.

It was a full house except for the last table that we got. If it hadn't been only an hour or so since we had breakfast I believe we would have ordered their breakfast special, everything looked home made and the bacon was thick sliced. The best thing was the coffee they only charged $0.50 a cup plus you got free refills. Had a tail gate lunch at Wal Mart parking lot in Havre, MT. Had to get a few last minute groceries before heading for the border.