More Relaxing Time on Lake Huron

During our visit with Peg and Dave, there was time in the yarn shop, time at Peg's house, a movie, a couple of really nice dinners, and a walk out the State Dock to see Dave's latest "project," the Heritage 23, a row/sail boat made of wood that he helped build with several other local guys.  I've included a picture of the boat under sail but invite you to go to the YouTube video to get a better idea of what it looks like.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=CyljecUybZw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXQdqorLX64&feature=player_detailpage

Nice work if you can get it!

If you want even more video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMrfVqLnYzI&feature=player_detailpage

Sunrise Side of Michigan

We've been enjoying a couple of days with sunrises over Lake Huron - beautiful.  The weather's been cool and sunny.  It couldn't be nicer.  A day in the yarn shop, some helping, some chatting and a lot of chilling.  I'll post more when we get to a new location - Punderson State Park in Ohio for Labor Day weekend.

Northern MN, WI, MI

Driving across the north end of these states brought home two observations:  We're really in the country of the Lutherns. When guessing the denomination of any church building in the distance, it was never a contest.  One just had to say Luthern and you were right.

The second observation was the fall colors showing on the trees. Yes - reds and yellows and oranges.  The fall colors are coming to a tree near you. They were very pretty on the maples of these Northern forests.

We're staying at a county park in Escanaba, a beautiful campground where it rained all day (according to the camp host) and where now everything is cool and clean.  We have the best wifi service that we've had so far. We even got to Skype with Jennifer and Grace, earlier.

On to East Tawas tomorrow.

Just Relaxing

We've been two days outside of Duluth, actually in a community called Saginaw, MN.  It's a really nice RV park. We've had some relaxing dinners, some nice walks, did some laundry, reading, crocheting, and TV watching, since we can get broadcast stations from Duluth.  It's been a relaxing stop, and tomorrow we're on our way to the upper peninsula.

Two spots, one night

We decided to stay in Warroad, MN on  Thursday night.  Interesting name: a confluence of rivers and Lake of the Woods. The Chippewah and the Sioux were less than friendly to each other. One thing they fought over in this location was rights to the rice beds of the lake.  Who knew?  The area was explored by a whole bunch of early explorers and French men and priests, all of whose names I had never heard.  Just a different little corner of the world.

We started by parking in a field of "overflow" sites.  It was hot and no shade.  When Bob tried to pay for our site ( a good 3-4 city blocks back at the entrance of the park) he found that there was one site in another part of the park that was available, shaded and in the woody part of the park (another 5-6 blocks in the other direction.)  He ,"walked to check it out, found it much better, walked back to where Linda was sitting in the shade of the RV.  We pulled up stakes (so to speak), and moved to a new location.

When we took an evening walk around this park, we found sites with wooden decks, permanent fire pits built into decks, sheds, boat storage, etc, etc.  Apparently, we discovered another locals "campground

Two days at Lake Metagoshe, ND

We stayed two nights at a very nice state campground in the Turtle Mountains of ND. Did you know that there are mountains in northern North Dakota? When we came out of Canada, we decided to stay waaayyy up north in the states.

This state park includes a beautiful lake.  We walked to the lake and watched the water skiiers. It was not too busy and we got to talk a lot to our neighbors. The rigs started rolling in early Wed. night and we learned it was the practice of the locals to bring their campers and boats up after work, set up camp, go back home and come back for the weekend. The place was filling up fast by the time we left.

Our drive to Minnesota included a new location for a DQ lunch and ice cream and scenes like the sunflower fields in the picture.

North Dakota sunflowers

Day 2 in Moose Jaw

Another day in Moose Jaw.  We walked all around their historic downtown area and thoroughly enjoy a tour of their "tunnels."  The tour we chose was about the Chinese population, left over from building the trans-continental railroads. They were cheap labor for laundries, burlap bag manufacturers, and restaurants (at least these were the jobs we observed.) They did all their work underground and also lived there ( in pretty desperate conditions.) We walked through the basements of several city blocks of buildings, all connected by tunnels. The Chinese found some advantages in staying out of site, though, instead of living above ground with the prejudicial treatment that they received in society. The presentation was very well done and the information, very interesting.

We're taking a "break" tonight, staying at the Wakamow Heights B&B.  It sits on a hill, high about the Wakamow Valley where Moose Jaw is nestled.

That's me lounging in front of the B&B

First day in Moose Jaw

Picture this: a campground with all the ammenities, across the road from the visitor center, cater-corner from a Tim Hortons who also has Stone Cold Creamery ice cream. We went only to the laundry room (produced some clean clothes) and all the supporting businesses (Tim Bits with coffee for the laundress), read, walked in the beautiful Saskatchewan sunshine, listened to music, had wine with our dinner and walked some more in the sunshine.

Tomorrow (actually Monday, today. I couldn't get a strong enough signal last night to post) some sight seeing.

Moose Jaw SK

We left John and Sue's house this morning. On our way to MooseJaw we visited Outlook SK, walking over their walking bridge (longest pedestrian bridge in Canada), visiting their museum, enjoying lunch at the nearby Gardiner Dam (one of the largest earthen dams in the world.)  These were all Sue's suggestions for seeing something interesting in Saskatchewan.  We went by back roads, described on the road map as being "thin membrane surface - no shoulder."  It's incredible how sparsely populated Saskatchewan is and how thin a paved road can be.

Sue, John and Jet

Walking is what we did

We didn't actually go all the way across

This guy welcomes people to Moose Jaw at the Visitors' Center

Saskatoon visit

We've had a wonderful visit with "old" friends from college, John and Sue.  John is working for the University of Saskatchewan, a noted expert in the area of environment pollution, holds a  CRC, a Canada Research Chair from the Canadian government.  This  allows him to do all kinds of research.  We took a tour of his building on the university campus and saw the labs where some 50+ people work under his direction.  All very interesting.

We had a great lunch at the Berry Barn and toured Saskatoon with Sue, a beautiful prairie city with perfect summer weather (we hear the winter weather's not so good.)

Drumheller campground and Dino Museum

We enjoyed a night at the HooDoo Campground outside Drumheller.  When we left to go to Saskatoon, we stopped for a really quick visit to the Royal Tyrrell Museum.  The entire town is "into" dinosaurs.  The IGA dinasaur greeted us, as well as the world's largest dino ourside the visitors center.  That's Grandpa standing at the base of the large palm tree in the dark shirt and light colored shorts.

IGA has a dinosaur, as does everyone else in town

World's Largest Dinosaur

Here are a couple of mesum pictures.

Outside Greeter

Grandma's Friend

Grandpa reading about dinos

Travel from Banff to Drumheller AB

We had a great little trip out of the mountains and into the prairies.  We stopped and enjoyed lunch with Dean and Sally Salter. Dean is the brother of Pam, a member of  the Yachats church.  He's been to Yahats several times -- a retired minister .. who now writes novels.  We've read all but his latest, which he gave to us on the way out the door.

Drumheller is a town through which we were passing on our way to Saskatoon. Several people in the Banff campground said we had to go to the dinosaur museum, here.  Did you know that dinosaurs were discovered here?  We'll learn more about it tomorrow and then post.  This area of Canada is known as the Badlands.  It's pretty barren.


Slow frustrating connection. Maybe more after dinner.

These pictures were taken on our way out of Banff.

Morning Clouds over Banff Mountains

More morning clouds

More morning clouds

Banff

This is our first full day in Banff. We are "dry camping" in a nearby campground. If your're not plugged in to anything, it's easy to drive to town, park, and walk around. You'd all be proud of my walking exercise today - down the main street, a little tourist shopping, through two museums, on to a lovely lunch, back to the parked RV, and now here at the Second Cup  to use their wi-fi.

Yesterday was mostly driving. We crossed the Continental Divide, changed to Mountain Time, and drove through three Canadian National parks. The Canadian Rocky Mountains are beautiful and the weather perfect.  The pictures don't really show what we're experiencing, but we're posting them anyway.

Whoops! I can't upload pictures with this tablet, and we didn't bring the lap top.  Pics to follow, later.

Banff Mountains from campground

Hoodoos at Banff

Staying in a Fruit Orchard

Nice Campsite

Peaches

Apples to the West of Us

Today was a really relaxing day.  We read and sat and walked.  Bob went to the store that was advertised as "just around the corner."  It wasn't bad for him, got some kinks out and some veggies for supper, including some great local sweet corn.  If you like fruits and vegetables; hot, dry summers; snowy winters; and a gigantic lake, this is the place for you.

Off to Banff tomorrow.

Kelowna BC

Who knew that there is a metropolitan area of 184,000 people at the north end of Okanagan Lake in British Columbia. We thought we were coming to a little, out-of-the-way place.  Surprize!

Actually, we had a great trip through Eastern Washington. Ate lunch on the shores of the Columbia River at a beautiful city park in a little town that ended almost as soon as it started. Our travel day ended when we found a very helpful natve at an Arby's who gave us directions to our campground. Our planned-on i-phone maps were not BC friendly.

Apple Valley RV is just that. We're sitting in the middle of an orchard, with apples and peaches ripening all around us. It's a good thing that we stopped and bought some fruit as soon as we crossed the border or I might be trying to pick the ones around us. There are fruit stands everywhere and it was a nice addition to supper.



Lunch and a walk at Pateros City Park



Lunch - Lake (Columbis River) - Linda

Mt Rainier with Friends

What a fabulous, unplanned day.  Norm and Joanne invited us to go for a local, sightseeing drive.  Mind you, they live on the east side of Mt Rainier, just a little way from the National Park boundry.

We visited some of their favorite spots (that Mom could walk). Norm said to tell everyone that we went under the Pacific Crest Trail.

We had a wonderful lunch at the Whistlin' Jack Lodge on the Naches River.  This river supplies the Yakima valley with all the irrigation water necessary to grow all kinds of fruit, including one of two regions that produce those Washington apples that get shipped all over the country.

Here we are, our first night out, in Yakima. We had a wonderful dinner with our former neighbors in Yachats who are from Yakima. Their house sits on a hill looking over some orchards of apples, pears and cherries which they own and are trying to sell.

Driving along the north side of the Columbia River was a real treat. We've seen the gorge from the Oregon side several times in the last few years.  We haven't seen the Washington side since living in Camas.

The next shock to our systems came when turning north into the hot, dry desert of eastern Washington and all the reminders of eastern Oregon - Merrill and Malin.

Today is the pre-leg leg of our trip. We're spending the night at Nic and Holly's house in preparation for my one-month follow-up Dr appointment tomorrow.  The Bishop/Perdues are still making their way home from Southern California in their rented RV. Our Cruiser is parked in the street, waiting for our departure to parts north tomorrow.

We're done with the birthday celebrations in Southern California - a rousing success with lots of family and sharing of stories and catching up of lives.

Now, home, we're into the packing of our large "suitcase," trying to remember everything we could possibly need or want in the next 3 months. Bob is making an excel file listing our inventory :).  He wants to be able to declare everything as we cross the border into Canada.

House plants are residing with the neighbor, bills are on auto-pay, mail is forwarded, paper stopped.  Let's see, anything else?  We may be ready to go.