Trish & Anne RV Adventures

We left Banff on Thursday, May 28. Once we got out of the park we saw the largest cement plant in Canada – we were told by our Banff guide that it was instrumental in building the road through the park. And then we saw this little dust devil going though one of the many fields we passed. We were back in the flat county on our way to Edmonton.

We had another nice sunset at our campsite. The next morning we were having our tea and coffee outside, when we looked up and saw this canoe going by. If fact we saw 5 or 6, each being carried by a single person. It looked like it might be some sort of training, as they also had packs on their backs. There was one guy who had a very hard time getting it balanced – we felt sorry for him, as he dropped it a few times.

Then we were off for a tour of the Alberta Legislative Assembly – it was begun in 1907 and officially opened in 1912 and is in the Beaux Arts style.

Some of the regimental flags that were hung around the rotunda.

We weren’t able to go into the assembly room as there was a private event going on, so I only have these pictures of pictures.

But we did get to see the Alberta mace. The plainer one is the first mace – it was cobbled together quickly and it is rumored that the top portion is made from the float ball from a toilet. It was supposed to only be used for a short time – but it ended up serving for 50 years.

Looking up in the rotunda and then down on the fountain from the 5th floor. Trish is listening in the “Magic Spot,” where the acoustics allow you to hear the fountain below and it sounds much louder and that it might be right overhead. There is also a display here to honor the Famous Five – those suffragists who were instrumental in changing the Canadian law to include women as “persons.”

A few more views of the Alberta Legislative Assembly and the plaza around it.

After a short visit to the Visitor Center, we were off to breakfast for lunch. Turned out it was enough food to spread over three meals.

It was one of the hottest days of the trip – lower 90’s. Although there were some outdoor places we could have gone, we opted for going to the movies. We saw the Sheep Detectives – a bit of fun on a hot afternoon. Here is Trish in the lobby of the theater.

The theater was at the West Edmonton Mall. It is the largest mall in North America by store count. It is slightly smaller in area, 5.3 million sq ft versus 5.6 million for Mall of America, but it has over 800 stores versus only 500 for Mall of America. Some of the square footage is taken up with a full sized reproduction of the Santa Maria, a full sized hockey rink and a water park with a wave pool. There is also an 18-hole mixture golf course and an amusement park that we didn’t see. We did see at least five Lids stores, and we heard there are four Orange Julius’s.

Another great sunset to end our day in Edmonton.

On Saturday, we headed south – it was another grey day and when a truck pulled onto the highway in front of us, a fairly large rock flew off and hit the windshield. It hit very low on the passenger side, but the crack extended over and up the center. If you look closely you can see it in the pictures below – it parallels the wiper you see in the first picture. We were unsure about continuing the drive, but after talking with my brother that evening, we decided it was not critical to get it fixed on the way home. I had tried to set up an appointment along the way, but the only option was to go to Billings and wait until Friday – we didn’t want to add a week to our trip. (We did get some clear packing tape to put on it, but that did not keep it from spreading.)

We stayed that night in a Lions Club Campground – had to take this picture to prove it to Mary Beth and Mike, who do great things with the Lions in Wakefield, NH. But not sure they want to take on a campground.

Sunday we drove by a small airplane museum – didn’t stop, and then it was another easy border crossing.

Then we were back in the USA – entering Montana where we spotted this herd of bison.

We got to St Mary early enough to go to the visitor center at Glacier National Park – still a very grey day, we could barely see the mountains. There was a movie that did let us see what the mountains look like. St Mary is the east side visitor center, there are two others – one on the west side and another at Logan Pass – which is on the Going to the Sun Road. That’s the main road through the park, switch-backing up the mountain to Logan Pass. It turns out that June 1 is very early to visit Glacier National Park as they are still working on clearing off the 80 foot snow drift that forms every year. And although it was rain overnight at our elevation, there was more snow on top of the mountains. I did spot an osprey in this nest that was outside the visitor center.

But June 1 was the first day of the Sun Tours (given by the Blackfeet Nation) and we were on the tour bus at 9:30. They would take us as far up the Going to the Sun Road as they could. As along the Ice Field Parkway in Banff, there were waterfalls everywhere. We were driving along St Mary Lake and our first stop was a short walk to get a closer view of St Mary Lake. As there is a restriction to vehicles that are under 21 feet, there are only about 15 people on the tour. The last picture shows Triple Divide Peak – where the water flows to the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Arctic Oceans. It’s one of the what look to be lower but are really farther away peaks near the middle of the photo.

This stop was further up St Mary Lake. Later in the year you can take boat rides and rent kayaks in this area. Trish confirmed that the water was cold and the guide got a picture of us.

We drove a little further up the road, to another view of St Mary Lake with a view of Wild Goose Island . No one is quite sure why this tiny spec of an island wasn’t ground away by the glaciers. Can you imagine how beautiful it would be if you could really see the mountains?

Well, here is a similar view I found via google – yup, would have been great to see it this way.

These are shots at Sunrift Gorge – a quick walk from the road lets you see the Baring Creek going through this very narrow gorge. Also got some other views of the creek.

The Jackson Glacier Overlook was the end of the road for us — 14 miles of the 53 mile possible (if we were going in from the west we would have been able to go 16 miles in.)

Jackson Glacier is the white spot on the left side of the mountain you can barely see through the fog.

This is our guide Thunder Rain – those are actually eagle feathers in the headdress – First Nation peoples are the only ones that can legally have them in their possession. And his sweatshirt shows the various branches of the Blackfoot Confederation.

More almost views on the mountains and a cabin at one of the campgrounds in the park.

The St Mary River – running pretty high after the rain and snow beginning to melt. We got back to camp around 1 pm, and as we didn’t have a car and it was supposed to rain the rest of the day, we settled in, relaxed and played some games.

On Tuesday, June 2 we started heading east again in the drizzle. Just outside of St Mary we came across this overlook put up by the Blackfeet. Not much scenic view that day, but the statue and teepee were interesting.

Then we were back on the prairies, driving across Montana – flat land, trains, horses, farm equipment, and small towns.

On the way into Glasgow, MT we were greeted by these statues on the hill. Later found out they were done by Glasgow artist Buck Samuelson, who began creating metal sculptures in 1993 after he retired. They are all cold shaped by hand, and then welded together.

When we set up camp that evening we had a problem with the slide – the front went out but the rear didn’t. It seemed to get stuck and we were trying to figure out what to do – wouldn’t be able to drive in that situation. As I was fussing around and finding internet solutions that required removing the trim to get to the motor, Trish remembered a technique she used to use when it would come in a little cockeyed and that worked to get it back it in. We tried again to put it out, but it seemed that the rear motor just wasn’t working. At least we would be able to drive, but we would not be able to put the Murphy bed down. I showed you earlier our nice spacious area when the slide is open – well this is what it looks like when the slide isn’t out. The table drops down to a bed which Trish used and I spent the night on the couch – both spots were not as comfortable as our bed. (On future nights I moved to the above the cab bed where I was able to get a better night’s sleep.) We were talking with our neighbors, and they were heading to Canada. She had harvested all of her green tomatoes before she left home, and they had a few left that they did not want to risk losing at the border – so we got them. People on the road are so nice!

As soon as we were up on Wednesday morning I called Winnebago – our service guy said we might be able to get in for a walk-in appointment on Friday. So we looked at the distance and decided with 2 long days of driving we would be able to arrive by Thursday afternoon. But before we started out, we wanted to check-out a bakery that we had seen a sign for the night before. They didn’t actually have much, but they did have one sour-cream blueberry muffin that we got for breakfast the next day. But I also got to take a picture of the street signs that are set up. Glasgow is officially the “Middle of Nowhere” – a study from Oxford University and The Washington Post calculated that it is the furthest populated place (with over 1,000 residents) from any metro area of 75,000+ people. It’s 4.5 hours of driving to get to Billings, MT and it’s 150 miles to a Walmart. But it was one of the biggest towns we saw as we were driving US Route 2 for over 450 miles across Montana and North Dakota.

Most of the trip on Wednesday and Thursday was more flat and more trains – we counted at least 13 that we encountered and most of them were very long. We arrived back at Winnebago in Forest City, Iowa by 3 pm on Thursday – that let us get our name on the list for Friday morning – but it was not a done deal. We were to check-in around 8 am to see what the schedule looked like. We were in town early enough to go to the local YMCA. It’s on the campus of a local college, and since classes were done for the year, it was pretty quiet – but we did get in our only workout of the trip.

I checked in at 8 am and then with the manager at 9 am. It was pretty clear that we were not going to get in that day and it wasn’t clear that we would even get in before Tuesday or Wednesday. We decided that we would not wait around and would get service when we got home. Before we took off we saw that there were some demo RV’s in the parking lot at the visitor center that had not been there on our earlier visit. Three were Class C’s similar to ours – we liked our layout and workmanship better than any of them. The other three were Class B’s – the ones that are just built into a van. They were way too small for us, reaffirming how much we like our rig.

Friday evening we pulled into our campsite in Utica, IL at the same time our neighbors pulled in. We chatted for a bit. It was their opening trip of the season and they were there for the weekend, about 2 hours from home. We told them about our problem with the slide, and the husband asked if we had checked the fuses. I went and did that, and couldn’t find anything labeled “Slide.” But Trish did more internet research and found that maybe the motors needed to be resynced. It was a fairly easy process of moving the slide out a few inches and then putting it in and continuing to hold the button after it stopped moving. We figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. The first couple of times, it still only went out at the front, but then the rear motor started to work too! We eventually got it to go out all the way correctly – we just left it fully out, anticipating a better nights sleep and dealing with it in the morning if it didn’t retract. We were very relieved when it retracted normally in the morning. Then we had another day of driving and were in our first traffic jam of the trip near Joliet! Just south of Chicago we went by this quarry – I’m sure we had never been on I274 in this area – we would have remembered this. I looked it up and it is the Thornton Quarry, begun in the late 1800’s. It’s 1.5 miles long, half a mile wide, and 450 feet deep. It still produces 7 million tons of limestone a year and is expected to do so for many more decades.

Saturday evening we stayed at the ESP Brewing Company in Amherst. We didn’t pull in until almost 8 PM so we didn’t met our neighbors who were also staying overnight. We had a good pizza, listened to some okay but loud music and then settled in for the evening – with our slide out so it was a good sleep.

Sunday morning found us on the way to the Turning Stone Casino for our last stop before home. We drove by the grape fields along Lake Erie in Pennsylvania and New York. We had been doing so many long days of driving without much of a break that I found a place a bit off the highway to have our lunch. It was the Evangola State Park, which has a beach on Lake Erie. We had our sandwiches at a picnic bench and enjoyed some people watching and a pleasant day. We were on a little bluff above the beach, but I saw some folks in the water – seemed early as it was only June 7. I think the pile of driftwood must have been cleared off the beach – not sure if they will ever have a bonfire with it, but it sure looked like a perfect pile for that. Then back on the road. It was the night of the Tony Awards – so we opted out of going to the casino and had dinner in the RV and enjoyed the show.

Having dumped the holding tanks and wanting to leave them clean, on Monday, June 8 we stopped for lunch at the Schodack Diner just outside Albany. And finally we made it back to Massachusetts and then home. We got the RV settled back into its spot, got the key stuff out and called an end to this adventure.

Here are our magnet memories.

This trip added just over 6,500 miles to our total miles traveled in an RV.

In our 10 years of traveling in an RV we have gone 83k miles. We have spent 700 days on the road, at an average daily cost of just over $93 a day – including camping fees, rental cars, and fuel for the RV and rental cars. We have golfed 57 rounds on 53 unique golf courses. Trish’s average per nine holes is 2 strokes better than mine and I only scored better than her on 12 rounds. Yes, I have kept a spreadsheet that includes all those statistics. Combined with other non-RV travel, this is the map of where we have been in the USA. Working on plans to get those last two states checked off!

As I finish this blog up on June 23, I have just returned from having the cameras for the safety systems (you now the ones – auto cruise control, emergency breaking, etc.) recalibrated after having the windshield replaced last week. With the slide continuing to work, we are ready for some friends and family trips later in the summer and fall!

Until then, safe travels