Restarting Adventure

After more than six weeks exploring together, today was the day we parted ways with Jonathan and Jenna. They begin to make their way north-west to start their year long adventure in the Yukon, and we head home. It is such an incredible privilege and blessing to spend this kind of time and experience with your adult children. Jonathan and Jenna are fabulous company and fun adventure buddies. They have been so incredibly supportive, especially over this last two years, I quite literally don’t now how we would have made it through without them. I will dearly miss the daily-them, but I am so thrilled for them, that they are setting off on this grand adventure. I am sad our adventures have ended for now, but I am happy to go home. I am so sad to leave Joanathan and Jenna, but so happy to get home to everyone waiting for us there. I am currently a mess… which should come as no surprise to anyone! Our send off party, in the pouring rain For the first time in almost seven weeks of camping tr...

Today was our last official day before the trip home begins. It was kind of a funny day because the weather was not great, and Jonathan and Jenna left for Red Deer to visit with Jenna’s cousin and his family on their dairy farm. David and I set out without too much intention, other than to explore the area. We decided to start with the hoodoo hike on the opposite side of Drumheller. We found it without much problem, but while we enjoyed the cool geographic features of these - towers of soft rock topped with harder stone, that helps protect them from erosion, I was a bit surprised with them being billed as the best site for viewing hoodoos. We have seen hoodoos before in the Dakotas, and they seemed far more plentiful and less commercial. The area was very busy today with people behaving poorly. It is difficult to enjoy a time looking at incredible natural formations while people next to you are carving their names with sticks into eroding rocks! We did our best to enjoy the time there,...

Today we had to say goodbye to the mountains, for now. We loved Alberta when we were here last time. This time we are exploring completely different areas (and I do mean completely different) and we are enjoying it just as much. The route today was a north-east course across a warren of backcountry roads. Leaving the mountains we drove through a terrain much flatter than anything we experienced on the road through Saskatchewan. We passed the largest solar farm we had ever seen. It rivaled the canola fields in size! We passed massive wind farms, and of course cattle ranches and fields of horses. We drove through few towns, but some, like the hamlet of Rosebud, looked like something created for a movie set! It was the prettiest little town! I regret not stopping for pictures, but we had places to be today! As we approached Drumheller by mid-afternoon the landscape, once again, changed dramatically. The flat fields gave way to rolling hills and very quickly we were enveloped in a land of ...