Calgary West

Sept. 19, 20

Calgary' rush hour now is as bad as Toronto. It took us over a hour to cross the city at 4:00 pm. The park is appropriately named “Calgary West Campground”

This is our last stop before we hit the Rockies and provided us with a good 2 day rest. My cousin Marion and her grand pup Alfie came for a visit and a delicious dinner of hotdogs and frozen Spinach

salad.

me and Alfie

Where the dinosaurs roam

Sept. 17, 18

Dinosaur provincial park is just an amazing park. Totally different than any place we were ever been in. Located North east of Brooks Alberta, this park recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The land scape is referred as the badlands and seems it's from another planet.

This park contains one of the world's richest dinosaur fossil fields. Quite the feeling knowing you are walking on bones that were deposited here some 75 million years ago. Jan had a chance to hold an original dinosaur vertebra which she said was very, very heavy. Current day critters in the park include mule deer (seen), coyotes (heard), rattle snakes (maybe heard) scorpions and black widow spiders (neither seen or heard)

Despite the unsavory current inhabitants, we will definitely come back here again and stay longer.

Gas City (aka Medicine Hat)

Sept 16

We pushed on a little further than planned and ended up looking for a camp site in Medicine Hat.

Found a small sign giving directions to a “Gas City” campground. Although the name of it didn't sound very exciting, we were tired and decided to gibe it a shot. A small little dirt road past a factory took us to a nice little park overlooking the city. We lucked out as we were there the last day of the season.

looking down from the park

Sunset at Gas City

Well worth a stop if you are going through Medicine Hat.

Nothing could be fina than to be in Regina

Sept.15

Well, that's certainly debatable. We stopped in Regina to see an Aunt of Jan's. Unfortunately that didn't work out. We used this as a re-supply point (hurray for Safeway)

The private park we stayed at was called Comfort Plus, a pleasant park I could stay in again.

Austin? Yes but....

Sept.14

….wrong one. Looking for a washroom and pulled into a little town called Austin. Looked like ann old western town but was very well kept. Went int the bakery to pick up some treats and were allowed to use their bathroom.

A little way down the highway, and a longer way on the sideroads found us at Moosomin Regional park in Saskatchewan, Located on a man make lake this seemed to be an ideal family campground, a nice play ground for kids, lots of room to run and play, and a sandy beach Our site was very nice especially since no one was around to take our money.

Winnipeg

Sept.12, 13

Stayed at the Winnipeg West KOA. This park is on the Assiniboine River. The park was totaaly destroyed last year when the Assiniboine and Red River flooded causing wide spread damage all over the Winnipeg area.

Flood Levels

Much of the park has been rebuilt and the owner has added a splash pad, swimming pool, and childrens play area. Also the showers, washrooms and Laundry facilities were brand new. Jan ended up with a bit of a bug so we extended our stay to 2 nights.

This Photo could have been taken in Manitoba or Saskatchewan, since the scenery looked the same.

Manitoba? Saskatchewan?

Where's the friggin Moose?

Between Algonquin Park and Dryden we must have seen a thousand of these,

but not 1 friggin moose (unless you count the stuffed one). However we did move up the food chain from the chipmunk in Algonquin.

We had a pair of bald eagles fly across the highway in front of us. This was followed by a black bear who made me stop as he sauntered across the highway. This was repeated when a wolf  stood in the middle of the road dining on some fresh road kill. Of course we did not have the camera ready for any of those sightings.

Unfortunately we have dropped back on the food chain and are down to garter snakes