Made in Germany
Not that I need it or can't live without it, but the print: "Made (or produced) in Germany" makes me pay attention. And today was such a day. As I wrapped up my stay in Cold Lake and a very good friend took me along to Edmonton, she stopped down-town in a store known for it's imports from Europe. When customers come here you can be sure of hearing a variety of European accents. 

It is a store which made me hungry (maybe I really was) the moment I entered. German sweets and candy, mouth-watering German cold cuts and cheese from several European Countries, and canned preserves with known German names....it was all there. I had no intention to buy anything, but just couldn't resist the German-made Schwarzbrot, the Marzipan from Lübeck and the glass of Pflaumenmus, which actually originates from Italy. Back in the car I managed to stuff it between my baggage and here I am in an Edmonton hotel room having my hungry eyes rest on the Schwarzbrot package. 

But hey, we just emerged from the IKEA restaurant in Edmonton South where I enjoyed Swedish meatballs. And that really was a good ending for my stay in Alberta. 


All I have left to do here is rest until 3am tomorrow morning and catch the shuttle to the airport an hour later.


So then I am out of here. The last two days have been incredibly busy with errands all day long. 


Flight tomorrow is keeping me going all day as well, as it stops in Toronto and Montreal, before coming in at the St.John Airport in New Brunswick. The ride home will be another 2 1/2hrs. Passports please. Yeah... alright. Sigh.

The last 500km
Starting this morning under a blue sky from Saskatoon I drove the last 500km to Cold Lake. Even though it was only 5 hrs. I fell tired before reaching the well-known pastures north of the North Saskatchewan River. I remember I could drive without ever getting tired --- some twenty or so years ago.  But that is gone, along with a lot of other things and abilities. I really missed driving our motor home and it's comfortable amenities. These one-tonn trucks have a pretty stiff suspension and with a variable road standard I felt all the imperfections of Canadian road engineering. But the bumps and dips must have kept me awake.


Driving through the town where we used to live since 2002 was a shocker too. Not only is the housing market on an expansive rampage, but the road construction as well. Or what do you think of a 4-lane highway in a town which a couple of years ago had a mere 12,000 people?


Anyway after tomorrow's Sunday Service I have to run errands around town on monday, and that will keep me busy for a good while. 


Can't show you any pictures as I forgot to take the transfer cable for the Canon. But they will be posted after my return. Didn't have too much opportunity to take pics underway, as keeping the rig between the ditches was of the 1. priority.


Take Care!

September 27


A Regular Day
Today's errands included a short trip to Customs and meet the lumber truck for a small delivery of deckblocks. They are intended to function as a simple foundation for a shed. The shed will actually be an add-on to the garage. I plan to build it mostly out of recycled materials. But I have to see how far I get with that. I already know that I will need roofing materials and some OSB and plywood. 
After the delivery was made, I jumped in the car and was off to St.Stephen to pick up the repaired slide-out canopy at the uholstery. 

Lightning over Ethel Lake,Alberta

It was a beautiful drive in an outstanding weather. The U.S.-Hwy 1 is kind of snaking along the St.Croix River which also is the border between the U.S. and Canada. With the beginning fall colors and the deep-blue water I got a feeling of being on a vacation tour. When coming back I stopped at Walmart in Calais to get a few things.

Moraine Lake, Alberta

Back at home I mounted the canopy back on the slide-out, and it actually seemed to fit, though I suspect they have cut off 2 inch from the width, but it still works out. Hope it will hang on for another few years.


A neighbour is actually looking for a new FORD truck. So maybe he is interested in buying ours. Time will tell.


And I guess that's all for today. Thanks for visiting here and see you tomorrow.

September 8


News from the West
I like to keep up with old friends, contacts and former neighbours. We exchange some chit chat, talk about the weather some 4000kms away, or one or the other political hotsheet going on.
So I just got off the phone with a good friend in Alberta. She is a person who you might call a true environmentalist. She is highly intelligent, in fact too intelligent that local society can accept that. And what society is that, having a problem with an outspoken person like her? It is a society which is entirely focused on making money, on owning the newest, the best and of course the most expensive house, car or boat. And there would be nothing wrong with that IF it could happen without destroying the land, wildlife habitats  - mother nature at large. What I am talking about is the respectless exploitation of Alberta's oil resources.


My friend lives outside of town on a peaceful 10acre parcel of land. She lives without grid-power has solar panels on her roof, produces most of what is used of food in a kitchen herself, and was looking forward to stay on this land until she would be too old to do her chores.


I have visited her quite often. Her garden is a paradise of fertil black dirt, whatever she plants there will grow. Her little Dexter Cows give her meat and her chickens likewise plus lots of eggs. She could be the most happy person on earth, if it wouldn't be for her neighbour. A major Canadian Oil Company has acquired an oil lease on a huge field across from her little paradise. While you and I had a peaceful Labour Day Weekend my friend was enduring the nonstop noise and diesel smell from drilling rigs penetrating Alberta soil on their hungry search for oil. And when they have found what they are looking for, they will come and install big black oiltanks. 24 of them are in the planning on a 1/4section of land. Everyone of them will stink up and pollute the air with petroleum fumes. Then there will be an endless stream of oil tankers coming in sucking up all the black gold of Alberta. They will bring more noise and more diesel smell. They will come early on a Sunday morning or on a quiet saturday evening they will even come Christmas Eve and during Easter holidays. And you know what? There is NOTHING she can do about it. Oh well, she tried, she tried very hard, but when local governments are in the pockets of BIG OIL every fight against will be a lost fight.


My friend is looking at maybe another 20 years to live where she is now. That is 20 years with unbearable air quality. And unlike many Canadians who have chosen to live in the city with Canada's worst air quality, Fort Mc.Murray, to make a fortune, my friend doesn't get a dime for all her trouble. What she gets is lots of stress and an everlasting fight against a giant. 


I feel so sorry for her!
(no pics today folks)

September 7

The beautiful Summer...
Like most people I love the summer. Summer is what I live for. That's why I discovered the South. The South is an extension of summer. For me...at least. And that wasn't like that all my life. Oh no, when I was 25yrs. I thought of winter like fun, I wished that 20 inches of snow would fall over night, turning the country into a fairy-tale. I shoveled snow like it was money -- loving every bit of it. But that's over. Alberta's ice-cold winters scared the heck out of me. I still remember, it was the first winter out on the farm, the morning we woke I froze as soon as the warm bed cover was off my body. Looking at the themometer it showed +8C (46.4F) inside the house!! Outside it was -50C (-58F) And that was the reason why the dang furnace wouldn't come on. At -43C propane stops flowing. So we were dead in the water, or shall I say in the ice?

South Saskatchewan River

But we had wood burning stoves and that saved us over the next days,

Rusty train at Vanscoy, SK

No boy, gimme a nice summer and all is fine. Since we have been traveling south we have hardly seen or felt snow. Well, there was Salt Spring Island in march 2009, but it wasn't really much.

Summer is going in shorts and a light shirt, a wonderful breeze off the sea or across the prairie, summer is picnics and BBQ's, is being together with good friends, is hanging out on the beach, doing a lovely walk through a green forest, seeing summer campers driving along and having a ride in a convertible, seeing sailships and catchy motor yachts on the deep blue water; but also little children playing in the sand and biking along the road.  

Pit stop in Texas

I am completely in love with the summer.


But now it's gone. It is September and the first week of it is over as well. It is raining too and that just makes for a day inside. I always wanted to transfer thousands of pictures from my laptop to an external hard drive. So why don't I do that? Exactly!  So I walked over to the Motor Home and got the external drive. 1TB should do and it was still empty. It is the second one I bought. Not that the first one is full. Oh no -- it died - simply passed away as Bea tried to fire it up with a 19V power supply. That doesn't work very long if the device is laid out for 12V. 
Yep that's what happened. And a few weeks before that I fried the original 12V power supply as I plugged it in a 220V German power recepticle. So conclusion is we are slightly "overcharged" people. 

Rio Grande south of Big Bend National Park

Overcharged or simply crazy? Or is that the same -- in the end one never knows. Most of our families are saying (or at least thinking) that we are downright crazy. Spending weeks on end on the road just to be in a bone-dry desert environment for months and months. But like I said: I don't like winters. I would not mind if it would snow in the desert on Christmas Eve -- Tradition and upbringing in a northern latitude - you know. But next day I would want sunshine and sitting outside the rig enjoying my morning coffee at 8am. 

Mission san Jose, San Antonio,TX

But if we don't do it while we still can, we will never do it when we are past 80. Of course I can have a hope that I still drive a rig when being past 80 but one should not completely rely on it. I might need to take the short road, the one which goes about 2km down towards the U.S. border. Up on a hill there is the local nursing home. Yes, Campobello Island is the perfect place to grow old. At our last enquiry they had still 7 rooms available....:-))

Also a result of summer

Summer, summer, summer

And more summer...

Seems I am ramblin' along here, but aren't we bloggers supposed to write something meaningful, something we stand for. And that's me. Have a good one...and live your Dream.

CANADA on my mind

We had many good days in the Land of the Midnight Sun, but from time to time I still thought of my dream, about Canada.
My Grandma had a brother who had emigrated to Canada in the early fifties and I had been wondering whether I had inherited his genes and wanderlust. Anyway, in 1984 my auntie and uncle were planning to go see the family in Vancouver, BC. Their son, my cousin, was going to be with them as well, and when I heard about this I asked whether I could be with them too. It was my first real chance to see the country of my dreams.

They agreed, and I had to get myself over to Germany from where the flight was booked.

We had wonderful 6 weeks in British Columbia and Washington State. In Washington, we visited Mt. St. Helens where the area was still charred from the fires after the volcanic eruption 4 years earlier, we saw the Olympic Peninsula with its rain forest, and we drove up to Paradise (still covered in snow) at the Mt. Rainier National Park, and despite the fact that it was July, our attempt to get to the top of Mt. Baker, just south of the border to Canada, was stopped by 10ft. of snow on the road!

In British Columbia and Alberta, we visited the great Canadian National Parks like Yoho, Banff and Jasper Parks. What amazed me most was the Icefield Parkway which connects Jasper National Park with Banff National Park.

Mt.Edith Cavell

Lake Louise had always been one of my most desired destinations in the world, but, seeing it, also Moraine Lake was a true treasure.

When we camped in Jasper, auntie and my cousin were sleeping in the rented station wagon, while I had a tent to myself. We had been warned about bears strolling through camp so as my own personal measure of defense, I had a long knife under my pillow!! In the evening we were visiting a Ranger Program at the auditorium, which they have out in the open.


Lake Louise

The Ranger was just talking about grizzlies, showing impressive bear pictures on a big slide show screen, when all-of-a-sudden a murmur started and then all the people got up from their seats. Just below, not even 30 yards from the seat rows, lumbered a grizzly along. Everybody was in awe and I bet they paid a lot more attention to what was said about local wildlife after that.


Grizzly

The day after, we heard that the bear had destroyed a tent which, thankfully, was unoccupied at the time.

Rangers came with a bear trap and the evening after, we had just returned from a trip to Mt. Edith Cavell, a bear had gotten into the trap and was answering our curious looks through the door grate,with furious growls.

Of course this trip to Canada fueled the dreams of my youth and was even more determined that ONE DAY I was gonna make it to Canada for good.

Read how it finally happened many, many years later tomorrow.