Big Trucks, Vacation Pets, Rock Slides, & Windmills!

Saturday, July 24th, 2010

START:  Regency Park RV Resort, Cranbrook, BC - 11:30 a.m.

STOP:  Ross Creek RV Park, Medicine Hat, AB - 6:30 p.m.

WEATHER:  Hot, clear, and sunny all day!

It seems as though this vacation is starting to catch up with us.  Mom:  "We need to stop at a maternity store so I can get some new clothes."  Mike:  "I want some pregnancy pants!"  Me:  "Well, a lot of people would kill to be fat like you, Mom, so I wouldn't worry about it."  Really though, think of the crap you all eat whenever you hit the road for any considerable length of time... then multiple that  by 37 days.  The waistband situation is becoming tense.

Our first stop on the road today was in Sparwood, which boasted the world's largest truck (seen above) that was once used in the coal mines.  Weighing 260 tonnes, it was apparently delivered to Sparwood in pieces on eight flatbed trucks and was then assembled upon arrival.  How you assemble something that enormous or how someone ever even drove it at one time is beyond me but regardless, we're glad it was there to spice up what otherwise would've been just an ordinary pit stop for the Perrons.  After a lunch of instant regret from A&W, it was also in Sparwood that Mike and I finally acquired some vacation pets!  Click here to meet Felicia Cottontail and Shemp.  For a total of 30 cents, you too can have love and companionship for years to come.  Unfortunately, Shemp would later go hog wild, never to be the same again, and now only goes backwards unless you tip him forward on his beak.  Felicia's 15 cent technology is still going strong.

We finally crossed the border into Alberta around 2:30 p.m. and are now one province closer to hoooome.  Unfortunately, crossing the border also meant saying adios to the mountains and hello once again to the flat lands, which don't do much in the way of keeping poor Paw awake through hours and hours of driving.  Just before the prairies made a reappearance however, we drove through Alberta's Frank Slide - the historic site where in 1903 at four in the morning, 82 million tonnes of rock crashed down from Turtle Mountain, burying the town of Frank.  Since that is an impossibly large amount of rock to move, it's all still there with the highway running straight through it.  After that, we hit Pincher Creek, which is home to hundreds and hundreds of windmills all along the highway as far as the eye can see and then... nothing.  Seas of green.

After taking advantage of the tax-free gas prices in AB and filling Beula's tank all the way full for the first time, we landed at Ross Creek RV Park in Medicine Hat for the night, which proved itself to be the most dismal of all RV parks we've encountered thus far.  No washrooms, no showers, no picnic tables, no sewer connections (at our site, anyway), no laundry and TRAINS.  Trains blasting by with up to 120 cars, grinding steel against steel and practically within arm's reach - every hour.  Glorious.

We're back in mosquito territory now so we stayed within Beula's confines for the night, watching the one good channel we were able to get on the TV and just relaxing.

After soaking her feet in the sink basin (lined with a bag to protect any future dish washing from feet germs):

Mom:  "So we'll just use this water for the coffee machine then?  Come on, open it up and I'll pour it in!"  Barf.  Tres drole, Maman.

Mom:  "Oh well, at least all the train commotion makes for some blog material."

Mike:  "Not really.  'A train went by, heheheh.'

Looking at a particularly special picture of Pops:

Dad:  "I look like I should be on the street corner holding a can of pencils.  Five cents a pencil!"

Mom:  "There's a piece of salmon left in the fridge Mike, just throw it in the microwave."

Mike:  "The microwave doesn't work."

Mom:  "Yes it does, I just used it!"

Mike:  "Well, it doesn't work for me.  I tried to heat up nachos for like two minutes and they weren't even warm.  In other words, bullshit is afoot."

Well, we've traveled roughly 6,850km so far and have about 2,500km left to go!  Tomorrow we'll hit Saskatchewan and Mom's put her foot down and demanded that we take a small detour to Rouleau where they filmed Corner Gas.

Letting the good times roll,