Tag Archives: Fulltiming

Alberta and back to the states

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We left our friends, the Chens, and went our separate ways.  We were in Jasper in 2004 and thought about taking a day trip to Edmonton to see the West Edmonton Mall.  At that time it was the largest mall in the world.  We thought it might be interesting.  However, after thinking about the 350 miles round trip in one day, we thought better of it.  We found out the next day that a severe storm hit the mall with hail, wind, and rain (maybe even a tornado) with flooding and roof collapses.  Glad we didn’t go!

This time though we did plan on going.  We stayed at a little campground north of Edmonton in Morinville.  Here is a view from the trailer door:

This was a Passport America site so we saved a bit of money but still had to fight mosquitos!  They also had a lake and we thought we might use the kayaks but never did.  We stayed 5 nights, did household things (read laundry) and went to the mall one day.

The mall is pretty big.  It has the waterpark, amusement park, and a small hockey rink.  It has about every store you would need, some even are doubled!  We put on a few miles walking around.  It was interesting but now we will have to compare it to the Mall of America when we get there in the future.

We left Morinville, heading back to the United States, and I didn’t want to even mess with Calgary as the ‘stampede’ was starting.  We skirted around it but stopped at a Lowes for a bathroom break.  During the stop, a Canadian Postal worker came up and started talking to us about the Airstream.  She has a friend that has a few Airstreams and she always takes pictures of them and she did so with ours.

We ended up after a pretty long (330+ miles) at a Casino in Lethbridge, AB.  It was a nice little stop and FREE!

The next day was crossing the border into Montana.  I didn’t know what to expect.  The last time (2004) we brought the trailer back into the states, the agents went into our trailer and took a bunch of our food.  This crossing was much quicker.  A few questions (that I can’t even remember now) and we were back in the USA.

We ended up in Great Falls for 4 nights.  This allowed us to see our friends the Erpelding’s who pastor a church there.  We also saw another friend that used to go to the church in Visalia but is now in Great Falls also.

We had a great time in Great Falls (new slogan?).

On to Jasper

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Our time at Banff had come to an end and we were making the trek to the Jasper area.  It is not a short, trivial drive but we started relatively early and it was light until around 11:30 each evening so we could make it.  We also had to stop to see the sights along the way.

The first sight was Peyto Lake.  The color of these glacial lakes is amazing!

The next stop was lunch at the Columbia Icefield.  That is a large glacier behind the trailer:

Then we saw Sunwapta and Athabasca Falls, respectively:

We continued on to Jasper, found a dump station and grocery store and went to the campground.  Naturally there were mosquitos and a very steep spot for us:

Lots of space under the back but not much in the front!  When I was lowering the front, something under the trailer stopped it from lowering any farther.  Hmmm…

Remember I told you about darkness not coming until after 11:30.  Here is an 11:30 shot of the sunset:

We toured around Jasper a bit.  We headed toward Maligne Lake and passed Medicine Lake on the way.  The first picture is a storm rolling in on Medicine Lake.  The second is Roxie in front of Maligne Lake.

While at Maligne Lake we took the hardest hike to date!  George really wanted to see a moose, or Man-Moose as he called it.  There was a trail to Moose Lake where we had heard moose sometimes show up.  This trail was horrendous because there were tree roots covering the entire trail from heavy usage.  It rained on and off, it was uphill and long.  We finally made it but, alas, no moose.  We made it back during some heavy downpours and enjoyed sitting down on the ride back to Jasper for a nice evening meal.

We left Jasper, of sorts, and moved to a new campground.  Bye Jasper:

When I hooked up to go to the next campground I found out what stopped the lowering of the trailer.  It was the spare tire under the front of the trailer.  I have never lowered the trailer that far to hit the spare but now I know that the characteristics of that happening.

The next campground was the last one we were going to share with the Chens.  This was near Hinton AB.  We walked an elevated path through a huge beaver pond and saw numerous animals including a beaver.  We also took an interesting drive past a local mine and to a Canadian Continental Divide marker.  It was a lot of gravel road but we saw even more beavers along the way.  Here we are (it was COLD!):

The time with the Chen’s came to an end.  They were heading west toward Vancouver BC and we were heading east to Edmonton.  Parting is such sweet sorrow, but we will see them again!

Before and after: