I’ll fill in some details with another posting but we’ve been around in the last week. When I posted about the Walmart idiot we were on our way to Andrea and Mike’s wedding. We spent a couple of days in Canmore reuniting with various members of Marilyn’s family and then moved into Calgary for the actual wedding last weekend. They had a morning service which neither of us had ever seen but it worked out well. The weather was threatening but it gave them sunshine for the (very late) nuptials and an OK evening for the garden party at Mike’s parents. They probably saved a lot on beer because it was really too cold to drink beer that evening.
The wedding was Saturday – on Sunday morning Judy’s sister was celebrating a special birthday (the number of which we won’t mention) so she invited the whole family for dimsum. We were back at the same restaurant that she and Jim took our kids to for their first dimsum experience and it was very good. After the breakfast we went up to Mike and Andrea’s house for a brief visit at which time we dropped off Marilyn’s cousin Cohl who had been staying in the bus with us during the wedding. Then we pointed the frenchy-bus south towards the Coutts border crossing.
We got sent inside at Coutts which prompted flashbacks to our ordeal at Sumas last winter but this time was different. They made us wait for about an hour while they pretended to review our file but mainly I think they were just making us wait. Their benches were much more comfortable than the ones at Sumas and they had TV – tuned to Fox no less – so it could have been a lot worse. My advice – if you plan to get hassled going into the US then do it at Coutts rather than Sumas.
By the time we got out of customs it was dark so we only went as far as the Pilot in Shelby. We’ve spent the night in their parking lot many times on our way from Nipawin to warmer places in December or January. On Monday morning we made a leisurely trip over to Havre and got settled into the Havre RV Park by noon.
For anybody planning to travel to Havre by RV I have some simple one word advice: DON’T. The Havre RV Park appeared to be the best game in town and it was crap. It was “managed” by whoever happened to be on duty at the neighbouring gas station and “managing” appeared to consist of coming around once a day to kick out anyone who was over their time limit. The garbage was overflowing, the sewer didn’t work, it backs onto the highway, all the connections were on the wrong side – I could go on but I won’t. Just avoid Havre completely if you are travelling in an RV because this one seemed to be the best game in town. We spent 4 nights there – they actually tried to kick us out after three nights but Marilyn went toe to toe with an idiot and won because she had written proof that we had paid for 4 nights. It sounds like even that was a near thing though because the idiot had an idiot-helper who tried to convince Marilyn that 4 nights meant 4 nights but only 3 days – whichever was less apparently.
I got NARC’s new Growsafe equipment running, more or less. We’re still having some QC issues with various components but I think we are gaining although some days its hard to tell. By supper time Friday there wasn’t anything left that I could do so we headed back toward the border and this time pretty well got waved through by Canadian Customs. We figure we’re due for another ordeal soon because we’ve had several fairly easy crossings lately.
We made a brief stop in Airdrie for Alison and Camiel’s big BBQ on Saturday evening. One of their staff had volunteered to roast a whole lamb on a spit so we had to be there to see that and there are many of their friends that are mutual friends so we had a great time reacquainting with them. Then yesterday morning we were back on the road headed for Vancouver. We had pretty decent travel weather – not hot but not pissing rain either – most of the time anyway. We arrived in Chilliwack around 9:00 last night and parked on the Wallyworld lot for the night.
Today we have a boat broker lined up to show us a boat that I have been watching online for a couple of years now.
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