2004/08 Yukon trip - The road home - |
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Thursday 9th September
We needed computer ink and food, so we drove down the TransCanada Highway into the centre of Calgary until we found a mall that could supply both, and then we headed north to Didsbury. It’s been over twenty years since we last drove to the farm from this direction, and sure enough we selected the wrong road from the grid and missed them. However, at the Olds end of the road was a board giving directions to the nearby farms. Their entry said in true Alberta style: 3.2S 1.6W 2S. The distances are of course in kilometers.
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They made us very welcome. It was our first meeting since they stopped off at Minneapolis Airport on their way to Nevada. They were both going to a wedding up north at the weekend so we’d been lucky to catch them. They fed us very well and we had a great evening catching up on news.
Friday 10th September
We moved on to other relatives. At least we tried to, but it took a couple of circuits to find them. The roads there have finally got names, to help the oil companies find their wells, but they are not very memorable, “Range road 3-2” for example. It didn’t help that I was looking for their old house while Sandie was looking for their new one. In the end we spotted him driving his 4-wheeler.
We had intended stopping by for a few hours, but their prairie hospitality kept us there for another day. In the evening they took us out to the Water Valley Saloon for dinner. Their friends joined us. One had canoed some of the Yukon’s rivers in the past so they were interested in our trip. We ended up looking at the slide show pictures of our trip until the early hours.
Saturday 11th September
Shortly after an enormous breakfast, he was called over to help his son with fixing the pump for his water well, and I went along. This was probably just as well as he had a very sore shoulder. Their son (the vet) and his family live in the old house. The well was the original and used to be under the old old house, which had been replaced by a gazebo. The pump had to be buried under many feet of insulation, as he said that the frost there could go about seven feet into the ground. It took all three of us to coordinate the pump settings and the water pressure over in the house.
We also helped him put the body shell onto his Jeep. This Jeep model is what Sandie is thinking of getting to replace her Mazda, so I arranged a test drive for her, and we went bombing around the neighbourhood. It seemed like it would be good for dealing with St Paul’s unploughed winter streets. They filled us up with food again and we set off on a sunny afternoon across Alberta.
All the farmers had been complaining about the weather. Usually Alberta is brown and dry by this time, but they’d had weeks of rain, so they were all struggling to get theirs crops harvested. They said that at least it was better than last year when it had snowed on their wedding anniversary – early August!