Marty and Vicky's Trip West

Here I'll give some general last impressions of our trip, our equipment, and our "spiritual journey". Hopefully, something intelligent for you to digest here The Trip - The trip was a long time in planning. As I said in one of the earliest posts, we started thinking about a long trip a few years ago. We bought the minivan with this kind of travel in mind three years ago. I made the bed for the Rig a couple of years ago. We started planning this actual trip back last Fall, and we spent a lot of January honing the details, making reservations, etc.  We had a great time, though maybe you can tell that in the last week or so we were getting tired. We had originally planned to go all the way to the Pacific coast after Yellowstone, visiting Seattle, Vancouver Island, the city of Vancouver, and then driving through British Columbia to Banff. This would have added over 1000 miles and over a week to the trip. We wisely decided some months ago to pare it back. We'll do the Pac...

As I mentioned in the last post, we decided to return home a day early. We were supposed to stay in Ludington, Michigan for two nights, but we looked at the long range forecast (hot days, warm and humid nights, and strong thunderstorms) and decided to leave early and beat the weather. We left Ludington at about 1:15 and made for the Toledo Strip . About 6 hours later, we were in Fremont, Ohio , just east of Toledo. Fremont is a small city near Lake Erie. Out hotel was off I-80, and there are typical chain restaurants nearby. We decided to go into town and check out a local pub, The Garrison . They had a good menu, and good beers on tap. While we waited for our food, we read up on Fremont. A couple of facts: It's the former residence of Rutherford Birchard Hayes , the 19th President of the United States. It is the home of the first Presidential Library, that of Hayes. It's also the location of the Heinz ketchup factory that produces 80% of the ketchup sold in the US. Fremont was...

For the last part of our trip, we planned to spend a few nights in Michigan to unwind a bit more before the final two day drive home. We said good-bye to Canada and the dangers of pissed-off moose and drove across the bridge in Sault Ste Marie that spans the St. Mary's River, which connects Lake Superior to the small lakes feeding Lake Huron. We drove over the bridge, looking down on the famous Soo Locks (an engineering marvel which avoids the rapids in the river, and one of the busiest canals in the world) as we went. US Customs in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan, was a piece of cake. And then, for the first time in almost two weeks, we were back on US soil. It felt really good to be back "home". Back in the USA again We needed some supplies: gas, ice, and groceries, so we stopped at Meijer. Meijer is a huge Midwestern chain of gas stations and convenience stores that in some places also have a grocery store and home center. Gas prices vary across the US (as well as across Ca...

Despite the title, this post is not about the Mounties. It's about geology. Well, not the whole post, but it starts out that way. Some of the last week of our trip was spent traveling through a part of the Canadian Shield . The Canadian Shield is the ancient core of the North American continent. It extends from the Hudson Bay in an arc outward and southward. The southern ends of it extend a bit into the northern parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and northern New York. The Adirondack Mountains are part of that formation. The Canadian Shield is characterized by a landscape of mostly rolling hills (and occasional mountains, like the Adirondacks), thin soil supporting little agriculture but lots of coniferous forest, bare rock outcroppings, and many, many lakes. The rocks of that rocky terrain are very old: 2 to 3.5 billion years old. Mostly igneous and metamorphic, so really hard rock. And valuable. The Canadian shield has some of the most valuable mineral...

We left Calgary on Monday and since then, in three days of travel, we've gone through the three prairie provinces of southern Canada. Over 900 miles of driving. There really isn't much to see (we made one sight-seeing stop), and we really wanted to get to our next destination, Lake Superior. So, on Monday, as reported in the last post, we made it all the way to Swift Current, Saskatchewan. I forgot to mention: Swift Current, which you've probably never heard of, is the fifth largest city in the province. At 16,000 inhabitants, it's about the size of a small American town. On Tuesday, we drove to Virden, Manitoba, with one important stop along the way. We changed drivers in the fourth largest city in Saskatchewan, Moose Jaw. It's twice the size of Swift Current, and has a bit of tourist cachet, something (perhaps apocryphal) having to do with Al Capone and the Prohibition Era whiskey trade. Downtown Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan We continued moving east. As we went, more ...

Right now, Vicky and I are at a prairie campground in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. We just spent four days in Calgary at the Stampede and need a break from constant noise and wall-to-wall people. This is the place for it. Those of you who are reading this blog have hopefully caught on that we occasionally have to catch up on blogging. We'll be doing that, telling you about the Stampede, over the next couple of days. In the meantime, you may want to scroll back through the blog and see if you missed any of our previous backfill posts. Greetings From Saskatchewan! Middle Province Facts: Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba are all about the same size. Each is a little smaller than Alaska. So that's almost three Alaskas in the south central part of Canada. We'll be traveling from west to east through the southernmost parts of each province in the next few days. Except for the western part of Alberta, all these provinces start at the US border with prairie, then transition to va...

Marty has written a lot about the Stampede. He suggested that I write some impressions. I really enjoyed the rodeo and the draft horse demonstrations. Living in central Pennsylvania, I see Amish draft horses working in the fields and pulling carriages along the roads. These are hard working animals. There is a Percheron horse farm near Colyer Lake. Percherons are big beautiful horses. The Percherons at the Stampede were groomed and fancied up for the rodeo. It was like seeing a familiar person all dressed up to go out. I have never been a horseback rider or had much interest in horses. The agility and beauty of the animals was fun to watch. Percherons were well-represented among the carriage horses The Stampede has lots of vendors and exhibitions on farming. Centre County has one of the last tent encampment fairs in the United States, the Grange Fair. People come and live in tents for two weeks. There are tractor pulls, vendors, a midway, entertainment and animal competitions. The usua...