Thursday, 30 May 2013

Week ending May 30, 2013

On Tuesday, we arrived in Regina and got set up at Kings Acres, our usual RV park here.  Karen and Dominique came for supper.
The next day, we went to Karen`s  did laundry while John mowed front lawn and Joan mowed back lawn. After showering we picked up Dominique from school and headed back to the RV park to enjoy a roast chicken that our trusty slow cooker was busy preparing while we were away. 

The rest of the week was spent doing chores, and visiting with Karen and Dominique when they arrived after work/school. 

Saturday morning we picked the kids up to drop Dominique off at the legislative grounds so that she could participate in a 5 km walk, a fund raiser for cardiac care.  While she was walking we went to the Regina`s farmers market. As it is early in the season, there was not much available, but Joan picked up some delicious tomatoes and Karen got a bottle of Vodka from a local distillery.   We then moved a few blocks to walk down the Artists` Fair.  After wandering around about half of it, we received the phone call from Dominique that she was done her walk, so off we went to pick her up.  The afternoon was spent playing Wii in the trailer. We went to Smokin Ookees BBQ for dinner.   It was okay, but we suspect they do not compare to Brian and Kris`s BBQ pits that they have discovered on their trip through the southern states.

Sunday was our education day. We did a historic walk through a downtown area of Regina.  The day was cloudy and cool, actually a perfect day for a walk. We learned about early churches, schools and the various forms of house and apartment architecture.   


We lost the satellite signal in the trees, as the leaves were coming out, and the wind was bending the trees around, so we weren’t able to watch the NASCAR race in the afternoon.  
Our final day in Regina was spent doing laundry and putting together 2 Adirondack chairs for Karen.  We then treated Karen and Dominique to dinner out before going  back to the trailer to surf the web for future campgrounds.

Tuesday we packed up in light rain and drove across the QuĂ€ppelle valley to York Lake Regional Park just south of Yorkton.  The park access road is one of the worst we been on, washboard and potholes.  The park is so well marked that the campground operator came out to the campground turnoff to meet us, as there are no signs once you get off the highway.  The operator is a very obliging fellow.  Its a small campground, about 30 sites,  of which we had our choice. The lake is pretty, but to date we haven’t blown up our new inflatable boat to try it out.  The weather is supposed to turn warm and sunny this week end, so hopefully we will try the boat.

There is a 4 km walk along the lake we planned on doing, but unfortunately it is still under water, as there is a still a lot of standing water this spring.   There is a new housing development along the lake so we walked along that area. 

Thursday, 23 May 2013

Starting out for 2013

After spending the winter house-sitting, 3 months in Edmonton thanks to Annie and Buncha, and 2 and a half months in Calgary thanks to Don and Jackie, we moved back into our 5th wheel in mid-April.  As we still had some doctor and dentist appointments to take care of we stayed put in Cochrane at our 'home' park.

While there we went to Big Hill Springs Provincial Park for a walk along a bubbling brook.

On May 6  we moved to High River to spend some time visiting with Trev, Sue and boys.  The boys dropped in after school for a few days.  On the weekend, we drove with them to Strathmore to watch Jamie play lacross.  He had a good game, with the team winning by 4 goals. 

Then we started our travels for the summer, heading to Saskatchewan for the Victoria Day weekend.   We stopped at the nice Eagle Valley Campground just off highway 1 near Maple Creek.  We had admired it from the highway for many years, but this was our first chance to stay.    We carried on to
Assiniboia, parking next door to Carol and Dave (Joan`s sister), who catered to our every need while we washed the trailer and put rubber conditioner on our slide-out seals.

On Saturday, Karen and Dominique came from Regina, for a day-long tour on Sunday with everyone of the Big Muddy river valley.   We picked up a tour guide at the Coronach golf club at 9:30 to tour this interesting badlands type area in along the USA border which is rich in history.   Sitting Bull and his Sioux came into the area after defeating Custer at the Little Big Horn.  Many native effigies are still visible.  The coulees and caves were also used by cattle rustlers, stealing horses across the border and hiding them in the caves and coulees. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were among these.  The tour wrapped up back at Coronach at about 5:30, so it was a very full day.







After the weekend, we carried on to Regina to visit with Karen and Dominique for the next week.