Week ending June 9, 2016 Foremost area to Bowden

Thursday afternoon we walked the 1.812 km path through the campground and around the Foremost Reservoir, before it dead ends.

On Friday, went for a squarish drive to check out communities east and north from Foremost.  The first stop was Nemiskam, which is a ghost town, mostly, about 10km east.  Drove around the few streets. 

Carried on to Etzikom, the home of the Canadian National Historic Wind Power Museum.  We were too early to go in (before 10am), but there were lots of windmills outside, with some interpretive signs.

Further down the road, we came to Orion.  It has a few houses and a very local co-op store (didn't even have the standard co-op logo).  Then on to Manyberries, where we were hoping to find a cinnamon bun.  No luck there.  The services sign showed a restaurant, which turns out to be in the hotel, but doesn't open until 11:00.  Once again, we should do a more thorough job of checking these things out before we hit the road.  All of the streets in town have berries in their names, including Saskatoon St.

Then we had to retrace a bit of our route, back past Orion, then north on SH 887 to the Red Rock Coulee Provincial Natural Area.  As we were reading the sign, a fellow on a motorcycle, slowly drove through, taking a quick look, and returned to the highway.  We went for the short walk into the coulee, where we found the concretions that had been exposed, with interesting lichen patterns on many of them.  

On to Seven Persons, where we stopped at Premium Sausage.  Nothing there insisted that we buy it, but they did have some cinammon buns that were packaged in Rolling Pin Bakery in Bow Island.  Then to Bow Island, where our first stop was for diesel, even though we didn't need any yet.  We figured saving 14c/l was worth it, even for 1/4 tank.     We stopped to take a picture of Pinto McBean, the town mascot.

We found Erna's Rolling Pin Bakery and cafe, where once again, we got in line behind some high school students.  It was a shorter line, so we picked up a blueberry fritter and caramel shake for John and a black licorice shake for Joan.  We enjoyed these sitting at a table in a little shaded spot across from the bakery.   On our way back south to Foremost, we checked out Forty Mile Regional Park.  It is $30 for power only, but had a very large site, with many trailers in it, and even a gate attendant.   It is located on Forty Mile Coulee, which has a couple of lakes in it, so it must be a popular fishing spot.  Apparently there are supposed to be moose in some of the coulees in this area, but none of them were kind enough to be near the road when we went by.

Saturday we did a bit of cleaning around the trailer.
Sunday, did some more cleaning. Nascar was rained out.

On Monday we got up early, packed up and headed for Olds, got set up early afternoon.  After we got set up, we picked up some supplies, including a Ninja Master Prep Pro to make milkshakes and cold coffee, since they don't sell it anymore.  In the evening, we watched bits of a little league baseball game from our trailer, which is about 20 feet from the right field fence. 

Tuesday, we checked with Home Hardware in Olds, and found that they had a couple of Bunjo bungee chairs in stock.  We had seen these in Sports Authority in Henderson Nevada, and figured they would be good to have.   Then we went to Mom and Dad's and helped with some Windows 10 concerns.   Back in Olds that evening, there was a real build-up of thunder clouds, just as Global Calgary was describing.    We got a bit of pea-sized hail, our first significant hail since we have been in the trailer.

Wednesday, we drove to Cochrane to pick up mail, and to Costco to pick up some supplies.

Thursday, we returned to Bowden, where we printed off our tax forms, and some tickets to the Dolly Parton concert in September at the Saddledome  It's nice to have access to a printer for the couple of times a year we need one.