A Better Thrashkatoon/Buttitoba Post

So I'll start out by saying this; Manitoba sucks. I don't mean that in the sense that I didn't enjoy it, don't get me wrong, I DIDN'T, but Manitoba may be the one place on earth that is actually flatter than Saskatchewan.

We crossed the border sometime Monday afternoon (we're pretty behind) and the only thing that changed besides the time and my apathy levels, was that the prairies seemed to level out. FOR REAL. Anyway, boring story short, we found this campground outside of Brandon called.... something Valley. For all intents and purposes, Axe Murderer Valley. It was only $15/night, and looked pretty legit on the drive in. Soon after, we realized that we were the only people in the campsite. Also, the bathrooms were completely abandoned. I had to push a mess pretty bad, but luckily good ol' predictable men always leave the toilet seat up, so I was "safe". According to Hilary, the women's washroom toilets were actually DESTROYED. There was no such thing as paper towel, toilet paper and certainly not soap. The water flowing out of the taps in the campsite was brown and there were two cat's that followed us around. Not to mention the abandoned camper trailers that were strewn throughout.

I've never been more excited to wake up in the morning.

That very same morning is when I wrote the last blog entry. I thought it would be wiser to save our parents from the worry, until we had safely made it out of the province. You know. Just in case.

ANYWAY, the day we left Saskatoon, we had breakfast with Joel, Robbi and A to tha J. Joel ate a waffle in his crotch. Crotch-waffle, as I can hear Jesse so eloquently saying.

Classy, Joel.

The coffee shop we're in is closing up, so I'll have to close by saying that Ontario, may actually be more beautiful than BC. WE GET IT ONTARIO, YOU'RE NICE TOO.

Lake Superior Provincial Park has been the highlight of the trip. That was last night.

Oh yeah, there was also the thunder clouds we literally drove through, deer dodging, death defying barrell rolls and how much Thunder Bay sucks, but that will have to wait until next post.

Cat on top of a fridge.

Stabkatoon

I'm writing this from a Starbucks on my phone, while the cat hides underneath the drivers seat in the Jeep. He seems pretty content being terrified in there, so I'm hoping he doesn't decide to lunge out under the brake pedal anytime soon.

Stabkatoon was loads of fun. My phone now has Stabkatoon in its predictions. Wonderful! We camped at Manitou beach, floated in the salt water lake, played bocce across the whole campground and met the coolest kid ever. He must have been what, 9? Maybe 10? He rolls through our campsite, Robbi says, "hey what's up!", Kid, "nothin", doesn't stop walking at all. SUCH A G.

Oh yeah, the cat also hid under Graeme's sink. Now it's time to escape the province better known as, Buttitoba. I'm supposed to be buying a new tape adapter and finding a Manitoban craft beer. Wish me luck!

Saskskaksatoooon! Spelling is hard.

July 4th - 9th
EDMONTON!

We made it. Contrary to what Cam will have you believe we didn't end up in Alaska.

Sarah put us to work, and by "us" I mostly mean Cam. Here they are taking out the bar in her basement. I was out in charge of supervising and photo taking. No one was injured so I think I did a swell job.

Sarah is a real life grown up. She owns this cute little house and will have her friend Hillary renting out her basement suite as soon as her renos are completed. She wasn't able to convince Cam and I to stay (despite her valiant efforts) so she found the next best thing. We even have almost the same name.

The kitten situation: we did have a bit of a mexican stand off. Lincoln, the grey kitten on the bed, just wanted a friend but Chester wasn't having it. Cam tried to mediate a peace treaty but no concessions could be agreed upon. 

Sarah's other kitten, Riley, was mostly a dink hissing at everyone, including poor Lincoln. Here he is in one of the rare instances that he wasn't hissing/picking fights.

Don't let that cute face fool you. He is pure evil.

We loved Lincoln, and he loved us. Cam finally found a friend to play Civ with. We almost kidnapped him. 

Morning July 9th

I woke up at 4:45am so that I could say goodbye to Sarah before she left for work. Also I wanted to wish her a HAPPY BIRTHDAY SARAH POOP! 

Since Cam has been doing all the driving up to this point it was finally my turn. I was really nervous but the worst part is behind us (quite literally). It wasn't as nearly as scary as I thought it would be. 

Here are some photos of our drive from Deadmonton to Saskskaksatoon:

Welcome to the prairies. News flash. It's flat.

Number of cars passed before leaving Edmonton: 0

Number of cars passed after leaving Edmonton: 3!!

This was one of them:

Graeme and Dielle, friends of Cam's (yes he has at least two), have been kind enough to put us up while in town. They know us well enough to make sure to put treats in our pillows and set us up with some "house rulz". After all, Cam has only recently been house broken:

July 10th

Visited Cam's family on the farm. Here's a photo to prove it:

We've been earning our keep along our way by making house meals. Last night we did up a pretty good lil' bbq spread, then played Cards Against Humanity while getting eaten alive by mosquitos. This was the winner of the evening:

We're going to be heading out to Manitou Regional Park with Graeme, Dielle, Robbi and Aj (with cameo appearances scheduled from Joel and Sandy) from Friday evening to Sunday morning. I'm sure it's going to make for an entertaining blog entry.

Stay tuned.

Deadmonton ---> Stabkatoon

The scenery - Nothing
The band - Reverend Horton Heat
The gas - Cheap as hell

WE PASSED THREE CARS ON THE HIGHWAY.

Yes, that's a big deal when you're towing a 4,000 lb. trailer that looks like a portable smokehouse/murder chamber.

Honestly there was nothing interesting on the drive. If any of you are familiar with driving through the prairies, you've probably already skipped this post. Good for you!

Butt-katoon:

We're staying with Graeme. Or as I affectionately call him, Graemy.

Ain't he cute?

We went to the Paddock Wood ale house. The activist arm of the Paddock Wood Brewery here in Saskatoon. They seem to be the only microbrewery in Saskatoon, but I'm not basing that on any sort of fact, just observation.

Ain't she cute? I'm trying to find bombers of P-Dub's to bring with me on the trip, but so far, no luck (I've looked at one store)

I've decided that I'm buying one bottle of craft beer from every province that we visit. When we get to Montreal, Michelle, Phil, Hilary and I are going to have a friggin' tasty evening!

So far I've got:

BC - Parallel 49 - Vow of Silence
Alberta - Alley Kat - Double IPA
Yukon - Yukon Brewing - Brewmaster's ADD Cream Ale
Sask - Nothing

We didn't go to Yukon, but I had no idea they had a microbrewery up there. I imagine that it gets harder to find the further east we go.

Plans for the weekend? CAMPING. Robbi, G Ramma Tha Hamma, all the single ladies and I are heading to Manitou. It's a salty/mineral lake that you can't sink in. My friends are so good to Hilary, childproofing our camping trip for me.

Anyways, more talk after camping. It's lunch time!

We Made the Cat a New Litterbox

This is generally how he feels.

Double Header Special - This Time With Pictures!

Okay so as Cam always says, "pictures or it didn't happen" and I'm a bit behind so I'm going to make this a double header special. I hope you like reading, this is going to be a long one.

Day 1 - Canada Day - July 1st
Location: Vancouver to Paul Lake

Okay so we're a day late. The original plan was to roll out of Van on June 30th after the wedding in Roberts Creek but we had more to pack/organize than we'd thought and really didn't want our first day of driving to be in the dark. So we decided to stay another night and had a beautiful/delicious dinner with our neighbours Martin and Molly and Andrew put us up for the night. It was pretty great having a civilized breakfast and getting to give my mum a hug before hittin' the road Jack. 

So we started off pretty well. Cam cautiously drove to the gas station and somehow, we managed to put air in the tires before they exploded from weight exhaustion. After checking everything over once more, and with a tiny bit of terror, we headed out. To add to the anxiety level the cat yowled at us for about 30 minutes in a very low guttural noise he usually only reserves for bath time. About 10 seconds after letting him out of his carrier he hopped into the front seat and peed on the mat, my foot and bag. Impressive really since he only unloaded about 10 ml. Cam painted a pretty accurate picture of this event so I'll leave it at that. 

It was a super beautiful drive leaving Vancouver. Tamara had me get hipstergram before I left, but since my phone has decided that functioning is for chumps, I plan to use this blog as a means for my photo dumping (off my digital camera... I know how 2011 of me).

We stopped in Hope to fuel up and have a little lunch break. I would like to take this time to toot my own horn and announce that I know the most amazing people. My Shaw friends banded together and got us $75 in fuel that took us from Van to Kamloops. I don't know if I've said it enough but thank you. Really though.

It was like a million and ten degrees driving out of Hope and this is where the Jeep decided it had had enough. Can't say as I blame it. Basically the transmission fuel boiled over the top and hit the engine making what would have been a sweet get-away smoke screen cover. Too bad we were traveling at like 30 kmph and weren't really getting away from anyone.

There was an upstanding gentleman that took pity on our souls, pulling over on the super peril shoulder of the highway to help us, and was rewarded with a sweet view of Cam's well... errthang. Here they are, by popular demand... THE shorts:

After that the rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. Chester hid in the back of the car and occasionally screamed as us that we are the worst parents ever. Basically like any other 4 year old would if they had the ability to articulate. 

This is us going through Rogers Pass. It was freaking steep driving, and after almost setting the car on fire a few km's before Cam was a little stressed about it. Here he is with his stressed face. You get a sense of our speeds based on the red blur flying by us through the tunnel. Did I mention yet how happy I was that Cam was the one driving? 

Like I said, it was HOT AS BALLS on the drive up so we got to exercise our new version of cuddling.   Basically it's as little physical contact as possible to reduce heat transfer. We're just preparing ourselves for the inevitabile heat that is Montreal in the summer. 

Not long after dinnertime we rolled up to Paul Lake. It was like finding a fountain after wandering around in the desert for 30 days.

We stayed with our friend Sarah's parents. They live in the blue one in the middle (you can kind of make out the orange tarp that covers our bed parked out front). Tell me you aren't jealous.

Days 2 - 4 aka. July 2nd - 4th
Location: Paul Lake/Kamloops

We went into town on July 2nd. It was SO HOT! It was like walking out into a hair blowdryer. Even the wind through town was throwing hot air at us. Not my idea of a good time. So we blitzkrieged through grocery shopping and beer fetching, sprinting from one form of AC to another.

Not long after our arrival back at the house Doug decided it was Margarita time.

He takes his job very seriously. And holy shit were those good margaritas. Except for the "Dooty" that had lime rind in it, but still not all that bad. 

We made food, ate the food, made drinks, drank the drinks and had a rather enjoyable day. 

Next morning we got up "early", no one set an alarm so pretty much we got up when we felt like it and went for a hike on the far side of the lake. Here are some photos to prove it did in fact happen:

   

Okay so it might not look like it was much of a vertical climb, but it was. Trust me.

The rest of the day was spent inhaling breakfast, epic napping, fixing the hinge on the trailer that busted before we left Van, and going for a swim in the lake.

 
 Eventually the kitten man came out from hiding in the basement.

Just in time for us to shove him back into his cage for the next leg of our adventure. Look at how unimpressed he is:

Day 4 - July 4th

Location: Kamloops to Edmonton

We got up, made breakfast, hugged Judy and Doug good-bye and were on the road by 10 am. It was a pretty incredible drive on the 16 up through Jasper. These photos give you a little taste of how incredibly beautiful BC is:

I was pretty dead set on kicking it old school, and mapping out our route across Canada. The day before we moved Andrew got us this Garmin, and it's saved our butts more than once. I forgot to mention there was a sign leaving Hope that was trying to send us along some back route logging roads to Kamloops and the Garmin basically called us idiots for believing it, and straightened us out right quick. Thanks for bringing us into the 21st century Andrew.

This is Mt. Robson:

This is Jasper, so I guess Alberta is pretty great too. 

Spoiler alert: see those scary assed clouds beginning to form? Shit is about to get so real for us. But seriously this looks like a scene from Twister; silo and everything. 

It's at this point that I make Cam aware of the ominous looking clouds forming on the right side of us. He tells me a scary story about how when he was a kid he was looking at a storm forming outside and his grandma sent him to the basement when the dust off the roads began blowing up in circles.

We stopped in Edson for a quick fuel up to get us the rest of the way and as we were driving out of town the dust off the roads was beginning to do that thing I mentioned above.

Not long after this we saw the formation of a funnel cloud:

 That tree is about to get MESSED UP!

We weren't sticking around to find out though. "Storms to the left of me, lightning to the right, stuck in the middle with you." - the little known first draft to Stealer's Wheel "Stuck In The Middle With You"

Queue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DohRa9lsx0Q

I never thought I'd be so happy to see Edmonton on the horizon. And it was literally the light at the end of the tunnel. 

And somehow the cat slept through most of it:

And then I took 2 days to write this blog post.