Fort Macleod, Alberta

Leslie Monday, September 22, 2008

This morning we had to break camp in the pouring rain. Although it has rained for much of the summer, we’ve been lucky and not had to actually break camp while it was pouring. Because we were in a spot surrounded by falling leaves, I had planned to climb on the roof to sweep off the slides before we closed them. We decided that it was probably better to leave the leaves alone than to climb on the roof in this weather. I’m sure there are wet leaves inside as a result. :-(

Today was planned to be a very long drive – and it was. We traveled 296 miles from Edmonton to Fort Macleod, Alberta. At this point I’ve identified campgrounds that are still open and fit within our travel times. We weren’t interested in stopping in Calgary because we’ve been there two times previously. It rained on and off and there was a fierce cross wind throughout the day. I took a few pictures of the angry clouds that we watched across the flatlands. Alberta is a lot like Colorado – flat lands leading up to the Rocky Mountains.





Although the drive was long, we appreciated that the road was paved, smooth, and relatively flat. These are all very complementary adjectives to describe a road. Yeah! We were happy.

As some of you know, Molly and Cody now happily ride in the bedroom of the 5th wheel while we travel. They have become so comfortable that when we stop for lunch and climb in to check on them, they don’t even bother to get up from their beds. As it is getting cooler, we carry a remote thermometer in the truck so we can monitor the temperature in the bedroom. (One remote thermometer for the cats and another for the freezer. – sometimes it feels as if the truck is mission control!)

We’re camped at Daisy May Campground along the Old Man River. The view out the front is of the river. The space is sufficiently wide although we did have an electrical issue when we arrived. We had paid for a 30 amp, full hook-up site. Unfortunately after we got unhooked we discovered that there wasn’t a 30 amp outlet available. The guy next door had taken two plugs. I walked to the office and suggested that we would unplug one of the plugs from the guy next door. The woman running the office said we couldn’t do that but we could just hook up to an extension cord on 15 amps. She said, “you only need 30 amps if you want to run air conditioning.” The temperature at this time is maybe 50 degrees! I replied that maybe we’d just move on down the road. I’m not interested in 15 amps – we’d rather run our generators. With 15 amp service we can’t run a heat pump, the microwave, and (more importantly) I can’t run my hair dryer! The manager’s husband showed up with a solution that got us 30 amp service. All is good.


We haven’t done laundry in over two weeks so I really had hoped to accomplish that task this evening. Robert was more interested in food — so the laundry got put off another day.

Last Stop in Canada - Fort Macleod

Robert, Monday, September 22

It rained almost all of last night. It was raining when we packed up this morning. Leslie commented that this is the only time she can remember that we had to pack up in the rain. I don’t remember any times either, at least with this rig. When we had the pop-up it seems like we were always setting up and tearing down in the rain. That was the major push for us to move up to a hard-sided trailer. Anyway, we did get loaded up and on our way to Fort Macleod. This will be our last stop in Canada as it is only about 100 miles from the border. The road from Edmonton was 4-lane all the way here and it was a real treat to once again drive on good roads. The drive took us past the east side of Calgary but we didn’t stop. The compass in the truck started acting up again so I guess that we will need to get that fixed by a Ford dealer. We got to Daisy Mae Campground a little after 5:00 p.m. Although it has a corny name, it is not too bad. We were unhooking the rig when we discovered that we didn’t have an electrical hook-up. There were four RVs all backed into sites with an electrical pedestal in the middle. One rig was hooked up to two outlets leaving none for us. Leslie walked over to the office and the woman talked to her husband on a radio. He said maybe we would have to be on 15 amp service. Leslie told the woman that maybe we would simply move to another campground. Her husband appeared at the site and moved the electrical connection of one of the RVs to a different pedestal. After that we finished setting up. Leslie wanted to go start doing laundry but I wanted to grill some steaks we bought when we were in Edmonton. We had driven in and out of rain showers on the way here. When we got here the sun was shining but there were angry looking clouds all around. I wanted to grill and eat before it was raining. So I grilled the steak and we ate. Soon afterward the sun went down and it got dark, very dark. We used the campsite WiFi for a while and then I crashed.