Well it has been months since I posted anything on our blog. Sorry to keep you hanging, I know you are probably sitting on the edge of your seats just waiting to find out how our trip ended! In my last post we were still in Calgary just waiting to find out more about our truck and waiting for our insurance company to make the next move. We got to spend lots of time hanging out with Amy and Katie and Nino. We had a couple of sleepovers, went out for some delicious BBQ, and tie-dyed some cool shirts.

The kids and I spent a day at the Telus Spark science centre in Calgary while everyone else was working one day. It was a very cool place.

Amy and Katie took us to a really neat place called Heritage Park in Calgary. It is a living history museum with all sorts of exhibits, and buildings set up as they would have been in the past. They had a cute little amusement park area with actual rides from the early 1900’s and a cool paddle boat we got to take a ride on. There was a train that took you around the whole village, a cool printing shop where they were still printing papers using the old printing press, a candy shop and ice cream parlour and so much more. We could have easily spent another day there and still had lots to see.

We spent one day driving out to Frank, Alberta where there had been a massive rock slide that wiped most of the town out in 1903. We went to the Frank Slide interpretive centre and also went on a really cool coal mine tour in a little town called Bellevue. It was right around freezing inside the mine, so it felt really nice to come back outside but it was very interesting and the kids all got to take home a little piece of coal when we left. We also stopped on the way home to look at some ruins that were left of another old mining operation.

One of the days we were in Calgary, Amy and Katie and the kids and I drove back to Banff while Eric was working. We didn’t really get to explore much when we drove through on our way to Calgary, so it was fun to go back and spend a bit more time looking around.

Eric called the insurance company almost every day to find out what was happening and what the status of our claim was. Initially, the plan was that they were going to repair our truck for us since there didn’t seem to be too much damage. Turned out that after they had an actual mechanic look at the truck and assess the damage, they decided that they were going to just write the truck off and pay us out. We were excited that they made this decision, since we figured we would be able to get on the road quicker if we were able to start looking for a new truck rather than being at the mercy of the insurance repairman.

Luckily Calgary is a very truck filled place! So we got to work right away looking for trucks on Autotrader and Kijiji. We test drove 4 or 5 and decided to get an older Dodge Ram 2500 diesel. We liked it because it has 2 wheel and 4 wheel drive, had the hitch rails already installed and got way better fuel mileage than our other truck. Our Ford got 10-11 MPG while towing or not and this one will get between 16 and 22 MPG. A much better truck for everyday driving. So after we decided on a truck things moved very quickly. We had to get temporary tags in Alberta which gave us 7 days to get to Ontario and get a saftey and e-test done and new plates put on. We were in a hurry anyway because we wanted to make it to the Whitfield reunion on the August long weekend.

So off we went! We planned on making the trip in three days of driving. We drove 10-12 hours each day and things went pretty smoothly for the first two days. Our third day was not so great… We had spent the night in a Walmart parking lot and got up early to get on the road. We had just popped over to Tim Horton’s to grab a coffee and breakfast for the road and were sitting in our truck ready to get going when a big transport truck pulled into the parking area right in front of us. As the truck turned the corner in front of us, Eric and I thoght “wow that truck is getting pretty close” but we also were thinking that truckers are pretty good about cutting corners and he probably knew what he was doing…turns out he didn’t. As we sat there looking on in shock, the transport truck swiped the front of our brand new (to us) truck and kept going. I laid on the horn and started to back up but it was too late. We had a nice buckled hood, scraped up fender and broken grill. Eric and I got out to assess the damage and just had to laugh a little. I was pretty angry while Eric kept his cool with the guy and worked out how we were going to get this taken care of. It turned out to be only cosmetic damage and we were able to drive safely so we decided to exchange info and then get the damage repaired once we were back in Ontario.

They say trouble comes in threes right? Well, our third mishap was just a little way down the road. We pulled into a gas station to fill up just a couple of hours after leaving Thunder Bay and Eric had the bad luck of pulling up to a pump where the oweners of the car in front of us were busy inside buying groceries and using the washroom and just taking a very long time. There was an empty diesel pump just beside us, so Eric decided to back the truck and trailer up and move over to the next pump. I told him to just sit and wait and they would likely move in not too long, but Eric was antsy to get going so he decided to move anyway. We didn’t have as much experience backing this new truck and trailer up, and the bed of our new truck is only 6 feet long. Our last truck had an 8 foot bed so the trailer was a lot farther away from the cab of the truck. Anyway, long story short. Eric started backing the trailer up and didn’t realize that as he cut the corner, the trailer was getting closer to the cab of the truck. Neither of us even knew to watch for this, so we didnt’ even realize anything was wrong until we heard the crunch of the trailer hitting the back of the cab of the truck…it could have been worse, at least the window didn’t break! I wasn’t laughing any more…

We pulled into the driveway of the farm to finish our year long journey back where it all began; at the place where the Whitfields gather every year to spend a few days relaxing, playing cards, and eating together with our amazing family. The three kids were so excited they ran ahead of us up the long driveway while Eric and I tried to figure out how to get our big trailer into the driveway without crunching any more cabs. After a bit of trouble that involved our trailer, some very wet grass and having my uncle Sheldon happily tow our Dodge truck and trailer out of the mud with his Toyota, we were parked and ready to relax and enjoy some time at the farm with family.