Day 3: Vernon to Calgary
Wow, what a drive. This drive was dialed in at 5.5 hours on the GPS. We arrived after 10 hours. We stopped A LOT.
Let’s see… first stop was 3 Valley Gap where we took a break and bought two ham sandwiches and a fruit cup for $13!! My god.
Roger’s Pass was our next stop where we took a photo with a fake bear and breathed the mountain air.
In Golden there was a HUGE diaper explosion. I took EVERYTHING out of the car to get at the diaper wipes stored in the wheel well and the Swiss Mister thought I was ridiculous.
Of course you can’t go to Golden and not get a some golden delicious apples so we grabbed some food at the grocery store and paid the SAME amount as 3 Valley Gap.At the ‘Welcome to Alberta’ sign we pulled over for a photo op and some other people pulled over too so I asked them to take a photo of us but it didn’t work so then I asked the tweenager to grab the baby and take another photo but the flash was up and the photo was crap so I asked her to go back and take another and the hubby thought I was ridiculous AGAIN!!
Lake Louis was a gong show with sooooo many people there. It was a little stupid for us to go just for a picture as the drive back down was a 20 minute wait.
The wee babe was really not happy for the last 2 hours of the trip so we stopped at a mosquito infest road side pull out where there was a bear gate that the hubby just had to pass through. Then a tourist decided that he wanted to pass through it too (WTF?) and the hubby thought it would be funny to growl like a bear to scare him. We all think he shit his pants because after he jumped he said “Was that some kind of joke?” I thought that the hubby was going to get punched. I think the baby saved his ass.
We continued on and the hubby was convinced that the wee babe was teething so we stopped in Canmore to get some Oragel but Shoppers was closed so I gave her some baby Tylenol. That knocked her out for an hour. Not long enough we still had a half an hour to go to get to my cousin’s house.
I realized that yesterday was too far of a drive. I couldn’t hack it when the wee babe was crying, screaming, howling… It was too much for my nerves. I begged my hubby to do whatever he could (he was sitting in the backseat) to get her to stop. All she wanted was out of the freakin carseat I think. Not sure if she was even teething because each time we stopped the car, she stopped freaking out instantly. It’s really unbearable for me to listen to her. She doesn’t cry like a whining it’s like a cat it getting murdered.
Anyway, we arrived at my cousin Lyndsey’s house and she had forgotten that we were coming. I guess I should have trusted my intuition and emailed her a few days before just to be sure. But we did call twice during the day, she just didn’t check her voice mail 
But she was so hospitable and gave us left over steak and ribs. Potatoes and corn. We were so lucky and the food was devine. And then we started in on the wine.
With the time change it was still light out at 11pm. Yeah baby! But it was a bit of a shock when the wee babe and tweenager were still awake at that point. So off to bed the tweenager went.
Man oh man did we laugh. We were up to 2am talking about a bunch of dirty stuff I can’t tell you about. Oh dear. Hilarity ensued. Let’s just say Jeff is now our new BFF.
We woke up at 8am, had a wonderful coffee and some granola, rehashed in PG13 some topics from the night before, packed up and we were off. Thanks soooo much Lyndsey for putting us up. We really appreciated it.
We’re on the road now, the hubby is driving (obviously) and it’s a play by play of the things we’re seeing (not much.) but I’m content with it none-the-less. Calgary was a gorgeous day but now we’re under clouds but I can see blue skies in front of us.
Today’s destination is a little undetermined but we’re thinking Morse with a stop in Medicine Hat first (couldn’t miss it Courtney!!). Evidentially, Morse a nice little town on the side of lake. We’ve used up all my relatives and aren’t going to be mooching off anyone now until Ottawa (thanks Allison!).
EXPENSES:
Gas: $56 @ 1.11/litre
Food: $13 sandwiches and $13 groceries
Wee babe disposition: pretty stellar save for the last two hours of howling.
Wildlife seen: Coyote, gophers
Weather: averaged 22 roughly
Things that have already broken: cable for the iphone
Stress level: a solid 100% when the wee babe was howling. Back down to a normal 5% for the rest of the time.
