Dinosaur Roar and Paved Paradise

Day 2:

Since we had made the effort to get to Drumheller we needed to do Drumheller things so we packed up our stuff and headed to the Royal Tyrrell Museum, the dinosaur museum. 

Really for a family of six it is not too expensive. Now a museum, especially a very scientific museum, with a lot of writing is not always super fun for a toddler. No fault of the museum. I blame toddlers. Why don't they have a longer attention span?  Why can't they read?  

Fortunately the Royal Tyrrell Museum is super well done. There are some interactive exhibits and the giant bug things are creepy. Patience liked the time

tunnel and Niles liked watching the world change through time. Xavier is fourteen and so has no opinion at this time. Evander really liked the dinosaurs. We would walk along and I would hear, "Where the saur? Oh! There he is!", over and over again. 

After we saw mostly everything we headed out to the walking paths. We agreed that because it was 35C outside we would not do the entire loop. The last time I had been there it was with Joyce and we didn't do the loop either but it was so cold and windy that day instead. 

I have a picture of Xavier and Niles on the same slope from the last trip. They are a little older this time. 

This time I doubled the children. 

After lunch and a quick change up of the car seats, the air flow in our van is terrible making the children sweat to death, we headed out to Banff to camp.  I didn't take pictures. It is like camping in a parking lot that I had to pay for. It was alright but I will remember to skip it the next time. On the positive side the pop-up canopy that mom got is working great. 

I did take a picture of scenery. 

 

Our Alaska Adventure

WIWe started thinking about this trip one year ago when Rob reminded me that our fifteen anniversary was coming up and we try to do something big one the five years. After a discussion with Rob we thought that a big family vacation was in order because Xavier is getting older and who knows when we would have another chance to do this. Some plans were made. I took a part time position at work so I could be ensured a long stretch of time off and we started acquiring campers. We finally decided on a Boler. Early on we invited my parents to come too because when travelling with a number of children more grownups are helpful. This also meant we would be travelling in a Boler convoy (all two of us). We didn't make many plans beyond that because we didn't know how well the toddler would travel. So this is the account of our Alaska adventure. 

Day 1 

We began with a bang, quickly packing up everything that was left and heading out to Drumheller. Following Google maps we headed out. It was a lovely drive, quiet, with little traffic. Great, except where were the gas stations? No gas stations.... Nope.  None at all. We started looking when we were on a third of a tank. Kept looking at a quarter tank and as we were pulling into the valley near Drumheller mom texts me, "our low fuel light just came on".  At that moment I was looking at our low fuel light so I knew how they were feeling. But there were  no gas stations so we just kept going, and going. Somewhere in there we turned off the air conditioner to increase fuel mileage. It was 35C by our thermometer but we just needed to get somewhere that had gas. Finally we drove into a town called Rosedale  Pretty sounding and at that time the van was starting to audible alarms about low fuel so when we saw an open store I hopped out and stopped to ask if there was any place nearby. 

Nope. We had to get to Drumheller, only seven kilometres away. (Side note, if we wanted there to be a gas station in Rosedale we would have to travel there more than in the summer. I made polite noises to that comment). As a bonus I bought ice cream cones because it was almost 7:00 and everything is better with ice cream. 

In the end we made it to Drumheller and found the Co-op. Boy were we excited. So excited that each van bought a large jerrycan and filled it. When we worked it out each vehicle had just over a litre of fuel remaining. Small excitement for the day. Then we went back to Rosedale to the campground we were going to, Pinters Campground. A small, rustic campground with lots of running around room for Evander and hills for Xavier,Niles and Patience. 

The kids started asking to climb the hill before supper but we made them eat first, and clean up. 

We made it to the top but Nancy waited on the trail. She thought it was too high. I just tried not to look down. 

The view of our campers before going up to the top. See the tiny Boler blobs. 

Then we went down and tried to put the small children to bed. That is the first day, in a nutshell.