My Happy Travels

My entire childhood I was teased. It’s a family thing. I didn’t always appreciate it and certainly had to deal with it because it was the family way. We are a family of smart asses, pushing each other’s buttons and seeing who would bite back or return the jibe with a better come back. We were schooled in the the art of sarcasm from birth.

My cousin Lisa has the masters degree. She is probably the person that I chat to most often from Australia. We were heading to her house for a couple days and I was excited to see her all the while bracing myself for the time honoured tradition of giving each other as much shit in person we possibly could. It was going to be fun.

They live in Airdrie, outside of Calgary and luckily for us, not far from the airport so we got the VIP pick up service. Calgary and Airdrie by association is on a prairie. It is flat flat flat. It has the Rockies in the distant view and our intention was to catch a train over those mountains to Vancouver from Edmonton. Industrial action cancelled our train trip so, sad face, we were now flying instead. Guess that bucket list item is meant to happen another time.

For the most part, this stop was visiting time. It was again, reconnecting with my people and just hanging out. Exactly what I wanted. We do like to at least see one new thing on our visits so Lisa took us to Drumheller.  This place became Wayne’s highlight of the trip thus far for reasons you will soon discover.

The very flat drive to Drumheller was through field after field of crops. Calgary is known for cattle ranches, but in this area it was all fields of crops. A vast amount of canola but also what looked like grain crops too.  Out of nowhere and in the blink of an eye we decended into a canyon like valley where all of sudden we felt like we were driving into the set of a classic western movie.  The walls of the canyon are layered in colouration making this lanscape completely different from those fields we had just driven for an hour or more. Drumheller is also known as the dinosaur capital of the world.  Here you can pay to climb inside the mouth of the world’s largest dinosaur for a fee! We did not do this. What we did do was climb the HooDoos. These are the rock formations in the walls of the canyon. It was a fairly steep and sketchy climb on a 27 degree day. We made it up to the plateau of the prairies and it was well worth the effort. Quite the view.

On the way to the HooDoos we passed a sign to the town of Wayne… remember what I said about the highlight of the trip thus far? Of course on our way home, we had to make the trip to Wayne’s town.  The journey to his town is via 9 of the ’11 bridges’. We pulled into the Last Chance Saloon for a hard earned beer but unfortunately they had such a busy weekend, they ran out of water, not beer, but were still closed 😔 Wayne still got his Wayne town souvenir hat and we headed across the remaining bridges so see the little valley town of 27 residents. This town, even more than Drumheller, was straight out of a western. Wayne has now been to Wayne and nothing was going to out shine this day for him!

Our final day we caught up with another cousin, Aunty and kids for lunch which was great! Again, the master class was given by Lisa, stirring those little kids into a frenzy. It was a joy to behold! It is challenging to see everyone but we like to make the effort if we can and it is always appreciated when reciprocated ☺️ One final night with Lisa for more lessons from the master. We couldn’t feel more welcome, so much so, despite my 4am alarm for the flight in the morning we stayed up way past bedtime just chatting and jibing the night into morning. We said our tired goodbyes and raced to the airport to make the final leg of the Canadian tour to Vancouver Island where the closest of the close live – the brother time awaits. So very happy and excited 😊