West Trip....the long road home.

 

Well....here it's time for another cousins trip and I never got around to finishing last years trip! For the few people that still care....here are some highlights of last few days, which consisted of a lot of driving with a few stops here and there.

Continuing the long trip across Canada, day eleven was a driving day. We left Alberta and entered Saskatchewan.

 The country side was pretty, but a lot of the same. Prairies, farms, grain elevators, trains, etc.....mile after mile. Not at all how I envisioned Canada.

 I loved the cross in the sky.

 

 I forget what this was. Sand or Salt? That's what happens when you wait this long to blog about a trip that happened a year ago.

 

Who knows what this is? We all said dandelion but it's the biggest one I have ever seen!

 

We spent the night in Regina, Saskatchewan at a Country Inn and Suites. 

 

Day 12

We toured the Irvin Goodon Wildlife Museum. We were not allowed to take photographs here.

 

The last stop before crossing the border back into the United States was the International Peace Gardens.

The 3.65 square mile garden is located on the border of North Dakota and province of Manitoba. It was established in 1932 as a symbol of a peaceful relationship between the two nations.

 

A few of the features at the Peace Gardens are gorgeous gardens and the Peace Towers.

 

The four columns represent people coming from the four corners of the earth to form two similar but distinct nations, sharing a common base of democracy and beliefs.

 

The Carillon Bell Tower plays tunes every fifteen minutes.

 

9-11 Memorial

Steel girders from the  former World Trade Center were brought to rest at the Peace Gardens.

 

Interpretive Center and Conservatory

 

The Peace Chapel is the only building that straddles the US and Canadian border.

 

The chapel features quotes from "People of Peace" etched into fossil-embellished limestone walls.

 

Floral Clock

 

We are back in the states and spent the night at the Fireside Inn and Suites in Devils Lake North Dakota.

 

Day 13

A lot of driving again today with a stop at the headwaters of the Mighty Mississippi.

 

 

It's not so mighty at the beginning.

 

 

 

Lake Itasca

 

Lake Bemidji

 

We stayed at a Comfort Inn in Duluth Minnesota. That's us....Green Country Tours.

 

A beautiful array of Coleus outside the hotel.

 

Day 14

Sunrise over Duluth

 

We make a short stop at Amnicon Falls State Park in Superior, Wisconsin.

 

The Covered Horton Bridge

 

The Lower Falls

 

Another stop on this last full day on the road home was the Paul Bunyan Logging Camp Museum.

 

Here you can experience what life was like in an 1890s logging camp.

 

 

 

 

 

 

On our last night we stayed in Janesville, Wisconsin.

 

Loading up that last morning was bittersweet knowing this was the final day. So many friends and memories were made in these two weeks...it was hard to see it come to an end.

 

Must be back in Ohio....it's cloudy. There is a Bicentennial Barn like this in every county in Ohio, a total of 88.

 

Would love to do this trip all over!

West Trip....Day Ten.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! My New Years resolution is to finish this trip blog before the next trip....LOL.
 I wasn't planning on dragging it out this long but I have been so busy with the holidays and work I just didn't have time to finish it.

The Three Sisters are a trio of peaks near Canmore, Alberta, Canada. They are known individually as Big Sister (Faith), Middle Sister (Charity), Little Sister (Hope).

 

This is day ten of our trip west as we leave the Canadian Rockies and begin the long trip home.

Leaving Canmore we shortly passed the Three Sisters Mountains, the last mountains we'll see.

 

One minute I took a picture of these mountains, looked down for a few minutes.......

and when I looked up we were in the prairies. I had no idea. I always imagined Canada to be fairly mountainous, especially the Calgary area. Not so. West-Central Canada is mostly prairie, consisting of large grain farms.

Nearing Calgary we passed a colorful building in the Olympic colors which I assume was part of the 1988 Winter Olympics. Goodness gracious.......how could that possibly be 25 years ago?

 Ski Jumps

 

The Calgary Tower

 

 

 

Standing on the glass floor on the observation deck. Carolyn....why aren't you looking down?

 

 

Calgary with the Rocky Mountains in the distance.

 

Calgary Skyline

 

Remember the Bow River in Banff. Here it is flowing through Calgary.

You wouldn't know two month prior, this area had catastrophic flooding when the Bow River and others overflowed after heavy rains in the area. The dome below had water up to the first ten rows of seats.

Calgary Saddledome hosted figure skating and ice hockey in the 88 Olympics and is home to the Calgary Flames. The famous Calgary Stampede is also held here in July, which would have been on our itinerary had we been here at the right time. 

 

We also stopped at Heritage Park, a historical village in Calgary. The park features four distinct villages or areas reflecting time periods in Western Canadian history. The time periods are circa 1864, 1880, 1910, and Heritage Town Square depicting the 1930s to 1950s.

A scaled down version of a Hudson Bay Fur Trading Fort.

 

 

The building's inside the fort contain furnishing's or replica's of that period.

 

 

Adjacent to the Hudson Bay Company Fort is the Aboriginal Encampment.

 

Sod House

 

This area of the park depicts a 1910 Railroad Town.

 

 

 

 

But the place we spent most of our time was the Gasoline Alley Museum, devoted to all kinds of automobiles, trucks, and gas pumps etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Would LOVE to have this! I have memories of going on a trip years ago with my family in one of these.

 

A few of the what seemed like hundreds of gas pumps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I could post a hundred photos of old cars and trucks but this post is getting way too long.

Back on the bus we passed a prairie fire.

 

We saw a lot of grain elevators and trains transporting the grain in the prairies.

 

 We stayed in Medicine Hat, Alberta.