so mike and i are officially in ontario. and how. we got to drive the whole way (well, mike drove while i took pictures and sang), only got lost four times (two of which i still maintain were not our fault!), never ran out of gas, and still made it to ontario in time for thanksgiving.
we started it all off with the def leppard and styx concert in vancouver. it was everything i'd built it up to be, complete with middle-aged groupies and lighters waving in time with music. both bands actually put on a surprisingly good show, and although there's nothing better than watching a band perform in the prime of their lives, watching them perform throughout middle age is one of a kind.
our next stop was whistler, where mo was kind enough to throw us a goodbye party. it was awesome to see everyone, and thanks to all who came out. wish we could have stayed longer, but as always, it was onwards and forwards the next day. we had a long drive through to calgary. went the wrong way on the reserve north of pemberton, and again in lilloet. but we were pretty good at correcting ourselves, and didn't go too far out of our way! in lilloet we stopped at the tourist info centre, which doubled as a hunting museum. it was a little eerie asking directions under the glassy-eyed stares of the counter girl and multiple elk, bighorn sheep, deer, and moose heads.
we got through the rockies while it was still light out, and the views made it all worthwhile. the highway we were on was in desperate need of repairs for the most part... in fact, just outside kamloops we actually got caught in construction! not that we really minded, i mean, toyota paseos are built for offroading right?? well, mike thought so anyways. it wasn't until we went over the railroad in alberta that my poor little car got its first taste of flight.
we finally chugged into calgary, having made surprisingly good time after all. something about men drivers and stuff... anyways, we had talked to kyle and he was willing to put us up for a couple nights in exchange for my questionable talents as a model and makeup artist. so, with misplaced faith in googlemaps, we turned left where we should have turned right (the map said slight left! so really, we were following directions perfectly!), and got lost in hidden valley. the thing with calgary is, every little section uses derivations of the same name to demarcate itself from the rest of the town. so we were faced with the choices of hidden valley road, hidden valley crescent, hidden valley heights, hidden valley close, and so on and so on. for how easily we found it, it damn sure wasn't hidden well enough! in the dark, we trundled back and forth until mike said "oh, i think this looks familiar... let's go this way..." and suddenly we were on the map again. whew! i think we were both quite relieved when we found the address we thought was right, and kyle answered the door, instead of some irate old lady in a housecoat. or worse, a happy old man asking if we liked popsicles.
the next day, kyle graciously showed us around calgary, and the weather cooperated (there were a lot of clouds in BC), so we had a fun day. we'd booked the photo shoot for 5, and after two hours of having my hair pulled out by the roots, i was able to slap on some makeup and get the real photos started! apparently my hairdo was worth $300 or so... it looked fantastic, but my only masochistic tendencies involve ink and needles, so i was rather happy that my $300 wasn't necessary, and i can put it to much better use! as for the shoot itself, you'll all just have to wait for the calendar to see the fruits of our labours!
the next morning we were off to drumheller, to look at dinosaurs. mike was making every dinosaur joke under the sun (and then some...), which i didn't find very amusing after the first five minutes, let alone the next three hours... but the museum made up for my frustration! i felt a lot better once we got inside, because bones don't talk, and they definitely don't make jokes about "ooh, dinosaur crossing! we have to be careful not to hit one, or they might go extinct again!" once we'd had all the dinosaur bones we could take, we went off to find our hotel. mike was pretty excited when he saw a hotel advertising "WATERSLIDES!!"
and so we stayed with the waterslides. mike had way too much fun with that... he would go up the stairs, and throw himself into the slide, emerging at the bottom giggling like a little schoolgirl, having almost cracked his skull open on the opposite side of the pool. i went once, but really didn't get the magicalness of it. oh well. we were joined in the pool by an older, rather large man, and seeing mike having such fun, he decided he just had to try it too. i was scared he was going to get stuck, but no, he made it through fine and plopped into the water, also giggling like a little schoolgirl. must be a guy thing.
the next morning we stopped off to visit the largest t-rex ever, which for a minimal fee, we could have climbed up to look out over the town of drumheller. we adopted the "lets not and say we did" philosophy, and took a couple pictures to satisfy our inner tourist, and hopped in the car, heading off to saskatoon.
we'd planned to stop in tramping lake along the way, where my grandmother was born. our directions (again, google maps), specifically told us to go left on highway 21. we found highway 31, and thought "oh, it will be soon!". miles of fields and a few dirt roads later, we found ourselves at highway 4. shi*t. we'd gone too far. but we hadn't seen a single sign indicating which dirt road was highway 21. so we doubled back a bit, trying to find a street sign, any street sign, which would tell us where the hell highway 21 was. or highway 656, that would've worked too. we knew we were supposed to be driving over a lake, and when we drove over a ... pond ... mike said "that might have been it!" he nearly had me convinced, when we passed over another, larger pond. "oh, i bet that was it" he said. after the third "lake" we crossed, i stopped listening to him.
we never did find it, and eventually admitted defeat, continuing on to saskatoon. i guess finding a community of 20 people is a little more difficult than it should be.
the next day was saskatoon to winnipeg. a lot of people will say the prairies are boring. i agree. sort of. growing up on an island in the pacific ocean, i definitely didn't have much exposure to rolling fields of grain, so i found it interesting. there was always something to look at, and a lot of ramshackle old barns and sheds, which i quite like. winnipeg turned out to be quite the treat, believe it or not.
we decided to stay at the holiday inn, since i was paying, or so mike says. when we checked in, we were offered a suite, a fancy room, or a kids room. being cheap, we went for the kids room, and man did we ever make the right choice! as soon as we got on the elevator, mike was already getting giddy, talking to the fish in their aquarium. as soon as the door opened, the first thing we saw was a pirate mural. mike started giggling. we stepped out and looked to our right, where there was a huge jungle gym with another pirate walking the plank. mike giggled some more. we walked down to our room, and there was a treasure chest on our door. mike ... well, you probably have a good idea by now what he was doing!
in essence, a kids room is a glorified playpen. inside our room there was a queen bed (supposedly for the parents), and a whole separate room for the kids, complete with bunkbeds and more pirate murals! the kids also had their own TV and PS2, which we did not use becuase we spent too much time in the 'play room' right outside our window. we played foosball, went swimming in the kiddie pool, and got attacked by a shark named jeffrey (his mother was quite content to let him chase us around the pool). as usual, onwards and forwards the next day, we pushed into the dreaded ontario, and saw one of our only sunsets on the trip (lots of clouds).
thunder bay to sault ste marie the next day, we really wanted a hotel with a pool, so we asked around, and since the best western (mike REALLY wanted to enjoy its waterslide, unfortunate for him) was playing host to three tour buses, we opted for the quiter option, which turned out to be not all that quiet in the end anyways. we did get to enjoy a thunderstorm that night though, which i found pretty exciting!
ontario was where we finally decided to get out of the car at real rest stops, not just pulling onto the shoulder for thirty seconds of waving cameras around. i figured since i'm going to have to live here, i might as well make it worth my while!
the thunderstorm followed us all the way home the next day, and i was a bit scared that the power would go out right at the end of the canucks game, but it managed to hold together and i got to watch the canucks win in overtime, so at least my first night as a resident of dundas was exciting!!!
and now i realise i've written way too much, as usual. oh well, i guess that happens! mike and i have been settling in (or back in, in his case). it's been a whirlwind, but i think things are finally starting to settle down. our internet is finally up, which means i can actually start applying for jobs. yay! hope everyone is well and you guys didn't miss us too much!
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