I was woken early by the sound of people talking in the adjoining dorm room so I got up and ate breakfast to start the day and started the process of showering, packing and moving out again.  Today we were driving to Canmore to set ourselves up for a week in a condominium.  Hooray a home for a week with a kitchen, laundry, two bedrooms, lounge and gas fire and use of a gym...

We had thought about driving to Jasper and back to Lake Louise in one day and spend three nights in the Lake Louise Hostel but since it was going to be a huge day of driving to get to Jasper and back I asked about changing our booking so that we could stay in Jasper overnight. Lucky for me the guy working at the hostel was Aussie and friendly because he said we should have...

Banana pancakes were a great way to start our day before driving back up the mountain to Lake Louise to see the Chateau. We had to stop and wait for a road block to open so for 10 minutes the boys got to jump in some snow and play with their new snow disks for tobogganing.  When we arrived at Lake Louise there were only about 3 cars and 1 bus in the car park; I’m sure in...

I woke up early in our motel room.  The clock said 7 am and then I remembered it was daylight saving time was over so now it was only 6am – bonus time to get online and work in quiet. Everyone started to stir so we got ourselves ready for a biggish day of driving from Lethbridge to Lake Louise.  Our motel had a continental breakfast with make your own waffles and the...

Here you go Nanny, a photo showing where Harris’s teeth fell out from.  Can’t believe he lost two in one week – the first in Mandan, North Dakota when he was 9 and the second in Waterton Lake, Canada when he was 10! What a busy week!

Farewell to beautiful Waterton today.  We saw ourselves off with a huge choose-off-the-menu breakfast that could have fed 2 families of 4.  The boys each had a Ranger’s Breakfast of 2 eggs, 3 small sausages, 2 pancakes and a skewer of fruit and somehow managed to eat the vast majority of it.  Steve and I had eggs benedict on bagels with hash browns – I love it when I don’t...

First thing the boys did this morning was run to the window to check to see if there was any overnight precipitation – success, it had snowed and was continuing to snow! A chance to wear the new coats and snow pants that we’d bought and see how our clothing held up in the -5 C weather (with a good wind chill too). We headed off to enjoy a continental breakfast of cereal,...

Time to swap currencies again and put aside the US dollars and whip out the Canadian loonies again, we were going back to Canada!  We had the best ‘free’ breakfast at our motel with make your own waffles; biscuits and sausage gravy and all the other breakfast regulars.  Today would be just a short day of driving compared to our last 2 days of trekking across North Dakota...

We rose early so we could say farewell to Sandy and the kids as they rushed out the door for work and school again. Some schools in Bismarck had a late start today following Halloween but not in Mandan.  I’m sure teachers hate the day after Halloween as the kids probably can’t focus on anything else but post Halloween talk and how big their candy collections are; speaking...

Today we got off to a healthy start with a swim and gym session at the motel.  I knew the motel in Shelby, where we were spending the night, has closed their pool for renovation so there was no need to hurry there; instead we chose to make use of the facilities we had available to us before driving for the day.  We had a long drive ahead as we were detouring a good distance...