First, just a couple of things about the blog. As you notice we have started a separate mini blog for this portion of the trip. But since you are reading this you must have found it ok! Secondly, we have realized that it is sometimes difficult to find the time, internet connection etc. to do a proper blog update with pictures and everything. Therefore, we've decided that the posts from this part of the trip might have a little less photos and be shorter, but as we want to keep the blog going, we think that just a paragraph about the place we are currently in would be better than nothing at all... Sometimes you'll just see the name of the town as an 'empty' post but it will allow you to follow our trip on the map on top of the page.

Ok, that's enough for 'admin stuff'. Back to the fun stuff!

Well, we are now in Medicine Hat, Alberta and unfortunately there isn't anything that exciting to write about it. We came in late last night and after trying to find 'downtown' for half an hour we ended up at the first motel we had seen when we entered the city.

It is quite a change in scenery from the eastern part of British Columbia. After leaving Vancouver and driving east we picked a slightly different route than the way we had come back through when driving from Golden. This time we went more south through Manning Park and stopped in Grand Forks, Nelson and then drove through Cranbrook to Kimberley. From Kimberley we passed through Fernie and then entered Alberta.

We had been told that Nelson was going to be a great place so we spent a night there. It is a beautiful spot with mountains, the Kootney lake and a quite little town. However, to find a breakfast restaurant that would serve bacon and eggs was a bit of a challenge. There are tons of places that serve vegetarian and vegan food but for an Englishman, that just won't do! We eventually found a really nice place on the way out of town so Robert's day was saved by a heaping serving of bacon!

Ferry ride across Kootney lake

On the B.C. side, the landscape in the Kootneys is spectacular with the Rockies and the Kootney mountains. However, almost as soon as we entered Alberta everything flattened out. Like, REALLY flattened out. More like a pancake!!! Miles and miles of farmlands! Cows and horses everywhere!

Approaching Lethbridge which is the first major city on the Alberta side it was evident that the city has a past history in the coal mining industry. Hills from the by product of mining greets you when you drive in and some kind of huge bridge that looks like a transportation system for coal can be seen in the distance.

We decided not to stop in Lethbridge and therefore drove another two hours to Medicine Hat. Today we will drive through the rest of southern Alberta and into Saskatchewan. Probably another few hours of flat lands. Robert is still driving and keeps singing to stay awake. Victoria is awake because Robert sings.....

Oh, to end this post, we just want to share a few pictures from the last part of the Arctic trip. Robert finally got his goat (not the way he had hoped for) and Victoria got a kiss from a camel....

Robert got the goat! ...at a petting zoo.....

A Canadian camel....

Victoria and the goat

FLAT prarie landscape

So in seven days we have passed through five provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and entered into Ontario) and adjusted our clocks from Pacific Standard Time to Mountain Time to Central Time and now in Ontario we will shortly change them again to Eastern Standard Time. Since our last blog entry we have been through Moose Jaw (Victoria had to stop since she has a couple of friends from there), Regina, Winnipeg(will tell you more about this experience in a minute), Kenora and finally Dryden from where this entry is being written.

Regina is the capital of Saskatchewan and I'm sure there are interesting things to look at. However, we drove in to town late at night and as we have learned by now; the road that leads into a city in Canada looks pretty much the same anywhere with fast food resturants, gas stations and standard hotel chains such as the Travelodge, Super 8, Comfort Inn etc. After some driving around we ended up at the Howard-Johnston.

It is probably worth a paragraph or two in this blog to talk about accomodations. After almost two month on the road, we have seen a variety of motels, hotels, inns and B&Bs. The standard, quality and expectations are usually (but not always) correlated to the price you pay and while we are not on a backpackers' budget, we've been trying to be a little thrify if the place is just somewhere to rest our heads before continuing driving the next day. On occasion we have 'splurged' a little when we find a cute town or place but for this driving portion of the trip, our motto is 'clean and cheap'.

The Howard-Johnston in Regina was 'clean and cheap', but also completely and utterly disorganized. The hotel was under renovations which made part of it look like a construction site and the drilling into walls (it felt like our heads) started somewhere around 7am in the morning. But the alarming part was the staff of the hotel. There were two girls working the front desk and Victoria is usually a very patient customer who rarely complains, but after the check-in procedure took almost half an hour and when we asked for directions and the girls couldn't even point out on a city map where the hotel was located, even Victoria had problems hiding her frustration. That incident, plus some smaller ones, made us not feeling too sad to leave Regina. Sadly so, as the city probably has so much more to offer than the experience of incompetent hotel staff.

Next stop for the evening was Winnipeg, Manitoba. The city is large and we ended up in the middle of downtown. Again, trying to be.. hmm... 'frugal', we found a hotel that looked fantastic on the outside, located in a beautiful building from 1914; the Marlbourough. The rate of a hotel room (about half of the Radisson across the street), should have given us a hint though..... The hotel had a pool, gym, restaurant and breakfast was included in the price which sounded great. Still.... the price should have been the clue....
We were woken up several times during the middle of the night by people in the hallway who after getting completely drunk had forgotten which hotel room they belonged to and decided to let the entire hotel know that they were lost. Strange characters were snooping around the hotel property and Victoria felt so uncomfortable she turned around and went back to the room after an attempt to go to the convenience store. The security guy at the hotel wore a bullet proof west and the place was just seedy.

The next morning we decided to skip the free breakfast in fear of what the restaurant would look like. We decided to give Winnipeg another chance by driving to the Forks which we had heard was a nice part of town. The Forks looks a little bit like Granville island in Vancouver with an open market housed in an old warehouse. It was quite charming and nice and we had breakfast there before going for a walk along the river and crossing over to the French part via Provencher Bridge which is an interesting masterpiece of architecture and engineering.

Robert and the bridge

Provencher Bridge

Leaving Winnipeg behind us, we soon entered into Ontario and drove through the town of Kenora which was a nice little place on a lake. Not being able to find Robert a proper pub, we continued to Dryden where we spent the night before heading towards Thunder Bay.

written by  Victoria & Robert on October 23, 2009 from Dryden, Canada
from the travel blog: Across Canada
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