The “road” we are on right now.  Highway 9 was under “creation” for about 5 miles.  It was difficult to see were the road was supposed to be. Luckily there was a local in front of us.  There aren’t a lot of roads up here compared to the Chicago area.  Thus when a road is shut down, like Highway 1, that is still shut down from the weekend, they send people on a 400 km detour.  Luckily, we had already passed through the area of Medicine Hat and Saskatoon, so we weren’t affected, but we have run into quite a few people who were.

Today we met a family of three from the Boston area who are climbers.  They were at our favorite “watering hole” doing dishes, eating, bathing, and doing laundry.  They are on their way west as well and then down into the U.S. to Boulder, CO where they will hop a plane back to their home in Poland.  The parents had just finished their fellowship at MIT and now they are vacationing or as the locals say “they are on holiday”.

Horseshoe Canyon, our lunch location.

At lunch we finally got an up-close pic of one of the gophers, or as we still call them “prairie dogs”.  A family I met at the Tyrrell Museum playground this morning was freaking out at the very hungry and curious critters.  The dad actually dumped his coffee in their direction to get them to “Shoo!”  The mom made me laugh when she heard that I was from Chicago. She lit up and excitedly asked if I had ever seen Oprah in person.  Not that Oprah isn’t exciting, she just isn’t the first thing I think of when I think of Chicago. :-)

Brooke outside the Atlas Mine

Brooke loves trains.  So much so that when she turned two and needed a “big girl room” she choose Thomas above the cute flowery and lacy choices.  She was very excited to see the trains used in the mines.

Scott and Brooke attempted to go tour the Atlas Mines this morning.  Two problems: kids need to be four because the tour is an hour and a half, and hundreds of school children were coming thus the first tour was at 3 pm.  We took Brooke to the playground outside the Dino Museum again instead.  Then having been very productive we went to eat lunch, and now we are finally en route to Calgary.