» photo albums 2009/ROCKIES / FAMILY VISIT

For the big summer trip we’re going to the Rockies again, because this time, my family is flying in to visit us, and to see a bit more of Canada!!! We are taking my dad and his gf in our motorhome, my brother and his family rented their own motorhome. We’ll tell you all about it in our next updates!! 🙂

Friday, July 10th

The night before we decided to leave on Friday instead of Saturday. We wanted to drive all the way to Medicine Hat (5 hrs driving time) and took a break appr. in the middle, in Swift Current, where we had an early supper at Humpty’s. As usual we enjoyed the prairie sceneries and saw a coyote, antilopes, some bird of prey, a bison with a little one and a gazillion cows and a gazillion gophers 😉 In Medicine Hat we parked on the empty (except for all the RVs haha) parkinglot of a former Wal-Mart store, where we figured out what we wanted to do on Saturday and Sunday. We want to go to Drumheller on Saturday and hopefully we can find a campsite there for the next night.

Saturday, July 11th

On our way to Drumheller I phoned the campground close to downtown and we were lucky to get one of the last spots available. After a 3 hour ride through the most flat and empty prairie you can possibly imagine, and the last part up to Drumheller through rolling hills, we fell silent when we entered the Drumheller Valley. Wow! Those badlands looked way more impressive than we had expected! Bigger and more picturesque! We turned right to drive a few km to the hoodoos, then turned around to drive to Drumheller and then follow the North Dinosaur Trail through the valley of badlands to the Horsethief Canyon Viewpoint (aaaaahhhhhhh!!!). Then we turned around again to go back to Drumheller, but on the way we stopped at the Royal Tyrrell Museum with the dinosaur skeletons and much more. If you have an RV you have to go straight to the overflow parking, but there is no such sign in the beginning, so we cruised a very full parking lot before even finding the overflow parking with a RV section. The museum was very impressive, many interpretive things and of course many fossils and skeletons, esp. of dinosaurs. At 4 we were back in Drumheller at the campsite where we parked in a pull through site with power and water, facing a hill. There is no privacy, but the campground is close to downtown, so we could walk there to see the “World’s Biggest Dinosaur” of 26m high. Nico climbed the stairs inside to look over the valley from the dino’s mouth 🙂 We walked through the town a bit, but there wasn’t much going on. On our way back we had supper in a Greek restaurant, mmmmm moussaka!

Sunday, July 12th

After a quick breakfast in Drumheller took the 9 to Calgary, passed the city on the east side to go to Okotoks, where we visited fellow Dutch emigrants Richard and Jacky and their sons. After a few hours we drove a bit more west to Black Diamond to visit Rob, Anneke and their little Ryan, another Dutch family. We had a lot of fun with both families (thanks for having us!!), but around 4 we had to leave to be at the Travelodge in time to welcome our family who flew in from Amsterdam. My 90-year-old dad and his girlfriend Amalia, my brother Ton, sister-in-law Rita and their sons Martijn and Sander. It was a great reunion after 16 months! We had supper in the restaurant and showed the motorhome to a few of them, before they all went to bed (we were staying overnight in the parking lot).