Author: Steps to Wander
After leaving Banff National Park, we had a long stretch of random towns we planned to stop in for the night and even longer stretches of flat fields between these towns. It was a crazy contrast from the epic mountain views we had just spent the last few days in, but beautiful in a different kind of way.
First town we arrived in was Medicine Hat, Alberta where we spent the afternoon in a great city park and cooked up some pretty gourmet burgers. Afterwards, to beat the heat, we found a small swimming area and we had just picked up a blow-up raft we wanted to try out. The raft turned out to be much smaller than anticipated, but it held all three of us up (Paris included) and the potential of the raft deflating at any moment just added to the fun.
That night we cozied up in the parking lot of the nearby Walmart and fell asleep to the sound of idling trucks and generators from nearby R.V.s. Next morning we woke up to a dead car battery. We weren’t entirely sure how the battery had died, but it could have been from the rear fuel pumps kicking on (don’t even get us started on that mess again) or from us trying to charge our laptops from the 12v outlet convertor. But, we figured out how to charge the battery with the generator and we were in the clear.
Next, we continued to buckle down more miles through the golden fields of beautiful southern Canada. After another hot day of driving we stopped for a random R.V. Park sign to see if we could top off our water tank again after we had both taken showers. We had somehow stumbled upon a little oasis in the middle of nowhere with this R.V. park. They had great camping spots with lots of tree coverage, but what we really loved was their little restaurant/bar with the outdoor patio decked out with tiki torches and a gazebo. We were starved, and couldn’t resist a plate of nachos.
Recharged, we had no plans to pay to stay at the R.V. park no matter how cool we thought it was, and we set out to finish our drive for the day. We finally reached our camping spot for the night, an old deserted R.V. park off the side of the highway. It was an eerie place, and as we drove through to find our spot it kind of gave me the creeps. But, it was a free place to stay and once the sun had gone down and our lights were off, no one would even know we were there.
We drove the next morning and we hoped to reach Regina, Saskatchewan by the end of the day. At this point, we were starting to dread the days of flat fields for hours, even with the beautiful yellow canola flowers. But, this was part of the adventure we had signed up for. It couldn’t be all days of epic glacier hikes and mountain views, that’s just not how this continent was created. We kept reminding ourselves we were driving through places we would probably never be again in our lives, and if we didn’t appreciate them now then the opportunity may be lost forever. So, we enjoyed the flat fields and blue skies and drove on.
Related Tags