Family reunion: the drive

Note: I'm posting this after the fact.

This is going to be a bit of a test to see if I can get a blog post cranked out quickly before the day gets crazy. Yesterday we met the Vancouver relies at a little cafe in Okotoks.

The convoy begins

They have been driving Beano while they’re in town. From there we proceeded in tandem to Lethbridge taking the back roads and stopping to see grain elevators, take photos, and have lunch.

It wasn’t a perfect day i.e. no beautiful blue Alberta skies, but it wasn’t stinkin’ hot and we had an enjoyable trip. I especially liked poking around the grain elevators and taking photos.

A lot of the crops have been lodged, a term I didn’t know. It’s where the crops are lying down in the fields. The stems are permanently bent or broken which makes harvest difficult  and can reduce the price or even spoil the crops. I always thought it was called blow-down but I’m a city kid. Apparently lodging can be caused by a combination of factors including wind, heavy rain (that fits for this year), poor root development, or pest damage. Whatever the cause, a lot of the fields we passed were in this condition.

Heather wanted to see a field of canola in bloom and I was really surprised that the few we did see were just starting to bloom. The fields north of Calgary which I see each week are sporting the brilliant yellow of canola in full bloom. I’ll have to do some research about which areas of the province grow canola and what causes the difference in ripening times.

We stopped for lunch at the golf course in Vulcan. I never would have thought of that but it turned up as an eating spot when David googled eating places. It was the perfect spot. We had the place all to ourselves and there was neither music nor TV screens, just the way I like it, Bah humbug!

We arrived in Lethbridge, checked into the hotel, had dinner, and then some of us went to a get together a little way out of town. It was great to see people I haven’t seen for probably 20 years.

Today is the main gathering of the weekend. The rest of the Vancouver crew arrived early this morning on a shuttle from Calgary so the families will be in full force today. I have my phone and my camera and I plan to take a lot of photos. Stay tuned for whatever shenanigans we get up to.

In hindsight

Today marks our 39 wedding anniversary. Looking back, we wish we had kept track of how we spent all those anniversaries because we can remember what we were doing on only a few of them. There’s the famous ‘poop truck’ anniversary where we looked out Kermie’s (our green Westfalia camper van) upstairs window and watched the service truck pump out the outhouse in Kananaskis country. Hey, it may not be romantic but it has made us laugh almost every year since.

We spent a few anniversaries hiking at Lake O’Hara, first with Mum and one of her friends and then on our own. On our 29 anniversary we were on our first cruise with Adventure Canada. I remember that one because we said it was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Three years ago, just as restrictions from the pandemic were ending, we celebrated our anniversary aboard the Ocean Endeavour on another Arctic cruise. One of these days I’ll count up how many Adventure Canada cruises we’ve been on. I simply don’t remember offhand and I’m going to have to look back in my journals to figure it out.

A few days ago we looked at each other and asked what we were going to do to mark our anniversary this year. It’s so easy to just carry on with the day to day routines, have one of our standard suppers, watch some YouTube then retire to our studies for the evening. Richard asked me if I wanted to go out for dinner. I thought that would be a good idea and he suggested the revolving restaurant at the top of the Calgary Tower. The last time we were there we took Bill and Gerta, his first girlfriend, to dinner. That’s 9 or 10 years ago.

There are probably places in Calgary to get better food at cheaper rates but it’s fun to look down on the city and see the various landmarks from a different vantage point so tonight that’s where we went. It became clear within the first few minutes that we were in a line of tables whose inhabitants were all celebrating anniversaries of some sort. Two people seated behind me, came up as they were leaving to tell us they had overheard us telling the waiter that this was our 39 anniversary. They said it was theirs as well. We congratulated each other and they went on their way. I was facing a table of 6 and as they left one of the men came up and asked us if it was our anniversary too. He told us that it was his 50th and we agreed we had a way to go.

I had my phone at the ready and took a number of photos as the restaurant revolved. We chattered away as we normally do about a checkerboard pattern on the roof of one of the buildings, one train that was heading east and one train on a parallel track that was backing up. We tried to decide which church roof was which, and I noticed the angle of the pedestrians’ shadows when seen from that height. The mountains were only a faint outline in the haze but it didn’t seem to be smokey. We took pictures of the food and laughed at our foibles. We had a mathematical disagreement at the beginning of the evening when the waiter asked us how long we had been married. Suffice it to say that we each had a different number. I’m not terribly mathematically literate and Richard kindly explained to me that he was counting from zero whereas I was counting from one.

We spent about 2 hours in the restaurant and then came home. We immediately changed into comfy clothes. I emptied ash from the Solo Stove and pulled some creeping bell flower. We are now in our studies as we are on most nights. It hasn’t been the flashiest of anniversaries but we are both satisfied that we’ll remember this one. Here’s to the next 39 years.

Watching the trains

2 mains and 2 veg

Looking west

Richard's dessert

My dessert: huckleberry crumble turns your teeth blue

Looking north up centre street

People's feet on the glass floor of the observation platform