Our plan this summer was to drive west and see where the wind took us. Sam was a bit of a wild card and we had the first week planned with WillMo cabin festivities but after that the world was our oyster - it turned out to be a bit of a prairie oyster and that suited us just fine.
The day before our adventure was to start we got the special treat of having Keith's cousin Jen and family stay at our house. It was nice to see the six kids enjoy spending time together and I was glad our trips west and east got a chance to meet in the middle.
We had scheduled WillMo cabin activities in Waskesiu this year. It’s somewhat equidistant for the Schaapsher and us and it seemed like a good first stop. We stayed at the Elkridge Resort in one of the cabins (with a couple days in one of their townhouses). It’s a beautiful facility. One of the things we were most looking forward to was the zipline adventure tours. Paul and I were keen to do the full course which was 8 ziplines through the forest. There were mini zips for the kids and a climbing wall I was hoping Cian might be interested since he is such a good climber but up until now hadn’t been that interested in climbing a wall. We checked it out the first day and planned an adventure day later in the week.
We filled our time as always with good food, fun, boardgames, ukelele songs and Kraken. We did pretty well this year even with 4 kids - the older 3 know each other pretty well now and Sam is a very easy going baby.
One of my favourite days was when we headed into the town of Waskesiu. It was a rainy day so we thought we’d check out the town and the visitor information suggested the nature centre. I was picturing a room with a couple of skeletons and a beaver pelt and thought it was going to be a let down but it was SO much fun. We could barely drag Em and Cian away from the lake table where there were otter puppets, fish and a bear paw - there were many dramas enacted here. There was a scavenger hunt, tree identification, there were tonnes of very interactive/kid friendly exhibits. We loved dressing up as Canadian animals. The pinnacle achievement was the puppet show that Paul and I put on at the front entrance puppet theatre. I was the deer singing “High on a hill was a lonely deer herd” and Paul’s impromptu moose rendition of the subsequent yodel totally broke me. Our encore piece was Oh Canada with an all Canadian animal cast. It was glorious.
Paul and I did the Zipline tour and had a blast. Our approaches were definitely different: I was far more hesitant about things and he entered into each “zip” with reckless abandon. They had different challenges on the course and it was 2 hours of great fun.
During our adventures Keith and Cian challenged the 32 foot climbing wall and won. They enjoyed it very much and I was glad to hear Cian excited about trying some indoor climbing as I know climbing is something he’s really good at. A couple days later when visiting the mini ziplines Em had mulled the idea over enough in her mind and she too decided to try the climbing wall. The pass is for unlimited climbs and she might have tested out that policy. She climbed for over an hour and wore through 3 different spotters. I’m not sure what’s in store for us with that girl when she’s conquered a climbing wall at 6.
One of my other favourite days was traveling up to Missinipe. We were as “close” to my old stomping grounds as I had been in over a decade and I was really interested in seeing Ric and CRCO. We drove up there and barely made it out of the van before we were greeted by Ric eager to show us around town. I got to see all the areas that had changed and all the things he was excited about. My kids jumped off the dock (it was so ridiculously hot) and saw the float planes and loved Ric and Theresa. Em was mad I hadn’t taken her there earlier. It was a wonderful day and such a reminder of how much I love the North and canoeing. I even found one of my paintings hanging in the front of the canoe shed!
Our WillMo cabin adventure was a wonderful success and on the Sunday we headed on to Edmonton. My mom got her birthday cake from Sugared and Spiced bakery and we enjoyed that when we arrived. Our kids love it at Omi and Opa’s house as Em would say “because we’re so spoiled!”. They are indeed spoiled - my mom makes lots of delicious food, pre-records all their favourite shows on TV (we don’t have cable at our house so it’s extra special) and they get to play in the big backyard with the waterfall that had an extra “chute” feature that Opa had made. On one of their adventures outside Cian went to take a picture of Em watering plants because I asked him too and got up on a bench for a better shot not knowing there was a wasp nest in the corner of the pergola. Poor kiddo was stung three times - he recovered very well though.
When we got to Omi’s we made a plan of attack on our “MoCanada” tour. Keith was interested in taking the kids to the Tyrell museum and then realized it was also Calgary Stampede which none of us had been to. We booked one night in Strathmore an then headed South. We drove down to Calgary in time for the rodeo and it was a spectacle. The kids liked the cattle roping and I liked the barrel racing because I did it once at the Water Valley rodeo a lifetime ago. It was great fun. We then explored the fairgrounds trying to take in everything uniquely “Stampede”. Keith even decided to get a cowboy hat !! (This was particularly interesting since he didn’t want to wear a plaid shirt but I guess he got into the festivities.) We went into the farm areas and the kids got squeezed into a cattle chute. They fed and pet the chickens. They also participated in human fooseball which wasn’t very “stampede” but was a heck of a lot of fun. We had beef for supper and S’more bear balls (famcy mini-donuts) for snack. There was way more than we could absorb in one day but we had a heck of a lot of fun. We topped it off with a Lava whip (pineapple and strawberry ice cream treat).
We spent the night in Strathmore and had a nice breakfast at the hotel. It’s possible Cian ate 5 croissants at breakfast (I’m not sure we will be able to keep food in the house when he is a teenager). The boys wore their dinosaur shirts and we headed out to Drumheller. The Badlands of Alberta are beautiful. I hadn’t seen them since I was a kid and I had forgotten how gorgeous they are - almost otherworldly. We made it to Tyrell and explored the museum. Cian wanted to wear Keith’s cowboy hat which was great cause we could find him anywhere when he was wearing that thing. We love dinosaurs in our family and we learned a lot of new things. I didn’t know that T-rex and Triceratops were the last dinosaurs alive in North America before extinction. Cian didn’t know velociraptors were small and had feathers and he was initially not very happy about that fact because it did not coincide with his preconceived notions of velociraptors based on movies, TV and Lego video games. Keith had an extended conversation with him about scientific evidence and the importance of expert opinion.
After the museum we wanted to see the Hoodoos before heading back to Omi’s house. It was still a very hot day but it was well worth the stop. Before we had much of a chance to get our bearings Cian was almost all the way up to the top of the ridge. Any opportunity to climb and he is game. His sister wasn’t far behind him and Keith was a good sport and followed them up there since I had Sam in the carrier. They loved climbing all over the cliffs and canyons as they love any chance to explore. I’m happy they have fenced off the hoodoos so people can’t climb there. I’m surprised we can even climb behind them but my kids certainly enjoyed that privilege. We drove back to Omi’s after that in the most perfect summer evening on the prairie.
Our time in Edmonton was spent with family and friends which is just the way we like it. We got to spend an afternoon with the cousins hanging out with the sprinkler. Keith and I saw our friends Chantal, Donald and Jo and Graeme who were visiting fro Vancouver. We had a wonderful 14th anniversary movie date with our friends and saw Ant Man and the Wasp which was so so good. Em made fast friends with Deb’s daughter Rory during breakfast at High Level dinner and playing at the Garneau playground. Sam and I had a beautiful summer evening with Devin downtown. All the kids got to hang out with Auntie Rachel at Street Performer’s. Auntie Sue and Woody were visiting from Kelowna and we got to see them and have dinner together and Sam got to meet his wonderful Auntie Sue for the first time. We spent lots of time at Omi and Opa's house and planted Sam's tree to join the ones planted for his siblings. We even capped off the whole Edmonton experience with a day at WEM waterpark. I feel a bit bad that we hadn’t taken them there before seeing as how we go to Edmonton at least once a year. I realized that they had never even seen a wave pool so they were totally awestruck. My mom had talked for months about renting a cabana and hanging out for the day and that was certainly a highlight. The kids spent 7 hours at the pool with only the smallest break to slam down some food before heading back into the pool. 90% of their time was in the wave pool. Cian was devastated when we had to leave and they begged to go back the next day. Sooooooo it was kind of a parenting win/fail since he was 9 before he had ever been to a wave pool and I feel sort of bad about that - but we’ve corrected that now and I envision more trips to WEM in our future.
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| So much fun at the Waterpark |
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| Sam's tree |
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| Generations of friends |
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| Aunti Sue! |
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| Auntie Rachel at Street Performers |
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| 14th "friend" anniversary |
After all that adventure it was time to head home. Em talked nonstop about Rory after their playdate so I figured out a way for them to see each other again and we crashed our friends camping trip in Crimson Lake for an afternoon/evening so the kids could play together. That was a big success and it was really nice to see them all together.
We stayed that night in Rocky Mountain House and then headed out to Maple Creek, SK. I had found an actual ranch where they taught kids how to brush, tackle and ride horses and the suggested ages were 6-9. Most places ask that kids be 8 so finding something where Cian and Emily could do this together was a big deal. I called ahead and talked to Scott who sounds like an authentic cowboy and he was very accommodation. He booked the kids and me on the training session and then I had also wanted to do the cattle drive which was going to work out just fine as there were a couple guys there that also wanted to do it. I was SOOOOOO stoked about doing a cattle drive for so many reasons one of which was that City Slickers is one of my favourite movies. Scott said we could camp at the ranch since we didn’t have accommodation yet and that gave us a chance to try out our new 6 person family tent. We arrived down the gravel road to Historic Reesor Ranch and it was truly an authentic cattle ranch. I entered the office/mess hall and there were two women inside. They had my information from Scott and said we could set up camp past the outside near the tractor in the field…we were literally in the front pasture land before the fence beside an old horse trailer and what appeared to be part of a combine. There was no table or specified spot or anything and I thought to myself “even my easygoing husband might think this is completely ridiculous for our first night tenting as a family with a baby” but to my happy surprise Keith will make anything work. The ranch was beyond accommodating and they drove a picnic table out to the pasture for us to use. The nice bathroom with flush toilets was only a couple minute walk away. We set up out new tent in the pasture nestled amongst the rolling hills of southern Saskatchewan and enjoyed the most beautiful evening with a warm breeze and a gorgeous sunset. Scott and Teresa had such hospitality and we couldn’t have asked for a better evening together as a family.
The next day the wind started to pick up but it could not extinguish our excited spirits as we waited to do some horseback riding at the ranch (Em of course expressed her excitement in song). There were two wranglers that got Darby, Duchess and JB for us to ride. This was not your typical trail riding establishment where all the horses are completely subdued. The kids had to be careful to not spook their horses. They learned how to walk around them carefully and how to brush them properly. They put their blankets and saddles on and mounted them (via some stairs). They learned how to steer and stop and got to ride around on their own. I was a bit nervous I had forgotten how to ride but once I started brushing JB all the muscle memories kicked in. There was a paddock that had obstacles in it and the kids got led around a bit but then were able to lead the horses on their own. We went over logs and up hills and through obstacles and they did amazingly well. One of the ranch hands wanted to see if Duchess would go onto a platform and tried to lead her there but she got spooked and Cian amazingly kept his seat and didn’t freak out even though she spooked sideways. It’s so interesting that Cian has this instinctive way of balancing in unstable situations - low brace in the bow of a canoe or sitting deeper into the saddle on a skittish horse - being his mom is interesting to say the least. It was so amazing to ride horses with the two of them and for them to love it as much as I do. They were convinced that after their hour on horseback that they were experienced enough to do the cattle drive with me as they just wanted to keep riding. My biggest hope was that they would have a positive first experience riding and they certainly did have that.
The wind had picked up even more by the end of our riding in the morning and our tent was starting to feel it. We looked it up later and the winds were 53 km/h and our family tent was doing it’s best but I thought it was better to take it down so we didn’t stress the poles unnecessarily (one of the steel pegs already bent under the weight). We ate lunch in the van due to the extreme winds which didn’t seem to bother any of us. We decided that maybe we would mosey along after my cattle drive since the weather didn’t seem too conducive to camping and Keith and I took down the rest of camp before my cattle drive.
The cattle drive was amazing. It was like JB was my horse and I got to saddle him, hop on and out the paddock gates to the 500 acres the ranch owns. Despite the wind it was stunningly beautiful to ride over the rolling hills and to see blue, green and yellow as far as the eye could see. You had to be a more experienced rider for this trip so we jogged up to the ridge and went through small trails and valleys in search of cows. The cows on the back pastures were moms with their calves. I chuckled to myself that I was still doing maternity postpartum rounds just in a very different way. We found some cattle in the trees and coaxed them along the path. The ranchers said it doesn’t usually take much for them to get in formation and that was certainly true - they lined up nicely and we guided them into the field. As the sun shone down on the field there was literally a hawk making lazy circles in the sky. The little calves mooed defiantly back at us but fell back in line with their mamas. The country there is absolutely stunning - right on the edge of Cypress Hills interprovincial park. One of the calves got into the parkland so one of the ranchers and I rode wide and encouraged it back into the pasture. I sang the theme from City Slickers in my head most of the time and you couldn’t peel the smile off my face. I love the deep belly breathing that happens when you do something you really love to do - that’s horseback riding and being out in nature for me.
After my cattle drive we drove the windy prairie over to Moose Jaw. We stayed the night in the hotel with the pool in hopes that we would get a morning swim and we did. Winnipeg is such a small town that we met someone from Cian’s class at breakfast in the Days Inn in Moose Jaw. I love that small town feel of the Peg. We weren’t sure if we were going to try to camp in Moose Jaw the next night but it was still pretty windy so we decided it wasn’t in the cards for us and that we would drive home after our Moose Jaw adventure to the tunnels.
The Tunnels of Moose Jaw has two tours and we thought the kids would enjoy being bootleggers during Prohibition and we were right. They are the perfect age and temperament to be SO into the melodrama. It’s hard to know how your kids are going to do on a tour like that but I think Keith is right that our kids (the only kids) were probably the highlight of the tour for a lot of the group. The actors couldn’t have scripted them better. Cian and Em each broke one of the actors (temporarily - they were very good) with their sincere responses and it was fun for the adults to see things through the lens of kids who whole-heartedly believed. Sam was very good and slept through the whole thing. It was great fun so if you ever find yourself in Moose Jaw you should check it out.
Our trip home was uneventful - we were cocooned in our jam-packed van and made it home late into the evening. Everyone was thankful to be back in our comfy familiar beds. Our “Cowboys and Dinosaurs” tour was a great success. It’s a good example of how you don’t have to leave our own beautiful country to have great adventures.
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