Unplanned in Esterhazy

August 31, we were on a bit of a long haul stretch from Estevan to Veregin to the National Doukobor Heritage Village and planning to spend the night in nearby Canora (named by putting together the 1st 2 letters of each word of, Canadian Northern Railway).
Passing through Esterhazy I noticed two road side signs: potash interpretive centre and flour mill. A quick aside: it seems that every town no matter how small has a grain elevator, a museum, a park, and signs at the outskirts that let you know about them. I had completely forgotten about the potash industry; largest producer of potash in the world! You can get lost in the farming details of 75% of Canada's mustard, best red lentils in the world (1.6 billion hectares), wheat, barley , oats, and canola, and many, many, many head of beef. And oil wells of course.
So I said, let's stop for 5 minutes. Two hours later we got back on the road. The museum alone was delightful with a wealth of human and household artifacts. Then the young caretaker said the potash interpretive building was definitely worthwhile, so again I said, 5 minutes. She opened up and 1 minute in, I said to Jim, "change of plan, we'll go to Yorkton tonight and Veregin tomorrow". Absolutely, says he. So we listened and learned and were awed and impressed. There is a city 3000 ft below Esterhazy with miles and miles of tunnels and roads, a mechanic shop, rest areas, and a 40 kph speed limit. Potash is a very big deal in Saskatchewan and the world.
And THEN the youngster-in-charge took us into the flour mill, the only wooden flour mill in left in Saskatchewan, which started gristing in 1907. AND it has an elevator attached so we got the whole story from the horse drawn cart of grain driven onto the scales, the bucket elevator that unloaded the grain, the gristing process,and the final product. Magic!
It pays to read the signs in front of you because Esterhazy was not on our radar at all and it was a fabulous stop  for us.

the only wooden flour mill left in Saskatchewan

wedding dress in the museum with stunning beading

the driller blades in a potash mine

one of 3 head shafts near Esterhazy

on the road!

Estevan cenotaph

The trek to Estevan includes a story for another time but when we got there, late-ish, we found our hotel provided a free supper of very good chili. Salvation. If you are ever planning to be in Estevan, ask me about the place because it really was great value and a nice facility.
But this story is about the cenotaph.

It's on the corner of the main drag

thankfully or we might have missed it. The main piece was carved from a single 102 year old tree but I don't know about the 2 benches. The detail in these pieces is very special and I can imagine the bench figures faces are from real photographs. Of course the wood will break down eventually but what a gift the community. There are a couple of explanatory plaques, one remembering a Victoria Cross recipient from the town. We feel very privileged to experience these examples of the heart of our people.

Val Marie to Yorkton

The sights and information continue to be amazing. We stayed at the Convent in Val Marie on Wednesday, the closest point to Grasslands NP.

the dining room and fellow travellers

upstairs hallway

The Convent

Our host at the Convent, Adam, gave us a terrific breakfast on Thursday morning and sent us on our merry way which led us to another Chinese restaurant in Lafleche for a pit stop and conversation with what appeared to be a regular coffee group of local farmers. I asked what a combine might cost: about $500K for the machine, another $100K for "the rack in front", $400K for a tractor and $100K for a transport cart. Yikes! They assured us that while food may be getting more expensive the money is not going to the farmer, rather the processors. They were proud to say "we feed the world" and they had lots of ideas of things we should see and do.
One of those was the church in Gravelbourg not too far along the road. We could see it from a distance and arrived in the parking lot at the same time as a couple from Winnipeg. Emboldened by being 4 we called the posted number on the door for a tour. Wow. Our guide was a volunteer who lives nearby the church and said he averages about 1500 tours every summer. The church used to be a cathedral but the population has dwindled so that now it is a co-cathedral with Regina. It seats 1000 in a town of 1100. It was built in 18 months and opened in 1919, its purpose, along with a convent school and bishop's residence was to attract people to the town which got to about 1800 souls at one point.  It took about 10 years for the very remarkable wall paintings to be completed. Initially the windows were painted by the same artist but eventually they were replaced by stained glass, following the painters designs. As one of our farmer friends who has travelled extensively said "it rivals anything you will see in Europe". I agree.

Camping 2018

goats on the roof - Coombs

saw blade insert at the Timberland Pub

We don't have much room for camping this summer so we grabbed a few days last week to go to The Living Forest, less than 2 hours away, just south of Nanaimo. We've camped there a few times in recent years; we like the way it's run, the amenities, and the convenience. Sometimes we think we should venture somewhere else, but why? Flush toilets, a cafe that donates its proceeds to local charities, 2 minutes to grocery and liquor stores - what's not to love?

June was doing its June weather thing, being unpredictable. We had a summer month in May but June did not want to warm up. Our set up day was offering 40% chance of showers and we hadn't had rain for about 6 weeks so how could we moan about it. We executed our plan of erecting first the kitchen shelter, then the tent, then the less urgent bits. Just as we finished the two main projects, the rain started and it rained like Maritime rain, for several hours. At the last minute, Jim had thrown in two rubberized capes that we bought in South Carolina more than 30 years ago. Hallelujah. Also, hallelujah that our getting-a-bit-long-in-the-tooth tent stayed dry. It is a 3 season tent (which for me means summer) with a full batten-down-the-hatches fly but the fly has been rubbed by the pole clips and folded most of its life and kind of ignored, so I did wonder how water tight it might be. Test passed and good for another outing or two.
Third hallelujah is that I always take a meal prepared for set-up day, usually chicken curry, so we didn't have to find food and cook in the rain.

The kitchen shelter is only water resistant, meant more as a sun-shade or to keep the tree crap out of my coffee cup, but even it was reasonably dry. We did see a very nifty solution to tarping a tent or shelter using water filled pop bottles to weight down the tarp. But I digress!

Not being beach bunnies we usually explore the area, find a hike, park, point of interest, pub, or all of the above. This year I have a banged up leg so nothing too strenuous and no kayaking but
Living Forest has an online map that highlights all kinds of things we like to do at various levels of difficulty. Our friends the Tedders had the adjacent camp site and their tiny rescue-shi tzu Xena is not interested in any kind of physical exertion. At all!

A Great Gray owl

top of the world view

We went to North Island Wildlife Recovery Centre which has grown and changed a lot since we were last there. Nearby, the Tedders knew of a viewpoint up a very steep road to a cell tower installation, and then we went to Coombs for a late lunch. We love Coombs but it is suffering from success by being crowded and they've spiffed it up a bit too much maybe. Still fun though.

Morden Colliery tipple ruin

We also found the Haslam Creek trail (thanks to Gayle's good eyesight!), part of the Trans Canada system, with a nice suspension bridge across the gorge, the Morden Colliery ruins, and a winery making drinkable wine.
The Timberland Pub on Timberland Road serves up some very good food along with some rustic local characters.

Haslam Crk bridge

recycled horse shoes!

Our also long-in-the-tooth and completely neglected (apparently you are supposed to clean and oil them once a year. Who knew?) Coleman stove started to act up and quit completely on the last night. It's an old-school kerosene version and Jim has spent the last couple of hours trying to sort it out, with only an occasional not quite burn the house down moment. We like the kerosene concept as a less volatile fuel and adding to those millions of disposable mini propane tanks just goes against the grain for me. So he'll get it fixed with some good YouTube help or we'll have to bite the bullet for a new one. I also had a brainwave about how to more efficiently pack the car but that and the camp-stove may not get another outing this year. Sigh.
On the other hand we are going on a long road trip to Saskatchewan toward the end of August, by way of Fort St John which is way up north. I have a very long must-see list for Sask and am excited about the adventure of it all.

Meanwhile my stove mechanic friend has just reappeared and offered wine.....

Latest Craziness

I started this post more than 2 weeks ago so it is old news but I decided to finish it anyway.

The Halifax branch of the family, Paul, Sue, Rachel, Jillian, have a company called Over The Edge that helps non-profit organizations raise money. About $75 million to date. It started with a one-time event in Halifax with a brain-wave from Paul. He knew of 3 groups who needed some money so he said, let's charge people $1000 each to rappel off a tall building. And people did buck up for the adventure. There were a few bumps along the start-up trail, but OTE launched in 2008 and a decade later people are still rappelling off tall buildings for charities such as Make A Wish, Special Olympics, Boy Scouts of America, and many, many others. There are events all over North America, and also in Europe and now New Zealand.
For a few years, Rachel and Jillian "saw" their father a lot on Skype or Facetime as he racked up air miles but checked in twice a day with the family.

Two years ago a Victoria event was scheduled but didn't happen but at the time, Paul said he would bring Rachel out to rappel with Jim if we decided to do it. Friends of ours were turning 70 that year and I volunteered myself and Jim to rappel with them. Jim is of the "you are crazy and I am not doing it" school of thought but, really, he wouldn't be happy if I did and he didn't, so eventually he gave in; very reluctantly. He and the other couple were relieved the 2016 rappel was cancelled but I am in the "we'll be a long time dead" school so was a titch disappointed.

Fast forward to 2018, Paul messaged to say he was coming to see us for a few days on his way to Las Vegas. But wait says I, Over The Edge is in Victoria for its first local event the very same week, is that why you are coming here? No, just passing through. I was all over it and Paul, "I'm not a big heights guy", agreed to organize the family to come from Halifax to do the rappel, yes, 6 of us. By organize, I mean turned it over to Sue and cut short his Las Vegas golf trip (silly me, I thought it was work) by a couple of days. And the rest is family history and a fun visit.

The client is Make A Wish BC/Yukon and the building was the CIBC building on the corner of View and Douglas, apparently 15 stories and officially 160 feet from roof to ground. The minimum cost for participants of OTE events is $1500  and the net proceeds go to the sponsoring charity. As a team of 6 that meant we had to raise $9000.00, not exactly chump change. Thanks to brilliant support from our friends and family we eventually raised $10,200.00 and we all got over the edge and to the ground in one piece. I was surprisingly calm but it's not easy to step off the ledge. Even though I was pretty sure the guys on the roof didn't want to kill off the boss's family, you are on your own when you take that step and then "walk" down the building. Jim zoomed down as though he'd been doing it for 20 years while the rest of us were somewhere between a slow crawl and a cautious creep. Some of "our people" came to watch and, on the way down, it was a great comfort to hear them yelling support.

For the right motivation I would do it again and not be so tense, maybe even look around a little bit, but I won't actively go looking for another rappel! Been there, done that...had fun.

Rachel

Paul, Jim, Jillian, Sue, me Rachel

Six and a half years later...

We bought this house impulsively and then spent a fair amount of money on modernizing it before we moved in. A good friend, JMcI, asked what it was we liked about it in the first place since we were changing virtually everything. Never mind. 

In the midst of completely changing the kitchen and making sure all the lower cabinets were drawer units because we are getting ancient, we were faced with the 24 inch pantry cabinet and the pullouts would be $225.00 each. Times 6 is a whack of money for pull-outs so we said, “we’ll make them ourselves after we move in”. Hah! 

About every 6 months I floated the “what about those units for the pantry” question because the back of the shelves was like a black hole in space; especially the bottom one which required getting down on the floor to investigate the nether regions. I’m pretty fit and agile but, really, I was not interested in exploring that shelf.

Sometime in early December I upped the pressure and asked “the question” at least once a week, sometimes several times a day. 

That got the project on “the list”, a mysterious entity that only Jim knows about. This week, Thursday to be exact, after golf Jim drifted down to Lumber World (supplier of the original cabinets) to see what the possibilities were. Lo and behold they had a sale on and the now $250.00 each drawer units were discounted to $89! Holy schmoley! My plan had been to use the existing shelves to create the drawer boxes and buy the hardware at the Restore. Never mind again. 

This plan included purpose built boxes with spiffy DTC full-extension soft-close hardware and they had 9 available.

Let’s be clear, the units were on a major discount but we still forked out more than $500.00 which might be chump change to you but isn’t to us. We needed 5 and jumped right in, picked them up yesterday, and Jim unpacked a couple and started the hmmmm, how does this work dance. An hour later he’s realized that 2 of the boxes and hardware are the wrong size and the salesperson was gone for the weekend. Not to disparage Lumber World too deeply but there are a few people there who are worth talking to and a few others who will not give the lowly DIYer the time of day and on top of that are as dense as the bag of hammers they might try to sell you.

Before she left, our salesperson, one of the useful ones, sent a link to an installation video because no instructions came with the items we bought. Never mind again; the link was to a different brand of hardware. Sigh.

Google, YouTube, and Jim’s brain to the rescue and we have a plan because 3 of the boxes and hardware are actually the right size! Sort of. The third one needed some adjustment, being a half inch wider than it should have been and with a set of locking holes drilled in the wrong place. Never mind again, we can deal with that and did. 

Understand we’re working in a 24” wide space, 23” deep and had to install level blocking pieces and the drawer rails. Willing and fabulous as Jim is he’s not small and dainty and flexibility is a fleeting memory so this project was definitely a team effort with me folded up inside the cabinet at one point holding the necessary piece in place while it was drilled and installed.

Besides having much more accessible space, the major success was that we didn’t get scrappy with each other about the challenges. Jim was particularly patient despite being wakened every hour on the hour last night by the grandfather clock which I decided to activate yesterday. On our way to bed I asked if he wanted me to stop it, he replied probably a good idea, but at 7:00 this morning I had that sinking lack of memory of following through. We already know I can sleep through a bomb going off, a very funny story, and I grew up with that clock chiming away, so hadn’t heard a thing. Never mind! He’s having a nap right now.

At The Turn of the Year

The country is in a deep freeze and even we are hovering just above 0 degrees, nothing like the dangerous cold anywhere east of Vancouver. Not to mention north.
New Year's Day in most of Canada is the beginning of settling in for a couple of months of winter.
Not meaning to be irritating but no doubt this statement will be: for me New Year's Day is the beginning of the end of winter.
We've only gained about 5 minutes of daylight since December 22 and we still have lots of time to have a snow event, but the worst is over. Maybe. The worst being the wet dark days of November. December is mitigated by Christmas lights and festivities and January is just a big improvement over both. Sister Bets says February, but not me. I'm ready!

We usually bring in the New Year quietly and always stay up till midnight to ring it in properly with champagne and the fireworks from Seattle.

table for two

Today we had sundowners outside with the propane fire-pit to take the chill off.

We are a bit whacky on this side of the world but we'll be a long time dead so let's enjoy the now we've got. It was a super moon, not to be ignored!

Santa Claus brought us a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle that we finished today, 6 days from start to finish. Not much productive took place during the week! We weren't completely anti-social but the puzzle certainly kept us off the streets and out of the malls. Well okay, there was one short foray to Mayfair Mall just because it didn't seem right to ignore the sales completely. Right?

this was a challenge!

So 2018 is with us. Let's plan to treat it well, with fun, good people, and a dash of good works.