July 3rd

This morning of our third Day of the Calgary Stampede.  We had a late start with morning coffee being served to the guest.

It was the start of a great day, sun was out and it looked like it was going to be another 5 star day.  Its great when we don't have to hurry and get on a bus for sight seeing.

To day Inez & Chuck celebrated 55 years of wonderful marriage.  They are a great couple and a lot of fun on this trip.  About 11:30 we all loaded the bus and headed of to Heritage Park.

This park is a history buff's great stop.  You step back in time at Canada's largest living history museum.  With more than 200 exhibits and attractions spread over 127 acres of lush parkland, Heritage Park Historical Village has a lot to offer both the history buff and pleasure seekers.  This is not a museum where history stays behind the glass.  The interactive exhibits, costumed interpreters, historic buildings and hundreds of working antiques are all just waiting for you to touch, smell, taste, hear, and see how the West was once.

These are just a few pictures of the hunderds we took today.

One of the places I liked the best was what they called gasoline ally.

They had over 50 plus different gas pumps.  We need a hole day here to be able to see everything.  If we ever do this again I would start this at about 9:30 in the morning.  Tomorrow we start the Calgary Stampede with the Parade first thing in the morning.

July 2nd

We started our second day of the Calgary Stampede Rally today and Cyndy and I are very happy at how things are going. We served them a great Dinner last night and everyone liked it.  We had Hamburgers, homemade Potato Salad, Macaroni Salad, Baked Beans, and a cup cakes with the Canada flag on them for Canada Day's.

We had plenty to eat and everyone enjoyed it.

  We left this morning for Lake Louise area for a day of Site seeing.

Everyone had room to stretch out and enjoy the ride.  With only 18 people on the bus for 56 makes it real nice.

As we got closer to Banff we started running into the Canada Rocky's and they are beautiful.  Even the bugs are getting into the picture. The weather was great and I think I even got a little bit of a sun tan starting.

After and hour plus on the bus it felt good to get out and stretch our legs and use the restrooms and get some great pastry from the Lake Louise Village.

Lake Louise was beautiful with weather like this.  There were a lot of people around getting pictures.

The Chateau at Lake Louise was build in the early 1900 for the rich that road the Canada Pacific Railroad to this great Tourist area.

Our next stop was across the valley from Lake Louise at the Gondola and Wild Life Interpenetration Center. The first thing we need to take care of is getting something to eat before the Gondola & Chair life ride.

Yep I got Cyndy in one of these on the way up.  She even took some pictures so I know her eyes were open.

This is the view from up at top looking back towards Lake Louise.

Now for the ride down.

Look it she is even smiling as we are riding down on a chair this time.

This is about all the wildlife we got to see today.  I think a lot of it had to do with the hot weather.

This was on many of posters all over the road showing the Canada Pacific Railroad heading into the rocky's for Lake Louise area.

We got this cool picture of the group at the Bow Falls.  you could feel the mist from the falls and it felt good.

Banff was also built along the rail line running through the Rocky's.  The people need some were to stay when they came to this great park in Canada. The bus drive told us the the rooms in this hotel start at $500.00 a day and go up to over $1500.00 a day.  I like my coach just fine for visiting these areas.

I just liked the look of this old dead fir tree.  We had a great day and look forward to more just like today with this fine group we are with.  Everyone seems top be doing great.

June 30th

We are just about ready to start another great Adventure with some outstanding guest.  A few have shown up already, the rest should be here today or tomorrow morning when we kick everything off.  To back up just a little and show you how our last few days have been going.
We left Dicks RV Park with know problems on the morning of the 28th.  The weather was ok, had a little bit of head wind but not to bad.

Cyndy does a real good job of taking pictures on the move.

As you can see we found some road construction.  It was about 10 miles of this, but when it is done it will really be nice.  On both side of where the work is being done it is great highway.

 Yep, good highway and nice rolling hills.  The traffic is light and it made for an enjoyable drive.

Look out border here we come, no problems just answered there question and we were on our way.  We must be lucky because we have never had a problem going to Canada or back the other way.

 Welcome us to Alberta, isn't that nice they put a sign up just for us.  At least I can think it is for us!!!!

What a long day but we finally made it to Calgary, now all we have to do is find the campground.  It has to be around here some where.

Turbo is just tired and doesn't want to be bothered!!!

I don't know how we did it but we finally found the campground and are set up for the next week or so.  We are right next door to the Olympic stadium, looking forward to visiting that and the Stampede.  Well tomorrow everything kicks off so watch for more exiting news from the Olsen's.
 

June 26th

We have been on the road towards Calgary now for 3 days and finally made it to Montana, we are at the 50,000 Silver Dollar Bar.  Three days ago we left for my cousins place in Dixie, Washington.  It was great visiting with Nancy & Gary.  We also stopping by their place pick up a couple of box's that were dropped off by another Trip that Gary had  done a presentation for, Lewis & Clark Trip.  From what I heard from the Wagon Master, of that trip he is the best of all they had on this trip.

 It had been a long time since Nancy and I were able to just sit down and catch up on the past few years.  I really enjoyed it and look for ward to visiting with them again in the very near future.  I am going to find a way to at least get over this way at least once a year.

Cyndy and Nancy had a great time visiting also, they both had fun picking on us guys.

I had never really talked with Gary much in the pass, but look forward to more talks and just getting to know them both again.  What is nice about the life style we live, we can always try to make time to see people like this couple.  Hope to see them again very soon.
Well now we are back on the road yesterday heading towards Spokane to see a old high school friend of mine. It has been over 43 years that we have not seen each other, so I was looking forward to it.  But as luck would have it, about 5 miles from Colfax, the truck decided that it was not going to run right and it took us about half hour to go less than 5 miles.  We found a small RV park in Colfax, unhooked the trailer then babied the truck into Pullman, where we found the nearest Ford Dealer.  After about 3 hours they were able to find the major problem, told us they had to order a new wire harness for the injectors on the left side.  The same thing happen a couple of years ago to the right side.  Now fast forward to this morning at 9:00AM I got the call the truck would be ready to pick up in about half and hour.  So I head back to the dealership to get the truck, (have you heard of a dealership let you ues one of their cars, it was great and I would recommend them to anyone that need repairs, great job guys).
So by 11:00 AM we were on the road and enjoying life on the back roads.

The rolling hills with wheat were beautiful.

 We usually drive freeways when trying to make up time, but today we took it easy and drove back roads.  This old barn just looked to cool, bet it has a lot of history.  Just wish we could hear some of the stories.

These big wind turbans are popping up all over the place.

And here we stopped to take a short break.  It was not a bad day just over 180 miles of some great sights, before getting on I-90 and stopping for the night at the 50,000 Silver Dollar Bar.  Tomorrow we head to Dicks RV Park in Great Falls, MT for the night then on to Calgary.  It looks like we are going to make it there on time.  Maybe more pictures tomorrow.

June 20th

Well I finished driving school bus again.  Not planning on going back, but you never know what may happen.  I really enjoy drive school bus's, the big one are nice, but the short ones have personalty.  By that I mean the kids that you pick up everyday and help them in and out of the bus and on to school.  It is a great feeling when they get to know you and smile ever morning you stop and pick them up or you help them with a smile back.  It is a great feeling.
Anyway we are ready to put on a new hat Adventure Caravan  and get back into traveling.  As I have mention before we are going to the Calgary Stampede as Asst. Rally Masters. Well some times that road has bumps in it and things change.  We are now the Rally Masters and really looking forward to doing this Rally.  We have a very small group of 9 couples.  It will be a lot of fun.  As far as when we leave the Tacoma area, it depends on when the "Box" shows up here from Texas.  At first it was going to be here by "today", but weather in Texas caused it to become a couple of days late.  And now it will be here by Monday, if everything goes right.  So Tuesday morning we are planning on leaving and heading to my cousins place in Dixie, WA to pick up a couple of more box's that were dropped of by the past Rally Masters.  Anyway that good old bowl of jello is really getting a work out this last week.  So watch the blog we are hoping to have some great pictures and information about the Calgary Stampede.
We also got some great information for this fall we will be tailgunning the Grand Circle Tour starting the 1st of September.  So if you would like to travel with us through some great Western National Parks and see all of the great details of the parks.  Come join us, there are a few spots left on this super tour.  Call the office of Adventure Caravan or us and we can make it happen.
Here we go traveling again and looking forward to it!!!!!!

June 6th

Happy Days, mom's happy!!!!!!!!!!

Cyndy is a happy camper again, know more laundry mats.  She really likes this one and we are very happy with it. If mom's happy everyone is.  It says that it is even more energy saving then the other one.  All I know is we had the other one for 9 years.  Cyndy said that she figured it just cost us over 120 dollars a year for the other one.  That beats the hell out of using a laundry mat at about 20 to 40 dollars a month to wash cloths.  At least this one we know what was washed in the last load.
We are enjoying the great sun here in the northwest today and looking for to more days like this.   I will hopefully be putting together a blog about what we are doing in the up coming weeks, so that people will know where we are at.

June 5th

We have been doing pretty good lately.  The weather has been great.  Now to get down to Cyndy's problem.  Wait a minute, I think I should reword this that last statement to our problem.  When we were back in South Dakota, the first night we were their our wash machine decided to stop running with some very bad noise.  It rocked the trailer so bad I though it was an earth quake.  So after everything stopped moving we found the problem, the main bearing that keeps the drum spinning correctly, decided to go south.  So we have been without a wash machine for just about a month.  We found out why we bought the wash machine to began with, it cost us the first time to the laundry mat $24.50.  Luckily for us, the second time Cyndy's girl friend let use us her machine.
Now comes the problem, when we were back in South Dakota I called our favorite RV Shop here in Tacoma, Summit RV.  I asked him if he could get us a new Splendide 2100xc.  He said know problem will have it for you when you get back here.  Which was the 27th of May.  Well when we got back he called and said I got good news and bad news, bad news is they are back ordered, the good news is they are to be released with in a week.  Well that week as finally come and gone, and we get the new machine this weekend.  He called to day and said that it was in and we can come and pick it up.  He went out of his way to help us find one.  I had called camping world and they said maybe next week.   If you ever need any parts or repairs done please remember Summit RV here in the Tacoma, Washington area.  They will really give you a good felling and not take you to the cleaners.
Anyway Cyndy is happy again,  and when mom's happy everyone is happy.