West, east and inbetween

 Having posted blogs of the trip out west and some of the things we did while there  I also some some photos and videos that don't quite seem to belong anywhere but wanted to post anyway.

Having come from the UK I don't think I would attempt to travel in the UK as far as we did on a typical day in Canada. UK roads (motorways), despite having more traffic lanes are much more congested and there are frequently accidents,causing long tailbacks as well as roadworks. So, for my UK viewers, I have some video and photos of part of a typical day of driving. Between provinces the landscape varied quite a lot. In Ontario the highway was typically tree lined with not much to see either side (except when Lake superior was to one side!) 

but in the prairie provinces (Saskatchewan and Alberta in particular) the trees disappeared and we had wide open vistas to enjoy. The prairies were not as flat as I'd imagined them to be, I found driving them relatively good as the roads were pretty straight and flat. 

The highway we took through Ontario was quite hilly and windy in places, especially when puling a trailer and wanting to make good progress. The one thing all the provinces had in common was that gas stations can be few and far between, something to keep an eye on if your vehicle gas tank is on the small side and gas consumption is on the high side!

You may recall that on the drive over we'd seen a black bear, that was to be our most 'wild' wildlife we encountered although we did come across a deer (there were several deer here actually but only one on the dash cam, the others had already crossed the road) in one park as well as a busy beaver in a pond.

 

Something else the UK viewers may not appreciate is the length of goods trains and that most rural towns have railroad crossings in them, I guess because the towns grew up around grain elevator locations that need train tracks alongside to ship the grain to market. It was not uncommon to have to stop at railroad crossing to wait for train to pass. In this video the train took almost 3 minutes to pass by though I did clip the video to much shorter than that. 

We lost count of how many rail cars were part of that train but it was a lot!

It would be bad of me to not include a video of Sarah on the trampoline showing us her skills. 

Good job Sarah 👍