Drumheller Day 6

The kids look like zombies, ha ha ha.

But I'm not laughing. We had a lazy start to the day, and headed off to the coal mine again. K2 didn't make it. Meltdown city squared! Hubby took him to the truck to cram some food in him while K1 and I continued on.

We then went to the Royal Tyrell Museum. Do not take your kids when they're tired, hungry, and whiny. I enjoyed the museum. I did not enjoy the tantrums.

Afterwards the grandparents took us for dinner to Bernie and the Boys restaurant, a haven for burgers and hot dogs etc.  It was a busy place for sure.
If you love greasy, salty, heart-attack-waiting-to-happen burgers, you'll love it. I feel like I've gained 10 lbs in water retention myself. I'm also hoping that the kitchen is cleaner than the bathroom. . .

As tired as the kids were, they still played hard at the playground until bedtime, and they still crashed hard regardless of the three marshmallows that they each had.

K2: Can I have some mushrooms?
Me: We don't have any mushrooms.
K2: Oh. Um, those white things that we had the other this morning?
Me: Marshmallows?
K2: Yeah!MARSHMALLOWS!

Drumheller Day 5

Had a wonderfully lazy morning. Played cribbage on the giant board by the playground while the kids played.

Went to do the interpretive trail by the Royal Tyrell. Ended up climbing across the valley, up some ridges and to the top of a mound. K1 learned all about the prickly cacti. Jeans recommended!

I learned that some leafy looking plants actually have a million little invisible-until-they-stick-in-your-fingers spines. I got all but one out and guess who doesn't have tweezers? Oh! Will check first aid kit shortly.

Continued on hiking up a narrow crevice. Beautiful views of the valley. And of the trail that we're not on, tee hee.

Eventually got back to the museum and drove to the coal mine trail.  Instead of taking the actual trail we followed the less-beaten path up on to the fields above. Tip: Learned that it's easier to come down when K2 holds the back of my belt vs holding his hand.

Walked back down and literally walked the kids in to the ground on the way to the coal mine (turns out we could have driven to it), which is another half hour hike. Tomorrow. As it was even K1 put himself to bed, which is a miracle unto itself.

Made pasta, and the sauce was the best I ever had. Fried ground turkey, onions, garlic, and some kind of Newman's Own pasta sauce. So good! Possibly helped that I was very very hungry. . .

Debated the feasibility of campground sex again.

Drumheller Day 4

Decided to hike the hoodoos today. Instead of getting up early to beat the heat, we slept in a bit. By the time we ate breakfast, which was pretty much a wine fest, and left, it was hot.

Hubby decides to stop at Mark's Work Wearhouse to get boots. A delay, but turns out to be good call. Go in to the Co-op mall to pee and get water. Drive 2 minutes and realize that I forgot my phone in the bathroom. Go back. It's exactly where I left it.

Finally get to the hoodoos and the people coming off the hill look like they're going to spontaneously combust. It's HOT.

K1, who's 6, and hubby climb all the way to the top. K2 (3yo) and I go up as far as my knowledge of being able to get back down will allow, which is still pretty far. Down is definitely scarier than up because  of the fear of sliding on loose rocks and not stopping.

Make it down safely and rest with well deserved ice cream bars.

Stop on the way back and cross an old suspension bridge across the Red Deer River.

Kids are now super tired and whiny, buy all attempts to get them to rest are futile and they're trying to kill each other.

Have a classic camping lunch of wieners and beans.
This may backfire on me. Literally. All night long.

Go to the pool, only to find out that a. the pool is closed to swimming for another 2 hours because of lessons, and b. K2 is not tall enough to go down the water slide by himself--and they won't let him down with a parent--and that was the whole reason for going.

So go to the water park and splash park. Come back for a snack. Have supper with Grandma and Grandpa. Kids want to go to the playground but we convince them to watch a movie instead. (What would we do on a real camping trip to the middle of nowhere?)

K2 falls asleep. Hoping K1 will easily because the movie is over and I'm tired.

This day has been an exercise in flexibility  (mine, mentally) and calmness when dealing with the champions of whine.

Drumheller Days 1-3 Continued

Day 2:

Leave Banff at a reasonable hour. Stop five times for bathroom breaks, including a complete bypassing of an actual rest area and instead pulling off on a freeway ramp.

The iPads are dead, so set the boys up for colouring. Listen to them scream at each other because they each have a fistful of pencils but K1 has the gold pencil crayon and therefore is BEING A MEANIE FOR NOT SHARING! Give back some partially charged iPads. Stop crying inside (me).

Get in to Drumheller for an early dinner. Set up camp. Grandpa takes the kids to the playground. Mom has a shower!

Go to bed. Fall asleep 2 hours later. For an hour.

Day 3:

Climb the BIGGEST dinosaur in the world! Go to the water park and the splash park. Climb the dinosaur again, but this time Daddy challenges you to do the stairs two at a time. You do it, and your quads do not thank you for it later. Ungrateful little bitches.

Roast potatoes and veggies and salmon in the coals. Best meal ever! (Except hubby wanted some sweet Tai chili sauce and didn't realize that I'd packed some. Oops.)

Kids learn the hard way that metal weiner roasting sticks get hot on the fire end. K1 has a nice cross-hatch pattern burned in to his finger, but that doesn't stop him from playing tag in the playground for an hour before bed.

Catch some marshmallows on fire. Shower while the kids fall asleep.
Debate the feasibility of campground sex.

Drumheller Days 1-3

Day One: driving from Home to Banff, specifically Johnston Canyon Campground, which according to Google Maps is a 7ish hour drive.

Google does not have kids, nor do they have to drive around town for an hour looking for those last minute camping items. They don't have to stop to pee every hour. New travel rule: if Mommy has to pee, everyone pees no matter what.

Saw some beautiful sights along Hwy 93--Ice Fields Parkway. Drove past the glass lookout that juts out over a valley, and it's so high that I was freaking out in the truck. I've jumped out of a perfectly good airplane, but that part of the highway was just freaky.

The rivers are the prettiest colour green.

Rolled in to the Campground about 8pm. Or so. 9 hours later, anyway. Just enough time to roast some hot dogs and to try to convince the kids that yes, Mommy really does mean it when she says that she gets cranky when she can't sleep. And to take K1 to go pee. Then an hour later to take K2 to go pee.

Note to self: get out the driveway on time so that we have time to run the kids in to the ground at some point along the way.

Sukhi Just Earned My Respect

I just finished watching this week's episode of The Amazing Race Canada.

You know how they always ask you who your favourite team is? Who you're rooting for?

I never really know until close to the end, but I do usually know who I'm not rooting for. Not who I'm hoping will be eliminated (because hoping someone gets eliminated would be mean), just who I'm not necessarily hoping will win.

I wasn't rooting for Sukhi and Jinder. At all. They've been the team that can't seem to figure out how to do anything on their own. They get excitable and panicky and spacey (they are the team that stood in front of a clue box several times and couldn't see the forest for the trees) and no other team will help them. They've been seen as the weakest link. Even I thought that they'd flake out before the end of the race.

Oh, how wrong we've all been!

Spoiler alerts ahead.

Take last week. A challenging roadblock (bicycle biathalon) had teammates cycling a kilometre before having 5 rounds to make 5 shots with a rifle. Don't get all five? Take another bike ride to get another 5 rounds.

All the other teams had to go around at least once more; some of them completed their exercise quota for the month, including the dude who is a hunter.

Sukhi and Jinder show up (after struggling with harnessing dogs in the previous task and after having to complete their speed bump for coming in last in the previous week's non-elimination round), and does her bike ride, and then proceeds to boost everyone's confidence by walking up to the shooting range, saying, "I've never held a gun before."

Boom. Ting! Boom. Ting! Boom. Ting! Boom. Ting! Boom. Ting!

That's right. Five shots. Done.

Fast forward to this week's episode, and we see Sukhi and Jinder rock a currency-flag matching task, and then choose a hockey task over a perogy-making task. Sukhi can't skate. Never has. Jinder doesn't look much better on skates, and no, they don't beat the girls (but other teams do!), but they do finish in time to catch up and move up the ladder.

I'm thinking that they are finally proving why they travel so well together, and maybe the other teams shouldn't dismiss them quite so readily.

I may even start to root for them.