Elsie | Adventures
Road trips are never boring with Elsie! Things are also never boring with the Hannah one... but that's another story. Here she is getting ready to hit the road. Yes, she's swinging from the "Holy Crap" handle. (Does anyone else call them that?)
We hit the road the road late (around 7:30pm) and had smooth sailing until just after Macoun (so roughly 20 minutes). I took this picture on my phone just before we had to stop and wait to be allowed to travel the one lane through all of the water on the highway (for those of you not from around here, we're living in the aftermath of a 100 year flood.)
My eco conscious husband dutifully turned the truck off as we waited for the go ahead from the highway workers to signal us to pass. They did, but when he went to turn the truck back on it would not start. Ugh. We've never had a mechanical issue with the truck and had no idea what was going on. After several boosts and lots of help from the highway workers we still couldn't get it going. It was looking like our trip was not going to happen, especially if we had to do a major repair. We called all the towing services in Estevan and randomly enough no one would come and help us. They didn't really even give reasons, they just kept telling us to call someone else. Frustrating. So we called everyone we knew with trucks and no one had their phones on them! Finally Kirk Bolan agreed to come and save us - we were so thankful!
I called my family to let them know we wouldn't be there that night and they immediately started throwing out suggestions. My MacGyver mom suggested we bang on the starter as the brushes may have gotten dirty. The tall one banged on the starter... the truck started. Woo hoo! Thanks Mom.
We headed back on our way and resolved not to turn the truck off for the entire trip... just in case.
The rest of the trip went smoothly except for dealing withthe worst traveler ever the girl one. She doesn't sleep. Considering after the delay we virtually left at 9 pm, here she is at midnight at the gas station sneaking up on her sleeping brother to give him kisses. Punk.
And here we are at 4 am and Hanny is singing "La la. La la. La la. La la. Allllll donnnnnne!" Oi. She slept an hour the entire trip.
We stopped for a few days at my parents before we took off to the lake and in that time discovered that when the tall one had plugged in the camper the night before we left and there was a huge zap it apparently fried half the electrical in the camper including the fridge. Wonderful. We were unwilling to camp for 5 days without a fridge so we left the littles with the grandparents and took a little trip to Saskatoon to buy a compact fridge. I must say... it was a lovely date with the tall one.
We ended up skipping our first night of campingin order to watch the Bachelorette finale because of the fridge fiasco but arrived at our beautiful campsite at Morin Lake on Tuesday. Here we are backing it in.
While the tall one leveled the camper the rest of the fam and I parked on the picnic table and indulged in the best lake food ever. Poutine from "The Lark" in Shell Lake. Delish!
The main reason we go to Morin lake is because of the large treed in campsites. Luckily they were able to pump it out in time for our arrival as a major storm the week before had most of the campground flooded. Above the boy one you'll see the remainder of the tree that cracked and fell on the previous occupants camper. Ouch.
As you can see we don't rough it at the lake. That I reserve for a kidless holiday where we'd be packing a tent and all our belongings on our back and secluding ourselves on an island for a few days. We haven't done that since our high school Youth Canoe trips.
Here however we have our Tim Horton's coffee maker (because we refuse to wait longer than 3 min for a cup of coffee), a microwave, toaster oven, mini BBQ, 2 propane stoves, various heaters, fans, sound machines, Kindle, DVD players and of course the fridge.
I'll share more in another post on what we actually did during the week but it was great and here we are all packed up and ready to move on. As we were loading up the previous owners of Elsie actually ended up strolling by! They of course didn't recognize her but my parents had told me who they bought it from that week and so we were surprised to see Dirk and Jo Vanquuk (I have no idea how to spell it anymore!). We learned from them that they bought it from Jo's parents and they had bought it from someone name Pete Friesen who had gotten it new. At least we know Elsie has good Mennonite roots :)
On our way home to Estevan we planned to stop in Saskatoon for the Festival of Heroes Air Show. We ran into some other past Hepburn turned Estevan residents! We had to hang out with them while Dean took our truck to get a tire patched that had picked up a screw. Thanks for letting us hang out in your truck bed!
We had dropped the trailer at my grandparents house and so headed back to pick up there.
It was dark, hence the blurry pics.
We made good time on the way home until we past got to Weyburn and found out the highway was closed from Weyburn to Estevan so we had to go all the way to Stoughton and then home. I can't really complain. I slept.
See,lots of things that went wrong adventures! It's all good though, we're blessed :)
We hit the road the road late (around 7:30pm) and had smooth sailing until just after Macoun (so roughly 20 minutes). I took this picture on my phone just before we had to stop and wait to be allowed to travel the one lane through all of the water on the highway (for those of you not from around here, we're living in the aftermath of a 100 year flood.)
My eco conscious husband dutifully turned the truck off as we waited for the go ahead from the highway workers to signal us to pass. They did, but when he went to turn the truck back on it would not start. Ugh. We've never had a mechanical issue with the truck and had no idea what was going on. After several boosts and lots of help from the highway workers we still couldn't get it going. It was looking like our trip was not going to happen, especially if we had to do a major repair. We called all the towing services in Estevan and randomly enough no one would come and help us. They didn't really even give reasons, they just kept telling us to call someone else. Frustrating. So we called everyone we knew with trucks and no one had their phones on them! Finally Kirk Bolan agreed to come and save us - we were so thankful!
I called my family to let them know we wouldn't be there that night and they immediately started throwing out suggestions. My MacGyver mom suggested we bang on the starter as the brushes may have gotten dirty. The tall one banged on the starter... the truck started. Woo hoo! Thanks Mom.
We headed back on our way and resolved not to turn the truck off for the entire trip... just in case.
The rest of the trip went smoothly except for dealing with
And here we are at 4 am and Hanny is singing "La la. La la. La la. La la. Allllll donnnnnne!" Oi. She slept an hour the entire trip.
We stopped for a few days at my parents before we took off to the lake and in that time discovered that when the tall one had plugged in the camper the night before we left and there was a huge zap it apparently fried half the electrical in the camper including the fridge. Wonderful. We were unwilling to camp for 5 days without a fridge so we left the littles with the grandparents and took a little trip to Saskatoon to buy a compact fridge. I must say... it was a lovely date with the tall one.
We ended up skipping our first night of camping
While the tall one leveled the camper the rest of the fam and I parked on the picnic table and indulged in the best lake food ever. Poutine from "The Lark" in Shell Lake. Delish!
The main reason we go to Morin lake is because of the large treed in campsites. Luckily they were able to pump it out in time for our arrival as a major storm the week before had most of the campground flooded. Above the boy one you'll see the remainder of the tree that cracked and fell on the previous occupants camper. Ouch.
As you can see we don't rough it at the lake. That I reserve for a kidless holiday where we'd be packing a tent and all our belongings on our back and secluding ourselves on an island for a few days. We haven't done that since our high school Youth Canoe trips.
Here however we have our Tim Horton's coffee maker (because we refuse to wait longer than 3 min for a cup of coffee), a microwave, toaster oven, mini BBQ, 2 propane stoves, various heaters, fans, sound machines, Kindle, DVD players and of course the fridge.
I'll share more in another post on what we actually did during the week but it was great and here we are all packed up and ready to move on. As we were loading up the previous owners of Elsie actually ended up strolling by! They of course didn't recognize her but my parents had told me who they bought it from that week and so we were surprised to see Dirk and Jo Vanquuk (I have no idea how to spell it anymore!). We learned from them that they bought it from Jo's parents and they had bought it from someone name Pete Friesen who had gotten it new. At least we know Elsie has good Mennonite roots :)
On our way home to Estevan we planned to stop in Saskatoon for the Festival of Heroes Air Show. We ran into some other past Hepburn turned Estevan residents! We had to hang out with them while Dean took our truck to get a tire patched that had picked up a screw. Thanks for letting us hang out in your truck bed!
We had dropped the trailer at my grandparents house and so headed back to pick up there.
It was dark, hence the blurry pics.
We made good time on the way home until we past got to Weyburn and found out the highway was closed from Weyburn to Estevan so we had to go all the way to Stoughton and then home. I can't really complain. I slept.
See,
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