Peace River to home

We left Peace River at 0930.

The fields of canola were stunningly beautiful with mile after mile of yellow.

First stop of the day was Winagami Lake Provincial Park. where I was able to point out to Caro various locations of some memories I had. Really though, it was was so long ago (almost 50 years) that things have changed quite a bit.

Next was a drive by of the farming area where Glen Buchta lived while we were in high school. The farmhouse is gone and it was impossible to tell exactly where it had been.

High Prairie was next on my list. We drove around town quite a bit as I showed Caro where many of the stories that Glen Buchta and I talk about (when we are all together) occurred.

It used to be a red colour (if I remember properly)

The school is still there as well

I think we probably spent somewhere around an hour driving around town talking about some of my memories.

In early afternoon went to Grouard. I wanted to show Caro the bridge where I caught a huge jack fish in about 1974. I don't recall ever being in the town itself so we drove through it. The 120 year old church had been burned by arsonists earlier in the year and as of the day I write this (July 10/2023) two middle aged men from High Prairie are due in court for this offense.

The drive back home seemed long. I was very surprised how prosperous Slave Lake has become. There is a very large shopping district on the highway across from town. 

We popped into Edmonton to Costco to pick up some items before stopping at a Five Guys burger place for our last vacation meal before heading home.

Grand Cache to Peace River

 After a hotel supplied breakfast we started our planned hiking. We got to the first trail head of an interesting hike to a couple of waterfalls but there was no real parking (that we felt comfortable with ) so we ended up going back to the Sulphur Gates area where we were last night. This time we headed out on a rocky trail down along side the Smokey River. We followed a tiny creek off the main trail where the following photo was taken.

After this we headed back into town to walk some of the local in-town trails. One trail had a magnificent view. Just behind where I took this photo is a home with a large second story balcony. I mentioned to the home owner that he had a million dollar view and he agreed.

We were on the highway north bound around noon. After a quick stop in Grande Prairie we continued up to Dunvegan Crossing. This was a great stop as we took a tour at the Provincial Park there. Very informative and well worth the time. We got there quite late so although we could have easily spent more time looking around we had to carry on.

We got to our planned stopping point of Peace River where, due to fire evacuee's being lodged in our preferred hotels up on the top the river bank we ended up downtown in a less desirable motel location.

Interestingly Caro decided to take a walk to a park area near by so I sat in a chair in the open doorway of our room so I could hear if Caro was having any "issues" with anyone. She ended up coming back relatively quickly due to some unsavory characters lurking around. As I watched her walking back towards our room a 30-35 year old lady came up and asked if she could come inside my room to have a "chat". Hmmm- I don't think so! Just then Caro showed up so the lady started talking to her about the scenery in the area.

Our motel had a restaurant in it so I had Chinese food (AWESOME) and Caro had liver and onions (just plain "yuck" in my opinion!).

Grande Cache road trip

 It was time for a road trip so we decided to do a trip, starting at Grande Cache (we had never been there before).

Caro drove to Edson where we gassed up. After a further stop in Hinton I took over driving.

We had a very nice 4 hour drive and were looking forward to doing some hiking in the area. About ten minutes before arriving in Grande Cache (somewhere around 3:30 PM) the clouds opened up and a major rain storm hit.

We went first to the wonderful (highly recommended) tourist information centre. It had some great information of the area as well as some wonderful exhibits of taxidermy. I particularly loved this painting.

Because of the rain we checked into our hotel; waited an hour for the rain to stop, then headed a short ways out of town to the top attraction in the area called Sulphur Gates. This viewpoint is located high above the joining of two rivers. It really is beautiful

Supper was at a recommended Chinese food restaurant. Yummy!

Due to rain showers all around town we decided to stay in our room for the evening.