Thursday, August 14, 2014

Hello Mountains - Day 13


Day 13

Last night I told myself, "I’m exhausted and my body is telling me to take a rest. Tomorrow (today) I am not riding." We were told to take a day off a week by just about everyone - I think they/you were right! I feel I’ve lost lots of weight, but not sure how much because we don’t have a scale. 


WOW! We slept almost 10 hours last night. I guess we all were pooped. We walked up town to a restaurant (which we couldn’t find right away) and walked further than planned so I did get a 2.5 mile walk in this morning. Anyhow, had an ordered breakfast and feel much better. Mike has taken off for a 25-30 mile bike ride and we’ll pick him up down the highway in a couple hours. 

Today, as promised, I did not ride. And that breakfast I had really did me good. As I stated above, Mike did ride and we picked him up down the highway and headed west. We are now west of Edmonton and is the terrain changing. We no longer are on the prairie. We are traveling through hills and valleys with LOTS of trees; in fact there are trees everywhere...no more farmland. We even saw our first wildlife as we passed by a herd of buffalo off on the side of the road. 

As always we face our most frustrating experience of the trip: a place to stay for the night. Every campground is full. We finally pulled in to a Freson (large grocery store) that offers free RV parking. Unfortunately they don’t have power hookups, etc., but we are trying out our generator. Thank you Jeff!!

***HOLD THE PHONE!! We had our first bear encounter. We even got a picture!




THANK YOU: We’d like to offer a big thank your to Terrie at TL Enterprises in Milltown. She has been a great help in t-shirt development and then making it possible for us to not only sell them at a great price ($10) but make a profit for the Grace Fund at the same time. But, on top of that she has been an inspiration in our Grace Fund journey. We have hooked up with her regarding our journey and she has been helpful and partnering in spreading the word. Thank you Terrie!

NOTE: Love thy Neighbor. Our neighbor in the campground last night was from a town in Ontario east of Detroit about 50 miles. His name is Bert Zantingh (yeah; that’s a tough one). He and his wife (Corine I think) are traveling all of over the US (Maine to Florida; Florida to California; California to Seattle and then across Canada. In talking to him; I learned he worked for Belfor Property Restoration for over 20 years. He was forced out. No retirement, pension, or anything. He called it forced retirement. He, however, had a home on Vancouver Island and was able to sell it at the height of the real estate boom in 2010 and made enough to buy a new home (debt free) and buy the camper they are pulling around (debt free) and still put some money in the bank. It is interesting isn’t it that you never know where your retirement is coming from. He is a strong Christian in the Alliance church (I’m not familiar with it) but appears almost pentecostal?? He is in prayer groups and leads a soup kitchen for drug addicts and homeless. I asked about frustrations; he said; “always” but it’s the rare one that lifts your spirit and makes it easy (in fact rewarding) to continue with a smile. Our conversation lifted our spirits. This was a blessed acquaintance. Thank you Lord.


~Chuck

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