Road Trip 2010: Days 10Edmonton, AB

So. How did your day go?

Ours got off to a rousing start when, with my mind racing at 120 kmp, I woke up at 3 AM local and could not get back to sleep. I don't think was--at least I hope it wasn't--the early dawn light. (As we are further north the period of light is increasing daily. It's light until nearly 10:30 PM and light again at 4 AM. It will get worse(?) in the next few days as we head further north and it gets closer to the solstice.) Terry's snoring contributed to my wakefulness but so did concern about the tire issue on the trailer.

Anyway, we eventually got the trailer hooked up and on the road in search of repairs.

The good news is that, after two false starts wherein I was looking for "Dave" only to realize I wanted "Bruce" Henderson, we did, indeed, locate Bruce. (You would think that a little thing like the wrong first name wouldn't have created a problem since "Henderson" did work at the first place we stopped and used to work at the second--which was a short hop down the road--but you would be wrong. Neither place heard the "Henderson" after the erroneous "Dave". *sigh*)

Anyway, like I said, we did finally locate Bruce Henderson. Unfortunately, the bad news is that after he looked at the tires (a second tire on the opposite side and other axle was also showing signs of irregular wear) and consulted with another co-worker with experience in the area, he concluded the trailer might be suffering from misalignment and, even if they could diagnose the problem, their shop could not make the needed repairs.

The good news is that Camper Care (Bruce's workplace) was able to find a facility--Kal Tire--that could do the alignment AND provide two new tires to replace those that were worn.

We hustled on over to Kal Tire, dropped the trailer off with them (nearly 2 hours before our "appointment") and went on our way to Fort Edmonton for the day.

******

Fort Edmonton is a huge complex that is a living museum. Individual streets are arranged to represent the 1920s, 1905, 1885 and the Fort itself is set up as if it were 1800-1870s.

Terry and I got to Fort Edmonton at five minutes to 10 AM and found the entrance literally crawling with school kids. With a week or two to go, they are all making their class trips. They were all queued up with their teachers and chaperons to enter the park when the gates opened at 10 AM.

Luckily, there were special morning programs planned over at the fort proper which is on the other side of the park, so 90% of the crowd got on the early steam train to make the trip to 1850 while Terry and I decided to walk back in time starting with 1920.

We stopped at various homes, shops and offices along the way to examine the grounds and talk to the reenacters/interpreters who really knew their stuff!

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Except for the constant, annoying fall of the cottonwood fluff! Quieter than the little kids, it was just as abundant. With little breeze blowing, the fluff slowly drifted to the ground like large snowflakes. And, like snow, it formed drifts several inches deep along the edges of the street. It either blew or was caught up in the movement of hyperactive children to enter into every building. It got everywhere. At least, most of the 1920s buildings had screens on their windows and that kept some of it at bay.

When 3:15 PM arrived we had wandered our way through the park and had finished speaking with two Hudson Bay men operating the trading post in the Fort. It was time to return to 2010 and find out how Kal Tire had made out with our trailer. We took the steam train back to the future.

******

Retracing our steps from Fort Edmonton to Kal Tire was a snap and when we got there, we found that they had completed the needed work on the trailer and more. BOTH axles were out of true with respect to the frame of the trailer. Brian, said that it's not an uncommon thing. A deep hole, a jarring bump, a poorly navigated curb--could toss the axles out. He also said that many "holiday" trailers are out of true when they are sold. He's not sure why, but he is pretty confident that fully half of the trailers on the road were out of alignment when they were sold.

It cost us a pretty penny ($450 CA) but the trailer axles are now aligned AND we have two new radial tires on where the worn tires once road AND the other two tires have new stems--something I didn't mention but which I certainly needed as the old, original tires were starting to show cracks.

Not a bad day, eh?

Tomorrow we are off to Dawson Creek, if they have room for us. We don't have to be there until the 22nd (Tuesday), but we could use a day or two to tour Dawson Creek and/or lounge around. Not to mention the need to find a bank. Canadian money gets spent even faster the the US dollar.

If we don't lose our internet connection again tonight (like we did last night) I'll be posting some pictures from the Ukrainian Village and Fort Edmonton a little later.