Day 35

Aug 4 Day 35

We only made it three hours from the golf course. Didn't make it to Medicine Hat, or to Montana. Didn't make it to any nice boondock sites or scenic sleeping places. We made it only as far as Lethbridge, Alberta. This is the junction of the roads that either take us east to Medicine Hat, or south to Montana. We were just two tired to go any further. We actually ended up at a KOA campground. Lots of RV's, lots of kids, lots of noise. Fortunately for us, the folks who usually come to KOA's want to be close to the office. That's where the pool and the bathrooms and the laundry and kids games are. We wanted to be away from all that, and this place actually had a very nice remote spot in the woods by the river. It also had electric to recharge everything, since one of us knocked the extension cord out of the truck outlet earlier in the day, and the batteries were nearly drained from lack of recharge. It's unusual for a KOA spot to be this nice, and it came at the perfect time. Earlier in the afternoon, for the first time on this entire trip, we pulled over on the side of the road in the middle of a small town to take a nap. I couldn't sleep, so I went into the camper and tried once more to fix the inverter outlets on the battery generator Carol and Bruce gave us. I figured the outlets were shorting out due to all the dirt that got in there earlier from the gravel roads. I cut thin strips of cardboard, jammed them up and down into the outlets and then blew into them with everything I had in hopes of removing any debris in them. I'm sure it was a pitiful sight, but it worked! We now have the generator back. (As you might imagine, Peach immediately made plans to package up the one we bought at Walmart in Whitehorse, and return it to the Walmart in Lethbridge. She kept the box and the receipt, and was successful. She's sneaky good at that stuff.) 

As we were still at our nap spot, Peach noticed a truck with camper in the parking lot across from us with a family looking all around their rig for something they had obviously lost. The man headed back to the store he had come from, and the woman and kids were looking around and under everything. We went over to help. Turns out the man lost the truck key! I asked if he put them under the solar panels, as a joke to Peach, which she didn't laugh at. We suggested he look in everything he had gotten at the store. Sure enough, the woman found the key in the bag that had held the ice he had just bought. It was like Deja vous all over again, but this time it was with a different dope than myself! In reality, it was a brilliant move, for both he and I. In pretending to lose a key, then pretending to look for it, you meet nice new people who come to help. I just wish our wives appreciated it more.   

Our campsite at the KOA in Lethbridge 

Emptying the tanks at the KOA dump station