My Journey Home via Calgary

Well I'm technically on my way home from Edmonton but I'm actually going to take it slow and see a few things along the way. Today I'm camped out at the very popular Wabamon Lake Provincial Park where I'm going to try and do some paddle boarding. Parking lot's pretty empty right now but I suspect that'll change very quickly. Well a nice beach here. Looks like a little area cordoned off for swimming although it looks very shallow. And there's already a paddle boarder out there. Water looks nice and calm. I think I should just get the board. Oh this is perfect. Nice little floating dock. Yeah this is like the best launch area I've seen yet. All right I'm excited. I'm gonna go get the paddle board. Now it doesn't seem like a very big lake and I don't think I'll be out there for that long but I'm still gonna pack a snack. I've had a couple tricky launch spots lately but I tell you this is the best by far. Nice floating dock right out to like properly deep water. You can see some little fish in the water there. Hop on the board away you go. Why is it not always this easy? Even in the middle of the lake the water is like super super shallow. There was actually a sign warning boaters about that. I could definitely see if you have a larger boat you'd have some issues. Well I found a nice calm bay. Calm from the wind at least. But you can probably hear there's a lot of noise. There's some crows that don't like me being here. There's construction over there and there's some kind of like summer camp in behind there that's like lots of shouting and music. But I think this is the best place I can find to have a little breakfast. There's a little loon. I think it's a loon. Hi there. I kind of wedged my fins into the sand a bit so I think that'll act as kind of like an anchor. We'll see how far I float. Well that little fins in the sand anchor worked perfectly. The wind spun me around kind of 360 but I stayed in the same place. Finally had a snack while paddle boarding. Can't believe I remembered. It's always so nice in these little bays. You don't really want to get out to like where it's windy again. Lots more boats coming into the lake. The nice thing about the paddle board is you can just rest and take a little snooze for a while. Well that was a nice little snooze. I think it's time to head in now. I might head out again though if the weather stays nice. Those peanuts out on the lake were really good but I think I could use something more substantial like a bran cake. Perfect bran cake. Well it's afternoon. The wind has picked up quite a bit so I think I'm gonna put the paddle board away. There's actually supposed to be thunderstorms later on too so yeah might go for a hike instead. Well it's getting pretty cloudy and I can see the storms starting to form on radar so I'm actually thinking of heading down towards Red Deer which is on the way to Calgary and hoping that'll be my place for the night. And the weather report there shows no rain until at least the middle of the night so I feel like it's a pretty good bet. Well somehow I managed to navigate myself to the wrong place. I was expecting a bridge that you could drive over and then down and kind of around and I ended up in a farmer's field. That's definitely not right. So I've got to check what I actually clicked on. Yeah so I checked Google Maps and somehow I clicked on something 12 minutes away from where I actually wanted to go. I don't know how that happened but anyways all resolved. I think I have the new course laid in now. F***ers crossed. And that's why you make sure you have lots of gas and lots of time because there might be a screw-up. Anyways I'm at the place where I expected to be but I'm not sure if it'll actually be suitable so I've got to do a little walk around and see. I do have a backup place in mind if this one doesn't work. Well it does seem a little bit noisy with the highway. But it's also very picturesque so I don't know. I'm just not entirely sure. It's a little bit of a bumpy drive to get down here too. I'm going to kind of double check that make sure there's nothing that might cause a problem. I mean there's some bumps. Looks pretty okay though. Some ruts but they're not too deep. I think it's worth a try. Yeah I think this will do. Inside the van you can't really hear the highway noise that much. It's uh got a pretty river and I'm like almost but not quite level. Pretty decent for a night I would say. I just noticed though it has absolutely zero cell signal so I will have to fire up the Starlink. Salad with tuna. Quick, easy, healthy. So I noticed today as I was driving towards Calgary that things were just kind of gradually getting flatter and drier. It's amazing just driving like two hours south the difference. Morning. So you know I can't really overstate how happy I am with this van build. Like this morning it was kind of cool and damp so I just used my phone to turn on the heater with bluetooth. I didn't even have to get out from under the covers. Then I got up turned on the water heater. It was already still pretty warm so it didn't take very long for it to get to temperature. Had a shower. Meanwhile I left the Starlink running all night last night. That only used about five percent battery but I wanted to have it on you know just in case. Kind of somewhere remote right now so you never know if I might need to contact someone. So all in all Starlink, hot water heater, regular heater, everything. That used about 10 percent battery which seems like a lot but I'm going to be traveling about an hour and a half today so that should like almost top it up and plus solar. And now after making coffee and a banana brand cake that took about another one percent of the power and I should mention also that our fridge runs 24-7. That uses a bit too but I feel like only about one to two percent overnight in a cool climate at least. So yeah very very happy with how our battery and power system is working. I think in the summer we're always going to have more power than we can use but it remains to be seen how it'll work in the winter when the sun's a lot lower and we don't have nearly as much sun. All right I'm all packed up and ready to go and I'm gonna go see someone I have not seen in person for quite some time. Well look who we have here. Hey guys. Hey. Come check out the new van. Oh my god this is awesome man. Many scratching posts. Yeah. Love it. The first things you see and we're on a bit of a tilt this way. But yeah any kind of tilt makes it a little weird walking around. So yeah this is the place. All right you guys may remember Matt and Kaylee from our very first trip across Canada. We actually stopped at their place. It was one of our first stops and we stayed in their driveway which was a bit challenging because it has a bit of a hill. You may also remember them from the robo games when we were down in California. That was pretty exciting too. Here? The pink line? Yeah the pink line underneath the snowy owl. Snowy owl. Nice. I think we need to go up the road and then we'll catch it. Perfect. Always good to get some exercise and the weather is not too bad. Kind of off and on sprinkling. So yeah good temperature for hiking for sure. Well that was a nice little hike. Had a little bit of rain but it wasn't too bad and now it's looking pretty good. So I think we'll head into the little town nearby now. So we're now in the little town of Bragg Creek. It's very cute. I think Mel would like it. I think we might have to come back with Mel. Well it was so nice to see Matt and Kaylee but I've got to get on the road again because I'm aiming to get to Revelstoke tonight before it gets too too late because I'm not 100% sure where I'm going to stay there. I've got two places in mind. parked actually right near the entrance just because that gives me the most open sky for Starlink. I have a little bit of 5G signal but I don't think it's going to be enough to really do video conferencing so I'll probably need Starlink. I just happened to park a place that is like almost perfectly level. That almost never happens so I think it's a sign. I drove a little further back but it started getting very sandy and I don't really want to get the van stuck in sand before we're actually on a beach. It's just not worth it here. Seems nice. It's a little close to the road but I don't think that's going to be a problem. It doesn't seem like a very busy road. There's lots of campers in and around here. I'm pretty sure it's crown land. Seems pretty official. They have a sign to make sure that your campfire is out. So yeah, this is going to do very nicely. There's actually a lot of mosquitoes though so I think I'm going to be spending most of the time in the van. Yeah. So many mosquitoes. Get, get, get, get. Don't come in. Don't come in. Don't come in. I'll bet a couple probably got in. Well, it's been a crazy busy morning but I have to say I actually love this location. It is so quiet and so peaceful just, you know, to be here in nature. You know, even though I'm sitting at a computer working, I can look out the window and have a beautiful view. Anyways, I don't think I'm going to have much of an opportunity to explore around here because it's going to be a busy afternoon and then right after that I'm going to hit the road and head back home because it's been a long time since I've seen Mel and Benny. And I'm sure you're all bored of just seeing me too so you'd probably like to see them in a video too. All right, I'm ready to hit the road on the final stretch home. I almost got going with some cupboards open again but at least I'm getting good at checking for that now so they're all closed. I can drive crazy and not have anything fly out. All right, let's get going. And just like that I'm home. That was a really nice trip to Edmonton. I really enjoyed having the van and I think it was better than it would have been flying and staying in a hotel. I was able to have adventures and basically have my entire house with me. It was great. So anyways, next week we will have guess who? You're home! Yeah, so next week we will be back to our regularly scheduled adventures. Yes. Camping with the whole family. So we'll see you then. Bye! Well, I'm technically on my way home from Edmonton after two weeks of... no wait. Wobabun. Wobabun? Wobabun. So I noticed today as I was out... Make sure you don't miss the next video by liking, subscribing, and turning on notifications. 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