About a month or so ago we received a little white envelope in the mail from the
City of Red Deer. In that envelope was a parking ticket with my husbands name on it, but with out a license plate number, and the date of May 17th. My husband was busy at work that day...in Lethbridge(3 or 4 hours south of Red Deer) with his car. I was busy at home(5 or so hours south of Red Deer) with 2 kids in school and 2 kids at home with the van parked quietly in the driveway. Sooo.....which vehicle could have possible been parked in Red Deer that day to receive a parking ticket? Very good, neither of them. The ticket was only $35, but why should we pay for an offense that we did not commit? Daniel had no intentions of doing so. His court date was set for Aug 22 at 9:30am.
On the afternoon of Sunday Aug 21, we packed up the van with a few camping essentials and a cooler of food and made our way north for what we told this kids was going to be an adventure. We drove to
Stettler and set up camp in their
Lions Campground. We brought our coleman stove so I could cook dinner and warm water while Daniel set up camp. All we took was Kathryn's little two man tent, two air mattresses and some blankets and pillows. We put the three girls in the tent and then we cleared everything out of the van, put down the stow and go seats and put in an air mattress( a double fits perfectly in the back of our van) We put James on a pile of blankets at the foot of the air mattress and Daniel and I slept comfortably in the back. We were up and packed the next morning by 8am and made our way to Red Deer, with Daniel showered and dressed in his suit.
We arrived at the Red Deer Courthouse just before 9:30am and we found a parking spot right in front. Daniel went in and I told him we would wait for ten minutes in case the lady at the desk quashed the case because he had overwhelming evidence that he had not been in Red Deer on the date that the ticket was issued. The plan was that if he wasn't back in ten minutes that the kids and I would go find a park to play at and we would be back to get him at 11am. Just as we were getting ready to go, Daniel came out of the Courthouse shouting something in a exuberant tone.
When he first got inside he was told that because he was pleading not guilty, he would need to wait in this other line to register his ticket and set a court date for two months away. So he went and stood in that line and when the lady tried to register his ticket, she couldn't find it in the computer. And then she said "this ticket was paid for on the 15th of July". Obviously the person who actually got the parking ticket had the original that was put on their windshield and had paid it. When the handwritten ticket had been entered into the computer for some reason or another the wrong license plate number must have been entered in, resulting in the ticket that was mailed to our house. It seemed that we had come all the way to Red Deer for nothing. But since we were done before the morning had really even begun we decided that we could have all kinds of fun.
We had driven through
Drumheller and the Badlands the day before and the kids were fascinated by "Dinosaur land" as they called it. So they wanted to know if we could go back to "Dinosaur land and see the museum". So Daniel headed off in that direction but would not say what his plan was. We stopped and had lunch at
Horseshoe Canyon. If the wind hadn't been blowing it would have been unbearably hot. We then headed on our way.
We drove through
Drumheller on to what is called
Atlas Coal Mine. Daniel wanted to check it out. It was so very hot there. And I guess Daniel decided that the kids weren't old enough to really enjoy it(the girls that had been crying in the van as we drove out of Drumheller and away from "Dinosaur land" may have had something to do with his decision to turn back). So we headed back to Drumheller and to the
Royal Tyrrell Museum.
WOW, was it ever busy. But the girls had a blast walking through and seeing all of the dinosaur bones and skeletons and displays. It was so amazing. I just wished that it hadn't been so busy. We just always felt like we had to keep going. It was a constant flow of people. It was so crowded that I didn't feel like I could take James out of his stroller and let him crawl around which meant that if we weren't moving he was restless. So we missed out on watching all of the little videos and reading all of the signs and things. But, all in all it was a super experience and the girls loved every minute of it.
When we were finished admiring the dinosaurs we headed on our way. We stopped at the
Bassano Dam to have a picnic supper and stretch our legs and then continued on home. It was a lot of driving! All the kids did really great, except for when they would inform us that they had to go to the bathroom...15 minutes after pulling away from the gas station, but this allowed us to check out the
Rosedale Suspension Bridge.(sorry no picture)
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| Pretty Prairie Sunset |
It was fun, definitely an adventure, and not something that I want to ever do again in a non air conditioned vehicle.
WOW, was it ever busy. But the girls had a blast walking through and seeing all of the dinosaur bones and skeletons and displays. It was so amazing. I just wished that it hadn't been so busy. We just always felt like we had to keep going. It was a constant flow of people. It was so crowded that I didn't feel like I could take James out of his stroller and let him crawl around which meant that if we weren't moving he was restless. So we missed out on watching all of the little videos and reading all of the signs and things. But, all in all it was a super experience and the girls loved every minute of it.
When we were finished admiring the dinosaurs we headed on our way. We stopped at the Bassano Dam to have a picnic supper and stretch our legs and then continued on home. It was a lot of driving! All the kids did really great, except for when they would inform us that they had to go to the bathroom...15 minutes after pulling away from the gas station, but this allowed us to check out the Rosedale Suspension Bridge.(sorry no picture)
