Day One

Storyline: Westward Ho!

During winter months we planned our summer advanture to the west. It is an ambitious itinerary of 15,000+ km (~9,500 mi), spanning five provinces and one territory in about 3 months, with furthest point being Haines Junction YT where Alex’s nephew lives. It’ll take us through Northern Ontario (there is no other way really unless we cross through the USA and for many reasons, we don’t want to do this). Then we’ll head through Southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan reaching Grasslands National Park (N.P.). With a few stops in between we’ll get to Dinosaur Park and Drumheller. Then come the Rocky Mountains. Staying in Lake Louise and Jasper campgrounds for a week. From there it is all go all the way to the Yukon. On our way back we plan to take the more northern roads, stay north of Edmonton, go through the sand dunes around Yorkton and reach Riding Mountains N.P. Back to Ontario with a few more Provincial Parks. For the first night we decided to only get out of the GTA traffic chaos and drive about an hour to Sibbald Point Provincial Park on the shores of Lake Simcoe. Since there have been a few changes to our campervan Doranya, we could get the bugs, squeaks and rattles out of her system (and ours 😊 – A) while still close to home. The video Alex put together last night is about day one of our new adVANture. What’s not in the video is Alex letting thousands of little non-biting flies into the van through the driver’s window vent, that he had installed earlier for some air circulation. Flies and mosquitos can’t get through the vents as there is a built-in mesh, but the flies had filled in the mesh and in his rush to remove the Airvents, and close the window, Alex forgot to shake out the flies which then swarmed out from the mesh and into their beloved new home. Despite their attempts to evict us, we eventually prevailed and welcome the lesson learned before we experience the same with dastardly mosquitos.