Leaving Gillette Friday morning the temp was -15C no wind, the sun was shining, and the roads were clear. As we arrived in Gillette Thursday evening we saw 2 massive coal mines and miles of coal filled cars. We saw more coal mines as we left Gillette. In addition to the coal mines we saw oil wells and livestock farms with cattle and sheep. The terrain was flat to mildly wavy plains with sagebruch, and many more buttes. We stopped at Douglas Wy for lunch and then continued South on I25 to Denver. The temperature kept rising and was -2C by the time we arrived at 2:30pm at Kelly and /Diane Megson's in Windsor Co, North of Denver,
We were early so we went to see the prices of 2014-15 Impala LTZs, about $41,000 for the 2015 and likely around 30,000 for 3014s. Tom learned that the very low prices we say on TrueCar.com were likely for commercial LTZ with no options. Conclusion: keep shopping in Canada.
Over that evening and the next day we had a lovely visit with Kelly and Diane and their girls, Makaya 14, and Makena, 12. We talked lots about the relatives and ancestors from the Edgeley area. Kelly showed us his photo collection of old photos and Tom took photos of those of interest. We had the pleasure of watching Mataya's volleyball practice preparing for the USA Nationals, and Makena's soccer game. Then we took the family out to the Austin American Grill in Fort Collins for dinner. Kelly showed us around the Fort Collins town centre, something like the Broadway area in Saskatoon or the Cathedral area in Regina. But with a much larger and rich population in the area this was much larger and remarkable. All the trees were loaded with lighting. The streets were made for pedestrians, and there was a wide range of shops and restaurants.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
January 11-14, 2015
If you receive this please let me know - I'm working out the bugs. Tom at rogerstomrose@gmail.com
Sunday, January 11 was a loooong drive, 12 hours including stops from Windsor to Lubbock, Texas, for what the Google Maps GPS called 9 hours driving time. Not to suggest it was boring. First we passed smoothly through Denver on 4, 6, 8, then up to 12 lanes of highway with interchanges of several levels. Tom considers these types of drives like exciting exhibition rides. South of Denver we hugged the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains for hours driving South on beautiful 4 lane Interstate 25/87. Rose said we had the "Rocky Mountain High" (John Denver). The mountains don't seem to be introduced by foothills. They seem to rise up out of the plains. Then, just after crossing into New Mexico, 87 split off from 25 and we headed Southeast toward Amarillo, Texas. After the massive mountain scenery, we drove on massive plains, populated by massive ranches covering grass, sage, cactus covered gently rolling plains with the occasional butte or just shale rock outcrops. After many miles of ranch-land the car was filled with a foul stench which we soon learned was coming from massive cattle feedlots. Despite the fact that the temperature was +10-12 there was still the occasional snow bank on the ground.
Sunday, January 11 was a loooong drive, 12 hours including stops from Windsor to Lubbock, Texas, for what the Google Maps GPS called 9 hours driving time. Not to suggest it was boring. First we passed smoothly through Denver on 4, 6, 8, then up to 12 lanes of highway with interchanges of several levels. Tom considers these types of drives like exciting exhibition rides. South of Denver we hugged the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains for hours driving South on beautiful 4 lane Interstate 25/87. Rose said we had the "Rocky Mountain High" (John Denver). The mountains don't seem to be introduced by foothills. They seem to rise up out of the plains. Then, just after crossing into New Mexico, 87 split off from 25 and we headed Southeast toward Amarillo, Texas. After the massive mountain scenery, we drove on massive plains, populated by massive ranches covering grass, sage, cactus covered gently rolling plains with the occasional butte or just shale rock outcrops. After many miles of ranch-land the car was filled with a foul stench which we soon learned was coming from massive cattle feedlots. Despite the fact that the temperature was +10-12 there was still the occasional snow bank on the ground.
Saturday, January 10, 2015
January 6-8, 2015 Saskatoon to Gillette, Wyoming
January 6-8, 2015 Saskatoon to Gillette, Wyoming
If you have already received this please let me know - I'm working out the bugs.
We left Saskatoon 10am Tuesday and met Tom's friend Joe Josza for lunch in Regina before heading to Jim and Judy Rogers for the rest of the day and January 7. After a lovely dinner and visit we watched 3 episodes of Marco Polo on NETFLIX. Tuesday we watched the remaining episodes of Marco Polo and took Jim and Judy to lunch at Earls.
Tuesday for we traveled to Qu'Appelle to visit Bruce and Cathy Farrer. We had not been familiar and were pleased to learn of the Farrer-Whiting involvement in the Vernon-Qu'Appelle communities for the last century. Bruce is an organist, fellow genealogist and historian, teacher and recently famous for his high school project where he had the students write a letter to themselves 10 years in the future. Then ten years later he returns the letters. The project drawn interest from local, national and international media. Bruce is also the custodian of the records of Vernon Anglican Church, well known to the Rogers and Mattick ancestors. Tom was able to photograph pages with details on several ancestors who were baptized, married, and buried at Vernon Anglican Church. And many stories of the Qu'Appelle-Vernon ancestors were exchanged. Tom and Bruce will try to continue the contacts and exchanges of information.
Wednesday we were up early at 5:30am and away by 7:30. It was still dark. The winds were 30-70km/hr and there had been a few cms of snow over the night, so the 1+ hrs straight South on Hwy 6 we the most difficult of the day with some brief periods of a few seconds of near whiteout. Arriving at the border we handed in our passports and were nearly turned away. We had forgotten to sign them when we had them renewed in 2012. We also had a lime and an orange which were confiscated, but not the fresh carrots and the home made onion-mayo-honey-ketchup-curry vegetable dip.
After entering the USA we found that the Bell Mobility travel plan we had purchased for 70 for 30 days did not work. We continued South on US hwy 16 to Plentywood, pop 1900, where we stopped bought gasoline for US$2.47 and stopped for toast and coffee and wifi service. We called Bell about our not working US travel package, and had them set it up, which they did not succeed in doing. they had us reboot our phone to get the Travel package to work, but the reboot did not work. We traveled all the way to Gillette Wyoming, 800 kms before succeeding in getting the US travel package to work. We rebooted the phone again at the hotel and as we were talking to Bell the phone started to work.
Tuesday for we traveled to Qu'Appelle to visit Bruce and Cathy Farrer. We had not been familiar and were pleased to learn of the Farrer-Whiting involvement in the Vernon-Qu'Appelle communities for the last century. Bruce is an organist, fellow genealogist and historian, teacher and recently famous for his high school project where he had the students write a letter to themselves 10 years in the future. Then ten years later he returns the letters. The project drawn interest from local, national and international media. Bruce is also the custodian of the records of Vernon Anglican Church, well known to the Rogers and Mattick ancestors. Tom was able to photograph pages with details on several ancestors who were baptized, married, and buried at Vernon Anglican Church. And many stories of the Qu'Appelle-Vernon ancestors were exchanged. Tom and Bruce will try to continue the contacts and exchanges of information.
Wednesday we were up early at 5:30am and away by 7:30. It was still dark. The winds were 30-70km/hr and there had been a few cms of snow over the night, so the 1+ hrs straight South on Hwy 6 we the most difficult of the day with some brief periods of a few seconds of near whiteout. Arriving at the border we handed in our passports and were nearly turned away. We had forgotten to sign them when we had them renewed in 2012. We also had a lime and an orange which were confiscated, but not the fresh carrots and the home made onion-mayo-honey-ketchup-curry vegetable dip.
After entering the USA we found that the Bell Mobility travel plan we had purchased for 70 for 30 days did not work. We continued South on US hwy 16 to Plentywood, pop 1900, where we stopped bought gasoline for US$2.47 and stopped for toast and coffee and wifi service. We called Bell about our not working US travel package, and had them set it up, which they did not succeed in doing. they had us reboot our phone to get the Travel package to work, but the reboot did not work. We traveled all the way to Gillette Wyoming, 800 kms before succeeding in getting the US travel package to work. We rebooted the phone again at the hotel and as we were talking to Bell the phone started to work.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)