Thursday, July 3, 2008 LETHBRIDGE, ALBERTA, CA

Dateline: Lethbridge, Alberta, CA Bridgeview RV Resort

Bob's Blah Blog:

"Eh" is what they say when they don't know what the hey. Eh...?

Got some making up to do. I forgot to write about the Cathedral of Saint Helena in Helena, Montana. It is a huge Catholic church with outstanding stained glass throughout the building. The glass is exquisite, brillant, colorful and ornate. The claity of the figures depicted is beyond comparison in my opinion. We (and I mean Corinne) took lots of pictures and will post them in our album, so be looking for them if they aren't already there.

We drove from White Sulphur Springs throught Great Falls on to Shelby, Montana where we stayed the night in Shel-oole park/baseball/campground area. It was a nice place, not too pretentious and not overly crowded. In fact there were only a dozen or so of us voyagers staying the night. We got a bit of rain, but not much. Lots of McSquitos flying around and trying to bite us. Some did and some died trying. Well, most died trying if they landed on me.

We drove into the town of Shelby to "sheck thins out" and ended up at the Information Palace where the nicest young lady greeted us and told us all about Shelby, Canada and Palm Springs. She was "easy on the eyes, too." Her grandpa was with her when we got there but he soon left to let the dogs out...whatever that meant. She said there was Wifi available inside the office and we might even be able to get it outside in our truck if we wanted to get out and sit in our truck to internet ourselves. So, we took the hint and went outside where the internet worked just fine.

We drove around the town for a little bit, saw the sights and went back to the trailer. We picked up literature about crossing into and back from Canada and read about what we can and cannot take or bring back. Not very specific because I think they want people to bring stuff to the border so they can confiscate it.

Thursday morning, we set out for Canada which is 34 miles from Shelby. It was Corinne's turn to drive so I rode second officer and acted as the navigator. If we were gonna have problems at the border I didn't want to be the truck-commander. Pretty smart thinking if I say so myself. I just pretended to be passed out in the back seat from drinking too much. Corinne thought the young man attending to the drive up booth at the border was "cute" and figured the reason he was so interested in how much booze we had on board was because of me in the back seat pretending to be in an alcoholic stupor. Guess we fooled him...hic.

At the border we had no problems, if you don't count having to exit your vehicle, go inside the building and be interrogated by the CBSA (Canada Border Security Agency, I guess). We had to give them our passports and answer about 10,037 questions about who we were, where were we going, when were we leaving (and why), who our neighbors are back home, whose buried in Grant's Tomb, is Sly Stallone really making another Rambo movie, etc., etc,. you know, the usual drill. What really concerned me was the CBSA agent had red hair so I knew we, or at least I was in trouble. I know someone (and I mean Corinne) believed I was in trouble because she sent text messages to a few friends asking them to pray for me. I told her that was nonsense, we were gonna need money, more.

Anyways, there was this hispanic looking guy with a couple others trying to get into Canada, but for some reason he had an outstanding warrant for his arrest in the States and the Canandians weren't going to let him in. In fact, they said he was going to be handcuffed and escorted back the American side and turned over to the Montana authorities. Yippee!!! I guess that probably wrecked someone's plans for a good time or life in Canada. He said that warrant had already been taken care of, but you know, in all our years as the Popo, we only came across that situation a couple of times, so its not likely it had already "been taken care of." Lo siento, senor.

So, after leaving the border crossing we made our way to Lethbridge, about 69 Km north. Being the "sauve and deboner" kind of guy that I portend to be, I switched the Queen over from Statute miles to Kilometers. We have kept her on Kilometers and are learning how to speak metric by repeating whatever the Queen says. i.e., "turn right in 200 meters" or " arrive at destination on left in 50 meters." I think we are getting pretty good at it and should be fluent in metric distances by the time we leave here.

We learned today, by calling Verizon Wireless, that it costs us 69 cents per minute to call or be called using our cell phones here. Yikes! I guess we don't know anyone we would like to talk with that much if its going to cost us 69 damn cents a minute. I wonder if that's Canadian or American cents? I hope its American money because the Canadian dollar is like worth 4 cents more than the American dollar right now.

You ask, "How do you know so much stuff, Bobo?" Well, its because I ask people questions and pay attention to what goes on around me. Just today, when we went to the Li-berry, I walked right up to the Information Desk and asked the lady, "what can you tell me?" making it a point to look directly at the Information sign on her desk. She said "what do you want to know?" Hmmmm....not much of a sense of comedy here, I said to myself. She must be Canadian.

Here in the Li-berry there is a lady who has been reading something on one of the many free computers. Everytime I look over at her, she is smiling and seems to be really enjoying whatever it is she is reading. Maybe, just maybe, she is reading Bob's Blah Blog. Could that be possible?? Nah.... It must be something very long because she's been reading it for like two hours.

Corinne is off in the Li-berry researching some family connections. She just came back with a stack of books she is going off to photocopy. She said she would find something on her Canadian ancestors and I guess she did.

We read email today from our "Best Friend Forever" (BFF) Marlys (even tho we are not her BFF...I know, hard to believe, isn't it.) and her sister "Rrrrred Licorice" as she prefers to be called. I remember Rrrrred Licorice taking on that moniker while at a Phoenix Giants Baseball game many, many years ago and I guess it just stuck. Does anyone remember the goofy guy at sporting events in Phoenix who sold red licorice and soda and popcorn and whatever else and wore crazy bigger than life sunglasses, bright clothing and clown shoes? Well, I think maybe that might possibly kinda -sorta be who Rrrrred (aka Brenda) got the idea from to be called "Rrrrred Licorice." Not that she looks or dresses like him, but just because she wanted to be called Rrrrred Licorice "because it sounded cool." It takes all types to make this ol' world go around, you know.

Your BFF,

Bobo