Trip to Canada

Suzy, the girls and I traveled to Calgary to visit Rebecca and her family.  It's a long drive (about 13 hours of driving, but it takes us about 14-15 with stops) but so worth it.  My van reached 150,000 miles while we were on our trip.  I've had the van for 9 years now and all but about 5,000 miles have been driven by us.  It's been a good car.  It's needed some repairs in the past year...new battery, new radiator, new spark plugs, new brake pads, etc....but no major repairs and it has been a reliable car that has helped us make a lot of great memories.  I hope it will last us at least another 2-3 years.

The girls did a pretty good job on the drive.  I brought Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them for the girls to watch...mostly Gabby watched it.  Ella slept a lot on the drive.  And we listened to a book on CD called Anything But Typical.  And we played some games.

When we got through the border, we all needed to use the restroom.  Outside the restroom at the border, there were these signs telling a tiny bit about the history.  So I took a photo:

 And we always take a photo under the Alberta sign!  It's tradition.  A tradition that they weren't particularly thrilled to indulge me in but they did nevertheless.

 When we finally arrived, Hannah had made us this sweet sign to welcome us all there!

Also, I didn't get photos but 3 other things I want to remember from the drive.
First, there is a house we pass not too far outside Calgary that has a giant smiley face on the barn.  We always know we are getting pretty close when we see it.
There are fields growing some type of plant with really pretty yellow flowers...you just see this brilliant yellow for almost as far as your eyes can see...I wanted to pull over and take a photo because it was really lovely.

And finally, on the way home from Canada, I saw a couple of fields that had what looked like giant marshmallows.  I figured it was hay wrapped up in some type of covering. I did a little research today and I was right.  It is hay that has been wrapped in plastic to keep air out and keep the hay from going bad.  It's called balage.  Here's a stock photo I found that shows what it looked like along with a link to an article that explains it: