On the Road, The ACTUAL Big Ball of String Tour

I canNOT BELIEVE I finally am starting the “Big Ball of String” tour!! Back on schedule! (The imaginary schedule I never really established…)

I don’t know if you’ve noticed how hard it is to find someone with whom you can travel well.. You know, you are sitting around talking to friends and you all have this big idea "we should do a road trip together". You might start off as friends, and you might even come home as friends, but maybe you decide to never do anything together again...as long as you live..like - EVER!!!! And, its not just because something may or may not have gone wrong. It could be just too much time together, too crowded, whatever.

We have some of those friends. I can’t give any examples, because at some point, I’ll be talking about them, and I don’t want anyone to know...

However, THIS isn’t about those friends. This is about the friends with whom we DO travel well, and so they will be in many of my stories!

Shannan and I have been friends since high school and (except a brief time when we lost each other -mostly due to the fact that there was no Google search and no e-mail) we’ve been in close contact and close friends the entire time.

 It works out perfectly that she married someone who gets along with Peter famously AND sometimes the husbands get along better than the wives do... Or the wives with the husbands.. In fact, I think we’ve actually traveled more with Shannan’s husband, Richard, more than we’ve traveled with Shannan. It’s funny how that all works out.

The first trip we all took together, I announced to Rich that he was the only person in the car with whom I’d never fought… That’s still the case, but that’s almost entirely because of his calm personality…it’s certainly not because of mine!!

The reason I bring Shannan and Richard up at this time, is because THIS particular trip - the Big Ball of String Tour - was instituted because we wanted a fun trip for children (they have two little boys). Also, you may not be surprised to learn that really, I was just looking for an excuse to do "kid-friendly" things...like visiting the previously mentioned Toy Train Barn.

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Our first leg of the journey took us from Calgary, through Drumheller AB, and into Saskatchewan. Anyone who’s ever done this trip knows that most of the pictures look like this:

 

 

and like this

                         








The first time we took that road, I took about 400 pictures on the way of broken grain silos and another 400 on the way home of broken fences and leaning electrical poles.

Technically, it takes about 2 hours to get from Calgary to Drumheller… but look out that you don’t get lost in the wide open spaces – It took my brother all day to get there and back. (He took Range Road 242 instead of 241… or something…and didn’t see another vehicle or town for another 2 and a half hours.)

Drumheller is fascinating and should be it’s own trip. In fact, I think we’ll talk about that on Sunday.