Alberta and back to the states

We left our friends, the Chens, and went our separate ways.  We were in Jasper in 2004 and thought about taking a day trip to Edmonton to see the West Edmonton Mall.  At that time it was the largest mall in the world.  We thought it might be interesting.  However, after thinking about the 350 miles round trip in one day, we thought better of it.  We found out the next day that a severe storm hit the mall with hail, wind, and rain (maybe even a tornado) with flooding and roof collapses.  Glad we didn’t go!

This time though we did plan on going.  We stayed at a little campground north of Edmonton in Morinville.  Here is a view from the trailer door:

This was a Passport America site so we saved a bit of money but still had to fight mosquitos!  They also had a lake and we thought we might use the kayaks but never did.  We stayed 5 nights, did household things (read laundry) and went to the mall one day.

The mall is pretty big.  It has the waterpark, amusement park, and a small hockey rink.  It has about every store you would need, some even are doubled!  We put on a few miles walking around.  It was interesting but now we will have to compare it to the Mall of America when we get there in the future.

We left Morinville, heading back to the United States, and I didn’t want to even mess with Calgary as the ‘stampede’ was starting.  We skirted around it but stopped at a Lowes for a bathroom break.  During the stop, a Canadian Postal worker came up and started talking to us about the Airstream.  She has a friend that has a few Airstreams and she always takes pictures of them and she did so with ours.

We ended up after a pretty long (330+ miles) at a Casino in Lethbridge, AB.  It was a nice little stop and FREE!

The next day was crossing the border into Montana.  I didn’t know what to expect.  The last time (2004) we brought the trailer back into the states, the agents went into our trailer and took a bunch of our food.  This crossing was much quicker.  A few questions (that I can’t even remember now) and we were back in the USA.

We ended up in Great Falls for 4 nights.  This allowed us to see our friends the Erpelding’s who pastor a church there.  We also saw another friend that used to go to the church in Visalia but is now in Great Falls also.

We had a great time in Great Falls (new slogan?).

On to New Mexico

That’s enough of Arizona for us, we have to move on somewhere else.  We followed the same track as we did last year.  From the Phoenix basin up to Safford AZ toward New Mexico.  Last time we spent the night in a BLM area but Roxie didn’t want to do that this time so we went with the Walmart standby.

The next day we continued to our destination, Las Cruces.  We stayed there about 5 nights and were able to pick up some mail we had forwarded to General Delivery.  Our plan was to head to Texas to get a shotgun as we are Texas residents.  However, Dick’s Sporting Goods policy is to sell firearms to residents of states that touch the state they are in.  I looked into getting a gun in Arizona but Texas does not border on Arizona.  This was good news as we did not have to go to El Paso for the sole reason of purchasing the shotgun.

While we were in Las Cruces we visited the old town area of Mesilla which was very close.  It reminded us a bit of old town Albuquerque but much smaller.  Here is a cactus in bloom there and the church on the square:

After our nights in Las Cruces, we headed eastward, like before.  We went over the hills and did a lunch stopover at White Sands National Monument (we didn’t stop last year):

Last year we stayed the night in Almagordo NM at a Walmart and went on to Texas from there.  This time we headed north.

Our stop for the night was the Valley of the Fires BLM campground outside of Carrizozo NM.  This is a great little campground and I think we got the last electric and water spot.  Another bonus was the price of the campsite!  The normal price is dirt cheap at $12 but Roxie was able to get a Federal pass for being disabled.  This means at a lot of locations we can get half-price camping with this pass.  That was true here also so we did the night for $6!  It even sprinkled a bit on us while there.

On to Albuquerque!