Alberta for Christmas??!! Really??!!

The gods conspired against us me to prevent a full snowbird winter again this year, and we had to go back north for a month or so.  We headed for Overton on December 4th and hung out for a day up on the mesa, loading the Jeep with Christmas presents (and what warm clothes we had with us) and organizing the motorhome (defrosting the freezer, etc.).  Wendy had her heart set on cleaning, until I convinced her that she'd probably have to deal with 1/4 inch of desert inside the coach when she got back anyway.

We thought we'd give storing in Overton a shot this year, since it makes the trip 1/2 day shorter than starting from Quartzsite like we did last year.  And since this year we were going via Vanderhoof BC for a stopover to see my mom, a 1/2 day saved is a 1/2 day earned.  Anyway, after tucking Tussy away at the storage yard next to a well-travelled reefer to keep her company we headed north on December 6th.

 

It didn't take long before the foreshadowing started:

And I couldn't shake the feeling that we were headed in the wrong direction.  

At one point I was concerned that the route we chose might be impassable!

But unfortunately we were able to continue.  

We met some interesting characters along the way.  

While the scenery along the road turned from a beautiful tan and green to a depressing white and grey.  

  

Soon even the asphalt itself had the life bleached out of it.  

Along the way we stopped off for the night at Wells NV, Kennewick WA, and Vernon BC before arriving at Vanderhoof on December 9th.  Three nights in hotels, sleeping on too hard or too soft beds that who knows how many disgusting people had slept and done who-knows-what-else in definitely made us miss having our own clean comfortable bed everywhere we go.  But on the bright side, Wendy got pretty good at using Expedia on the fly AND we loaded up with enough "free" soap and shampoo to make Bella happy.  

We spent a week at Jack and Kathy's (thanks guys) visiting my mom at the hospital, then whooshed it down highway 16 to my daughter's house in Edmonton.  Not too many pictures taken in Vanderhoof, but here are a couple of my everybody's buddy Hoover and my kitchen helper Blaze.  

OK, now I KNOW the gods have a sense of humour... albeit a cruel, sadistic one.  After basking in relatively half decent winter temperatures in the minus 10 to 15 C range for a few days the thermometer plummeted to minus infinity on Christmas Eve and stayed down until New Years Day.  Oh well, Arizona's chilly too.  Might have to put on a jacket in the evening.

Despite the temps we managed to get out and enjoy some Christmas lights.  I can't help but contrast these with Lake Havasu in the last post though.  

However, making it almost worth the trip north in the minus 1000 degree temperatures and suffering the frostbites, frozen fingers and numb head (although Wendy says I have this all the time) we did get to spend some time with some of the best most interesting grandkids in the world.  

And even to welcome one more little urchin to the tribe.  Happy birthday Sophie!  

Hope everyone had as good a Christmas and New Year as we did!  OK, now it's time to start scheming a way to get back to the desert...