Another day….another year.

Seriously, I am in awe that we are staring 2019 in the face. Life keeps on churning and somehow this adventure keeps on rolling.

Its a time to celebrate the best part about living this life; friends, family, love, and lots of sweet treats I most certainly overindulged in. I’m so grateful that we were able to spend early Christmas with my family this year. It was action-packed as Jake and I went from party to party, cooking and/or baking our way through it all. One of our favorite traditions is making Christmas cookies from my grandma’s mother’s recipes; Some have been in the family for 80 years! This year, we kicked it up a notch and introduced some more decadent french pastry into the mix. We did an almond macaron with a raspberry marscapone filling, a classic puff pastry topped with chocolate glaze and filled with homemade espresso custard, and of course, Uncle Jake’s famous brownies; which essentially incorporate everything you could imagine in a brownie; this year we added homemade apple pie filling, crunchy bacon, cream cheese and hot cocoa, which turned out SO YUMMY! I can feel my belt tightening just thinking about all of these yummy goodies. Plus, Jake got to don his kilt in honor of Scotland, for no other reason than its awesome.

We celebrated Christmas early because we have to get our butts to Calgary, where we are going to be spending the winter and early spring housesitting for some new friends while they go sailing on their boat, S/V FIDO (isn’t that too cute?!). The best part is that their home is on 160 acres in a very similar environment to what we envision for Bosco station. This is a perfect test of a cold winter to see if its something we can handle, not to mention the caring for the property and animals to boot.

It is about 24 hours of driving door-to-door. That is almost 1600 miles that we planned to do in 3 days. This should give us maximum daylight driving conditions. Old Blue had to have a bunch of work done to ensure that it would be in running condition for the trip, and was packed to the gills with heaps of things that we don’t normally travel with. I’m talking tons of baking gear, fancy camera equipment, an entire library of books. Basically we tried to envision what we would do if stranded in by thick snow and cold winter days and all we could see is a fireplace, hot chocolate and books. Not a bad vision. This is one of the rare times we don’t have to worry about packing weight or even space for that matter.

December 18 we left bright and early to a clear blue sky, heading north and west to Fargo, North Dakota. The drive, much like the terrain, was very uneventful with nothing much beyond the endless yellow tussock fields and barren trees. It took us about 9 hours with only a couple of stops here and there and we were so glad to pull into our abode for the night. We rented a room in a house and once we had a quick dinner, Jake pulled out his awesome new Christmas gift, a classic Nintendo. We had so much fun playing games of our childhood, even though we were both pretty terrible. 😉

Day two would be the longest, we figured, since we have to go through customs. The goal was to leave as early as possible so that we could maximize our daylight hours. It was still pitch dark at 730AM, I guess the sun rise doesn’t happen until after 9AM. I suppose this is what its like in the north, just ask the Stark’s of Winterfell.

We pulled up to the border at Portal, ND, a town of nothing but oil fields for miles. There were only 2 cars in line ahead of us and both went through very quickly. At the first checkpoint, the border patrol officer asked us basic questions; How long we plan to visit, what is our purpose, yada yada. We knew that it would be too good to be true if we could just pull through quickly, and sure enough, he asked us to pull our vehicle over and come into the building.

At this point I really had to pee, but didn’t think about it until after we were inside, being interrogated by another officer, with more specific questions about our plans, where we are staying, etc. We answered truthfully (of course), but when he asked us where we live, we both hesitated for a bit too long and probably looked suspicious. I knew we were too late to correct the mistake but its a loaded question, since we technically don’t live anywhere. How does one explain this to a border patrol officer in a succinct fashion? I guess if we knew, we wouldn’t have hesitated.

While he verified our story, we were asked to pull the van into a private garage, so they could inspect our goods. I was just glad to be out of the chilly air. Several officers came in and interrogated us while a few more began going through our stuff. It was more than 45 minutes and by now I was bursting at the seems. The officer’s said that I had to sit and wait until they were done before I could go, a little bit annoying but I get it.

Its sure funny when you watch people go through your stuff, judging the type of person you are. At one point an officer made a joke about us being very outdoorsy and questioned several of our camera and scope items, which she thought were made for hunting. The same officer probably thought we were big time nerds after pulling out all of our video games and books and such. Through all of this, a second officer kept coming out from behind a scanner to ask us pointed questions about the van; Are we aware of everything in the vehicle?, Has anyone else been in the vehicle? so on and so forth. It seemed odd to us but maybe they found something?

In the end there was nothing to find and apparently our story was corroborated and thus we were free to go. It made me feel a bit nervous and uncomfortable having our stuff searched in the manner, even though we are innocent of anything illegal coming over the border. Its the nature of the beast and I think they did a really good job, because if we were transporting something illegal, they would have definitely found it!

But more important than all of that, I finally got to go pee! HOORAY!

The delay was a bit over an hour, which we anticipated. And then we were in Canada….JUST LIKE THAT. Poof. We continued driving along the same road north, and everything looked the same. Everything except the new speed limit that states 100…100km/hr! That’s right its all in kilometers. There were signs indicating our distance to Moose Jaw, which also threw me for a minute because it, too is in kilometers.

Despite being in a new country, the view didn’t change. The sun never got that high in the sky, so it felt like late afternoon all afternoon. We didn’t pull into Moose Jaw until after 5PM. Talk about a tiny town. Its super basic, nothing much special about it and since it was dark, we really couldn’t see anything of interest other than a bunch of homes squished up to each other, similar to that of a busy city. It was icy on the side streets and a bit difficult to negotiate cars parked on the side. Thankfully it was a short distance to our next abode for the evening. We rented a room in a home for a fantastic deal ($20). Unloading the car was a bit slow going since the streets were icy, but once finished, Jake whipped us up a super delish dinner of mac ‘n cheese, chicken and broccoli.

Day 3 has came and it was cold and dark. It was also raining and freezing which means black ice. It took us some time to get our gear loaded without falling on our bums and the drive out was VERY slow going since the roads were coated in slick ice. By the time we reached the Trans-Canada, it was all cleared and the driving was easy breezy.

So far, Canada is not too different from the US. The first big difference, besides kilometers is gas, which is sold by the liter. Not a completely new concept, but you can’t just fill up the car and then pay with a credit card, like in the States. You have to prepay by specifying the amount you want to pay OR how many liters you want. Since we have no idea how much our van holds, it took us many attempts at various gas stations to keep the tank somewhat full (we never quite got it to full).

Welcome to Cochrane

It was an easy day of driving through Saskatchewan and most of Alberta through Calgary. Our abode for the winter is about 15 minutes outside of the city and we pulled in around 3PM up the very long drive to a massive barn and open rolling hills. It was so pretty. Our host’s, Fiona and Don, welcomed us with open arms and are pretty much the nicest people ever. They invited us in with big hugs as if we are long lost friends and showered us with food and drink. Their animals Ekho and Radar were also super sweet and cute.

Their home is absolutely gorgeous and one they designed and built themselves. Talk about talent! It is immaculate down to every detail. Our suite is on the main floor, recently renovated from a very large garage space into an ensuite apartment complete with everything you could need to live comfortably for 5 months. I took loads of photos of everything, because its so inspiring and I think Jake and I will copy some of these ideas for Bosco Station. 🙂

We spent the next week galavanting all over Calgary with S/V FIDO and their friends and family, sharing in the holiday celebrations. Its true what they say, Canadians are the NICEST people in the world and we feel like adopted members of their family. This is the first time, I think ever in our lives, where we have about a dozen people that we could call friends in such a short span of time and are so thankful to be here. We also couldn’t resist joining a climbing gym in Calgary, because like they say…”when in Calgary…join a climbing gym.” (isn’t that what they say?)

Its kind of amazing to think back only just a couple of months ago, Jake and I were literally at the end of our mental rope of what to do next. And now, we are sitting here, in the most beautiful home in Cochrane, Canada, of our new amazing friends who are about to go on their big sailing adventure while we babysit their home, land and animals.

Here’s to a most amazing, wonderful 2019 to all. CHEERS!