Road Trip to Alberta

We survived! This was not our first road trip with Greta (we did one in Germany) but it was by far the longest consecutive time she has had to spend in the car.  Our destination for our road trip was Edmonton, Alberta to attend my cousins wedding. It is a 16 hour drive to go straight there, but as we had Greta we spanned it across a couple days and decided to explore parts of Saskatchewan & Alberta along the way. (I say we survived, but if you ask Matt - he says the next one won't be for 10 years -- I don't think it went that poorly...I'll convince him to try it again sooner than later ;) haha)

Our first day, took us across southern Manitoba (we decided to take a more scenic route than the Trans-Canada Hwy) through some small towns and the rolling hills of Manitoba, the Pembina Valley and into southeastern Saskatchewan. We spent our first night around mid-Saskatchewan in Moose Jaw.

We headed out early the next morning and continued west towards the Saskatchewan-Alberta border where we headed a bit south into Cypress Hill Interprovincial Park - which was absolutely beautiful!  We also visited a little prairie winery where we ate lunch, sampled wine, and toured their small, and still establishing vineyard. Very interesting to see something a little different that was not in wine country! A little miss guided driver (myself) took a longer drive through the park than we were suppose to so we arrived later in the afternoon into Alberta, so we rested a bit in Medicine Hat before checking out Dinosaur Provincial Park and spending the night a few hours from our next destination of Drumheller.

our attempt at dinosaur attack = fail

The next morning we headed to Drumheller, AB. My parents met us there (as they were also on a road trio to the wedding, and our paths crossed) and toured around the Royal Tyrell Museum with us and we took them up on the offer of spending the night in their RV - saving us on a few meals & hotel stays!

The following day we headed to Edmonton. We visited the West Edmonton Mall and did some shopping before heading to visit with family and wedding-ing the following day.

We attempted to do the drive home in one day but as we neared the 10 hour mark in the car, with 4 hours left to go, Greta was not a happy camper any longer. So we stopped and spent one more night in a hotel before we continued our trek home the following morning. I don't blame her -- I needed to get out of the car as well. I'd say it was a great trip - we seen so much, spent time with family, and Greta did incredibly well for the amount of time spent in the car - plus the extended amount of time in the car has made her want to spend some more time on her feet which may mean we may have a walker in just a short while!