The Bastard Tour of Canada

Caroline’s cousin Klemens came to stay with us for a couple of weeks last month and it was great to have him out. There were moments though, when reflecting upon his time with us, that I had to rate it as something of a bastard’s tour of Canada.

It wasn’t all bad, it was probably just a piece of it that really doesn’t sound all that good upon reflection.

Klemens landed in Calgary and Caroline and the kids picked him up from the airport. One of the first experiences that he was treated to was the Calgary Stampede. Sounds great. But then one has to consider that he was attending this wondrous event with Caroline and the four kids in tow! I believe his comment was something along the lines of ‘its very busy, isn’t it?” in reference to the efforts associated with successfully negotiating such an event with the four children (he is one of four himself, so by the time he left I think that he had a new-found respect for what his own parents had been through when he was growing up).

He was left to spend the latter part of the evening by himself when Caroline brought the kids back to our accommodations and from a couple of conversations we had, I’m sure he appreciated some of the finer points of the cow’girl’ population.

After that, the next thing that we decided to do to him was sit him in the back of the car with the smalls and casually take off for Montana. Then, the following day, show him all the lovely scenery from a bus, make him sit and mind the pizza with us while some people went horse-riding (admittedly it was by his choice that he wasn’t part of the equestrian activities) and then bus it back down the mountain.

Then, there was another long drive in the car, a stop at a decaying and no-longer used aqueduct (the risk of travelling with engineers) and then even more driving until we stayed at Dinosaur Provincial Park. Even there we gave him a chance to have some time alone and sent him off to climb to the top of the formations and capture the sunset (only to find out the next day that he hadn’t actually made it all the way tot the top as he’d stopped halfway up!)

Of course, with the dawn came another day and another car ride in the back of the car with the kids. This time we had to get all the way back to Fort McMurray, but we decided that we should be make a stop at the actual Dinosaur museum that lives just outside of Drumheller. It was an impressive looking building that held great promise. But because this was the bastard tour of Canada, all we did was look at the outside, glance at the café and tell Klemens that it was time to get back in the car, visit the supermarket in town for some food and off we went again, driving solidly until about 10:30pm that night when we finally arrived back in Fort McMurray.

We said goodbye to Klemens a week after that and I think that I can say that he actually had a good time and we did manage to send him out drinking with a couple of girls from work, so he wasn’t caged for the entire time1