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Well, here we are!  Canada, finally.  In all honesty, my kids were a bit disappointed.  I think they expected a major difference entering a new country.  After all, we have been across the Mexican border quite a few times, and there is a pretty big difference between the two, including language.  But Canada, well, it seems like an extension of America!  No offense to any Canadians reading this…you have a beautiful country!  ;)  Also, Happy Thanksgiving!

We were so excited for Canada, and decided to stop and camp as soon as we got across the border.  The town on the Canadian side, Milk River, looked adorable on the internet, and I decided to stay there for the night, and check it out.  We also had a little schooling to do, so we took this time to wrap up some education.  I love stopping in a little town and discovering everything that town has to offer, and Milk River did not disappoint.

First, we stayed at the Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing-on-Stone_Provincial_Park .  They had 64 sites, some with electricity.  They had all the other required RV needs, such as a dump station, water, and showers.  It was pretty basic, no bells and whistles, but still, it was beautiful.  Writing-on-Stone Provincial park is actually sacred ground, a nature reserve very important to the Blackfoot Indians that lived and hunted on these lands for hundreds of years.  It is just the most exquisite prairie land you have ever seen.  So open, and clean, and expansive.  You can lay back and imagine the way it once was, before men came in to build large buildings and design track homes that are practically on top of each other.  

What is most amazing about the park, and the main reason people come to visit, are the native Indian rock carvings and paintings.  The petroglyphs are amazing, even my kids loved staring at the stone carved art that was thousands of years old.  It is a very spiritual place, and oddly reminded me of Sedona, AZ.  The sandstone cliffs, with their gorgeous pictographs were such a site to behold.  Being in the great plains like this is really humbling.  Our lives are so easy, and we tend to take so much for granted.  Life must have been so difficult back then, without all the modern luxuries we have come to expect.  Yet the people survived, and survived so beautifully.  They must have loved living on this land, as their paintings and art depict a happy people, who were in love with their land, their homes and families.

The RV Park was actually a lot of fun.  They only have about 60 units, which were very basic and bare bones, and they were almost full.  One caveat though, they have a maximum length of 30 feet for RV’s.  Of course, our RV was much larger, and they were nice enough to let us stay.  I did pay an extra $10, but it was money well spent.  This park is also very dog friendly, which was something we required since we brought our Chihuahua Gisele with us.  The other campers and RV’ers were all wonderful people, an amazing cross section of people from all different walks of life.  There were some people who were roughing it, with just a tent, and quite a few people like us, living large in our Class A Motor homes.  It is somewhat difficult to say we are “camping” when we are next to someone who doesn’t have a flat screen TV and a queen size bed!

There was surprisingly a great deal of activities to keep us busy.  The park is on the Milk River, which offers swimming, fishing, and everything in between.  The first morning we woke there, we took a long hike.  It was beautiful, and very spiritual in an odd way.  Seeing the ancient hoodoos, and looking up at all the ancient art was very humbling.  We were also very lucky regarding weather, as the daytime temperature hovered around 75 degrees, and evenings dropped to about 55 degrees.  It was a little chilly, but perfect weather for a bonfire, which we had with other campers each of the two nights we spent there.

The only aspect of Milk River that could be deemed negative is that there were not many stores, or places to restock or make repairs.  Luckily our rig was in perfect condition, and didn’t need anything, but it can be frightening to be so off the beaten track.  However, I am sure we were near a Wal-Mart somewhere.  Believe it or not, they even had a Wal-Mart in Yellowknife, in the Northwest Territories!

Please come back on Monday, October 13th for our sixteenth installment, “Lethbridge & Calgary“.  See you there!