Issy was feeling a bit ordinary yesterday and wakes up feeling a lot worse. Its not the dreaded COVID, surely, we tell ourselves. She managed not to get it when I came down a few months back; we were in very close contact just before I tested positive, so we both thought she must be one of these COVID nevers who won the lottery and are just naturally immune from the dreaded disease. Its just a bit of a cold we tell ourselves, although she decides to keep her mask on when were close to people for the time being just in case.
Today is the very long awaited day when we finally get to see our beloved Emma again for the first time in going on three years. Were meeting her and partner Michael at Hanna, which is out on the prairie a couple of hours east of Calgary. Well be staying there with Michaels parents, LeeAnne and Steve, on their cattle farm. Other than LeeAnne and Steve, Hannas other famous residents have included all four members of top line Canadian rock band Nickelback.
to try to get our bearings. None of the maps on our phones seem to be responding so we resort to on our devices to point us in the right direction. The direction that my phone thinks is north shows up on Issys as being Hmmm. I wasnt aware that viruses were capable of upsetting magnetic fields, but were struggling up with any other plausible explanations.
We decide to trust and soon find ourselves in traffic, so much traffic and roadworks. Emmas told us that there are only two seasons in Canada - winter, and the construction season, and it‘s definitely not winter. We clear suburban Calgary and make our way out into the prairie. We thought it was supposed to be dry as dust out here, but everything looks very green and theres more water than grass in a lot of the paddocks.
I‘m feeling a bit weary so we turn off the Highway into the thriving metropolis of Irricana, population 1,216, in search of drugs and coffee. The pharmacist directs us to a building around the corner where she says we should be able to get a caffeine hit.
The sign on the door says Closed, but as I start to walk away an elderly man emerges and insists that in. The establishment is a Lounge (no minors), which I think might be code for a bar. My host, Gary, mentions something about China in a thick oriental accent, so I ask him when he first came here. It seems that accents are sometimes a bit slow to fade; he says he first arrived in Canada in 1965. Gary (good Chinese name?) and his wife are delightful people and couldnt be more friendly if they tried. I suspect they dont see a lot of outsiders. When I tell him Im from Oz he says that he thinks he remembers someone from New through here a decade or so back.
Wed read about the town of Drumheller as the home of the apparently famous Royal Tyrrell Museum which houses a large collection of dinosaur fossils. A visit there was listed in one article we saw as the number 21 thing to do in the whole of Canada. I suppose the author could have been eight years old, but even so that seems like a pretty
high ranking given - Niagara Falls, the CN Tower, Rocky Mountains, etc etc. The town is also at the centre of Canadas Badlands, and its easy to see why as we head into it down a steep hill with precipitous and heavily eroded bare slopes on either side. The town clearly takes its reputation as the Worlds Dinosaur Capital very seriously - there are dinosaur statues everywhere - sitting and standing on street corners, on the tops of buildings, and hanging out of windows. Visitors can even get views of the valley by climbing the 106 steps inside the Worlds Largest Dinosaur statue. The towns only theatre is currently screening, yep, you guessed it, Jurassic World. The whole place is insanely cute. We stop for supplies, but Issys feeling worse than ever so we decide to pass on the Museum for now.
We wait patiently inside a roadside fast food cafe in Hanna for Emma to meet us.
