Oak Lake Manitoba

It's a good thing we were able to avoid the storm that came and went in Manitoba. When we found the small town of Oak Lake it was actually past the official Oak Lake campground. Our maps sent us into this small town where the main roads were closed off due to flooding. The signage for the Oak Lake campground wasn't very clear off of the HWY. We turned around in the small town and headed back where the GPS said we should have gone. (thank-you Iphone!)
Oak Lake was a treasure to be found! The campground was also partially under water so the attendant put us in the most private site.
As you can see Oak Lake is a big, beautiful lake. There is a fairly new golf course down the road. The restaurant at the golf course was one of the worst dining experiences ever! We made up for it with a sunset stroll later in the evening.

Saskatoon

Sorry about the delay in posting..We are actually in Montreal this weekend(pictures to come)
Back to where I left off from Edmonton to Saskatoon!
This is when the scenery became a little less interesting than the first part of the trip.
We pulled into Saskatoon 16 West RV Park on Friday night. We made it in time to check out a friend Micheal Lander play at Mcnally Robinson Bookstore.(the picture shown) Luckily they knew we were coming and reserved us a seat for us as the place was packed. We enjoyed some of the delicious menu items and a frosty beverage. I would give this quaint restaurant/bookstore 5 out of 5 stars overall.

After the show we stopped in to see Micheal's music teaching school called 12 String Studio(www.12stringstudios.com). Then we went on to check out the dueling piano's downtown Saskatoon. Derek and I saw Nickleback's 15 Prevost busses while parking and wiped the drool off our lips and made our way to the Staqato bar. The piano players accept tips, but if you want to hear some of the most requested songs like Mustang Sally and those types of songs you will be dropping $50 bill in the tip jar! ( I think that's great!)
We heard that a really bad storm was coming our way so we decided to stay an extra day in Saskatoon. We had a mellow 2nd night and watched movies as the rain came down sideways for hours on end. Half of the RV park was under water when we left.

Here is a picture of me in the drivers seat-driving the bus-. It was only for a few minutes but yes I did it. Do you like my white knuckles?

Edmonton.....

We arrived in Edmonton and booked into a campground. It's called Shakers Acres. We decided to call it Shady Acres! Many little rodents were burrowing in the ground everywhere and the view was of an oil rig pump. I guess it could be worse though!
Rather than hang out at the campground we wanted to check out the West Edmonton Mall. We took many pictures but I liked this one the best!

That day Derek noticed a fuel leak. We drove over to Fraserway RV in the tow vehicle to see if we could source a mechanic. They mentioned a place called Buses 'R' Us. We made an appointment with them by saying we were passing through town. Otherwise, we might have had to wait a while...Buses 'R' us replaced a fuel line for us early morning and we were on our way to Saskatoon by the afternoon.

Jasper-Magnificant!

The first picture is of a beautiful rest stop area where Terry Fox has a monument. It was a quick Bus maneuver to pull over that last minute off of the HWY! We all needed a stretch and to get a pic of this spot! This was another area we thought we could easily spend more time.

It was a relief to see the booth for Jasper Provincial Park. We were greeted by a very friendly park attendant woman that said "This is the coolest rig I have seen all day, you get to park here for free"! It's only usually around $20 to park but that made us feel great with such a warm welcome to this spectacular park!
We pulled over right on the main drag in Jasper. Surrounded by mountains we left all of our curtains open and soaked in the scenery. We didn't want to stay in a campground that night as most of them were off of the main route. So, we lit some candles and ordered some Italian Food to go. We went to Cassios(www.cassios.ca). It is a very nice restaurant and our server was excellent.
While we were enjoying our dinner and some drinks back at the bus, an enormous moose came galloping down the sidewalk right beside the bus. It looked a little bewildered and was going too fast to get a picture.It was funny!

Runaway Lane on HWY 24

Our first day of heading east down HWY 24 from 100 Mile House to HWY 5. The first picture I took as we were going down was of the runaway lane. It was such a dramatic angle that I thought it was worth capturing. I know how fortunate I was feeling to not know what going up one of those was like!


The next picture was of the bus on the runaway lane! This is something you wouldn't experience(most unlikely to experience)if you have a "Jake Brake". Which we don't. We have "smoked" the brakes before on Duffy Lake Road (11% grade down)between Lillooet BC and Pemberton. I would say the view was worth it though!

Just before the Yellowhead, HWY 24 has an 8% grade down for 10 kilometers. We started off slow at the top of the hill. By the time we were halfway Derek was practically standing on the brake pedal and looked to me and said " the brakes are not responding!" I was trying to rationalize why the tires sounded like they were going over bumps and weren't actually going over bumps! Those noises were the brakes. The smell of smoking brakes was filling the bus and we were headed for the runaway lane.

The biggest fear for me was the unknown..I had never been or wanted to be on one of these lanes I read about in Air Brakes class. We went over the large bump between the HWY and the dirt lane and headed up almost halfway to the top and rolled backwards until we stopped naturally where you see us in the picture.
I went out and blocked the wheels of the bus. We then took the tow vehicle off the bus and waited for about 2 hours until the brakes cooled down.
The maintenance guy we saw taking care of the many lanes on the HWY said that it happens quite often on the HWY 24 and he will see about 1 Tractor Trailer per week flipped over in the ditch.
Once we made it down the rest of the HWY it was smooth sailing from there! Here we come Jasper!