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1 to 15 August 2016 16 to 31 August 2016

Monday August 1, 2016

I am out looking for caches again this morning.
I do not know why, but I have a hard time finding caches here in Medicine Hat.
Here is one like a tractor wheel. Kind of hard to see amongst the garbage.

I am disappointed not finding as many caches as I could!

The new Jason Bourne movie is out and we are going to the movies.

We liked the movie, it was a Jason Bourne movie, nothing more nothing less!

From noon until about 8 pm, we have the sun beating down on this side of the MH. We cannot sit outside because it is too hat.
When the outside temperature is 30°C, inside it is 40°C.
Since we only have 30 amps power, we can only run one AC at the time and let me tell you, it is working hard to keep the inside temperature at a reasonable level, like 28°C!

We decided to go by the office and ask if we could change site to one in the opposite direction so our door side could be in the shade in the afternoon.
No problems they said! Tomorrow we will be moving...

Tuesday August 2, 2016

One more hot day today, 32°C! We moved this morning. We spent the afternoon outside, in the shade, under the awning!
We really like our new site.

I am even cooking my breakfast sausages in the afternoon.

I am out chatting with our neighbor in the evening.

We have many thunderstorms around us, but nothing over us!
They call for a cooling of the temperature tomorrow.
We will see!

Wednesday August 3, 2016

A boring day with rain and 13°C.
Even with the rain, it is nice not to sweat all day while you are doing nothing!

I skyped with Jeremy this morning. He is back home from being on the road with the Canadian Snowbirds. In a few days, he will get back on the road for a little more than a week I think.

To do something different, we went for a walk in the local Walmart.

It is supposed to warm up tomorrow...

Thursday August 4, 2016

Medicine Hat is built next to the South Saskatchewan River. It is about 60 meters below the prairies surrounding it.
I am out looking for caches again this morning.
I am on my way to a small campground close by.
One of the many valleys in the Medicine Hat area.

While I was looking for some caches, I can across these solar panels!

Here is what it is all about.
I think it supplies as many as 150 houses.

Here is why they built it here!

The small campground I was talking about.
It is only a campground with 2 services, water and electric, but lots of shades.

This is the generating station for the solar panels. I am going down the trail to the South Saskatchewan River with my bike.

The trail goes under the Transcanada highway. We can see the river from here.

The lower part of the city is next to the river. In 2013 they had a major flood here.
That is when they decide to build the levee to protect the city.

Michele and I are out looking for caches this afternoon.
Here is one!

While going to a new cache, we saw a doe with her fawns. Notice on the left photo, the babies are feeding!

I have been looking for caches in Medicine Hat by myself a few times and I had a hard time finding some of them. I taught I was losing my "touch". Now looking for caches with Michele, I realize that I may not be the problem. Michele also think the caches hidden in Medicine Hat are hidden in a different way and we are not used to it. Is it the description, the hints or the logs left by other cachers? We do not seem to get it!
Oh well!

We still found 8 caches and had 3 DNF.

Friday August 5, 2016

The BIG day.
They are delivering our new mattress today!

Where is our old mattress?

Outside on the ground!

Our old mattress is so bad, we do not even want to give it away to the Salvation Army!
I do not want to pay $25 for the removal of the mattress, I am cheap I guess!
The neighbor told me many other campers have put their old mattress in the dumpster before. Why not me?
I am cutting the old mattress into pieces.

Two and three pieces!

We did not put the whole mattress in the dumpster because we did not want to "fill" one dumpsters with a big mattress.

We are lucky because the delivery was scheduled between 1 and 5 pm. They delivered the mattress at 1 pm.
We cannot wait to sleep on it!!!

Even if it is 30°C, I decide to sanitize our fresh water system.
Even if we are always taking fresh water from known source, every water has a different composition, some are hard water and some are soft water and anything in between. We sanitize as a precautionary measure only.

First, I fill the fresh water tank with a solution of water and bleach.

I drain the hot water tank, flush it to remove any residue in the bottom of the tank.
Next, I fill the hot water tank from the fresh water tanks and run the water from the fresh water tanks in all the plumbing of the MH.
I let the mixture of water and bleach sit in the plumbing for a little over an hour.

After an hour and some, I drain the fresh water tanks and fill it with just fresh water. I "run" this water in all the plumbing until I no longer smell the bleach, it takes a while!
I drain again the fresh water tank, fill it one last time and run some more water in the plumbing.
I do this once or twice a year.
This is just a preventive measure.

This evening, we are watching the opening ceremonies of the Rio 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

Saturday August 6, 2016

Michele asked me to join her for some yard saleing. Why not!
We are on our way downtown, literally "down"town.

Medicine Hat has a few murals.

It turns out I am the one buying the most!
A small DVD player for $5.00 and a Keurig brewer for an amazing $2.00!

I bought an old oil can opener for my brother Rolland.

Michele also bought some items for Gabriel.

Back at home, Michele is watching the Olympics games.

Of course, I also watch the games.

Sunday August 7, 2016

Tuesday, we switched site to get one where we would have more shade when we are sitting outside in the afternoon.
This is the road behind us.

Our new site. It almost looks like our site in Yuma and Quartzsite, Arizona in 2013/2014.

While we were at the dealership to get the last warranty work done on our MH, I asked them what product was the best to protect the countertops? They recommended "Gel-Gloss".
We can see I am doing the covers for the sinks and stove tops.

This is the "before" and "after" of the countertop.

Around the sinks.

We are very happy with the results with "Gel-Gloss".

We spend the afternoon outside watching the games. I actually went talking to our neighbor.

We have been under a weather advisory since the end of the afternoon.
By 9 pm it turned into a warning and it started to rain hard, lightning and thunder, but lucky us, no hail.

The thunderstorms lasted until late into the night!

Monday August 8, 2016

It is another hot day, but we decided to go and see the "Saamis Tepee" or the "World Largest Tepee"!
Here is the city's explanation on the origin of the name Medicine Hat.

"Medicine Hat" ... the Legend Behind the Name...
Medicine Hat inherited its name from the native word "saamis" which means medicine man's hat. A number of legends tell the story of how this city was named. You can find them online or on the city's website.

Here is the famous Tepee. it has a height of a 20 stories building. It was constructed for the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.
It was to represent the First Nation heritage to Canada. In 1991, it was moved to Medicine Hat.

One of the mural and we so much details.

I only have 6 out of the 8 painting explaining the First Nation culture from the beginning to today.

On our way back from the tepee, we made a quick stop at the SuperStore and checked out the meat department. When meat is a day away from its "best before date", they reduce it by 30%.
We bought a family size hamburger meat pack. I am cooking it right away and freeze it in one pound bags.

Michele watching the Games outside!

Once again, we got hit by big thunderstorms after suppertime. It lasted until well into the night.

Tuesday August 9, 2016

It is cooler today, we went from +30 to +26°C!
Why not go and look for some caches in Medicine Hat!
This one was very good, a big, green caterpillar, not a real one of course!

Another one disguise as a spider's nest.

From six o'clock on, it rained and at times we had thunder!

I forgot, we found 7 caches today!

Wednesday August 10, 2016

We are caching again today. We want to find enough to take us over the 2000 caches found.
One of the cache was this giant (fake) spider. They seem to have a thing for spiders here in Medicine Hat!

We are starting the "Power Saw series" of caches.
The "Power Saw series" has a total of 98 caches. Nothing really hard as it is there mostly got get your number up.
We need at least 19 caches to hit the 2000 caches found.
This is the reason we do this series.

You can see for miles and miles and you watch the weather around you. We have 3 storms around us. Here are two of them.

We had to stop looking for caches because one of the storm caught up to us.
We had a really good harvest of caches today, 30 of them.

And for a change, we had rain at the end of the day.

Thursday August 11, 2016

Our old camera, a PowerShot ELPH 330HS, is starting to show signs of wear.
What am I talking about? I did a quick count and I found we have taken over 55,000 photos with this camera and the quality of the photos is going down.
I think we got our moneys worth with this camera.
While we are in Alberta and they only have the GST tax here, we decided to buy another camera here.
We loved out ELPH 330HS, so we decided to get one along the same line.
Here is our new addition, a purple PowerShot ELPH 360H. This is the best quality/price in our price range. We paid $231.00.

We keep on watching the Games on TV.

I made a little boo-boo while cooking supper! I over boiled some water and milk and some got into our little table top burner.
Time to take it apart and clean the inside!

They way they assembled this little table top burner is very good, barely a drop of liquid got in.

We are in shock! No rain this evening!

Friday August 12, 2016

Just before lunch, we drop by the "Medicine Hat Brick and Tile" for a guided tour.
It was in operation from 1886 to 2010 and this is Alberta oldest industrial site.
Why did it stop operating in 2010?
In 2010, the water level in two surrounding creeks rose far higher than usual. The water broke through a wall and flooded every nook and cranny at the factory. When the water receded, it left 12 inches of silt everywhere. The flooding not only destroyed thousands of drying bricks. It also destroyed cutting-edge automated robot circuitry.
This marked the end of an era.
The "I-XL" factory was donated to the "Friends of Medalta Society".
A drilling rig used in the 1930's. It is the same as in the photo.

Because of the water contamination from the flood, the factory left all the bricks on site. The brick cannot be used. On the right, we can see all the different types of bricks they were making at the time.

The factory at the turn of the century. Medicine Hat had many bricks and pottery factory.
Why so many?
The abundance of good clay in the surrounding hills, coupled with the abundance of natural gas underground, made Medicine Hat the ideal place for those factory.

The flooding of 2010.

You can see the water level of the 2010 and 2013 floods.
You can imagine the damage to the circuity (right photo).

Bricks are made in two ways. The first was "pressed brick". The clay and small amount of water was forced into steel molds and mechanically compressed into bricks. The other way was by "extruded brick".
Down below you can see the press and the different molds used to make bricks.

Once the bricks were formed, they were taken to the tunnel kilns (oven) for firing.
When the flood came in 2010, the drying bricks were in water since they were not "fired", they simply returned to their original form, mud!

If you have ever seen a commercial pizza oven, you can say the tunnel kiln is the same type of oven.
The kiln is 270 feet long and in the center of the tunnel, the temperature is about 2150°F (1180°C). It takes about 40 hours for the bricks to make the entire 270 feet trip in the tunnel.

After the visit, we have lunch at the local TacoTime.

Our next visit is at the pottery "Medalta".
What is the name "Medalta"? It is simply the combined Medicine Hat and the original post office short form for Alberta, Alta.

We have visited the Claybank brick factory in 2013. It is very similar.
Some of the old beehive kilns.

The dome of the beehive kilns rely on gravity to stay together. There is no mortar holding this structure together.

The guided tour is starting!

Here is how a bowl is made!

The factory had many extensions over the years. The arrow points to some timber that was burnt during a fire in the factory.

This is the old factory where they crushed the clay into powder.

The industrial archaeologist found some very interesting writing on the bathroom walls. From jokes to recipes for making the right "mud".
The doors were added when women started to work in the factory.

The "Schuster Spin Press" machine is technically a mechanized potter's wheel.
It was used for making small pots and plates. A good operator could make 4,000 bowls a day.
The prints on the floor are to show you the steps the potter had to take to make a single bowl.

We had the chance to see a bowl made the old way.

The numbers on the big crocks indicates the number of gallons it contains.
Can you see what is in each big crocks?

Funny...

What is the purpose of those two containers?
Bed warmer, you fill them with hot water and put them in your bed at night to keep you warm!

We enjoyed the visit of the two factories.

I almost forgot, we bought a used "Brake Buddy" from somebody on Kijiji this morning.
A "Brake Buddy" is a supplemental braking system for the car when it is being pulled behind the MH. Ours no longer works.

It was a good day!

Saturday August 13, 2016

What do you do on a Saturday morning?
Garage saling!
This one was at a local church while other were at private homes.

We bought a few things.
Time for lunch and on the cheap!
A Pizza from Little Caesars Pizza at only $5.99.

After we got home, I started to put away stuff and getting ready for tomorrow's departure.
Michele is looking after the inside.
It is still a warm day at +30°C in the shade!!!

Sunday August 14, 2016

We said our goodbye to our friends in the campground.
First stop is for gasoline, not too bad at $0.969 per liters.

In less than 10 minutes, we are at the mall, next to the MacDonald, waiting for Danielle and Gabriel.
We are a little early.
It is so warm outside that we have to run the generator to use the AC and keep the inside cool.

Gabriel making faces!!!
He is at the age when he is changing so fast!

Once on the road with Gabriel, Michele does not waste time and gives treats to Gabriel.

Goodbye Alberta, hello Saskatchewan!

Gabriel finally fell asleep after a quick stop at the Swift Current's Walmart.

We left Medicine Hat at around 1 pm and got to Jeremy's place shortly after 6 pm.

After setting up the MH, Michele watches some of the Games while Gabriel plays with is "MH toys"!

Gabriel is hunting flies and mosquitoes. He is very good too!

Boy did we hit bugs on the way here.

We are very happy to be back at Jeremy's place. Jeremy will be back tomorrow afternoon from his "swing" with the Snowbirds.

Monday August 15, 2016

Time to try the clothes Michele bought Gabriel!

Gabriel is done with a puzzle that is used to measure how tall he is.

Pure happiness!

Jeremy's girlfriend, Michelle, had a chance to go and visit Jeremy at the Abbotsford air show in B.C.
There were many spouses going too!
Michele, Angela (Michelle's mother), Gabriel, Dylan and I are waiting to Michelle's airplane to land.
To pass the time, we play with Ladybugs.

Dylan cannot wait to see his mother.

Shoot! I forgot to take photos of Michelle!

Gabriel with a jar to observe insects. He also has plastic bug to practice. He also plays with plastic soldiers, I played with the same one when I was young!!!