Wow, what an awesome 6 months its been!

We arrived in Edmonton, Canada early June 2011 to see our new purchase, a 30 foot Winnebago motorhome (fondly named "Miss Adventure VI") that we had just purchased sight unseen from www.craigslist.com. Pat was born in Canada, so knew that cold wet rainy weather is always in the forecast. As we have developed into fairweather riders an RV was a great alternative to a motorcycle.

We have many friends and family who checked out Miss A for us. Thanks heaps to Doug Temple, Kathy Jones (Pat's sister) and Bert Walker! The sellers, Gwen and Gerry were extremely helpful and patient and John and Jerry Burden (Pats friends from University days) decided to share the purchase and use of the motorhome with us. The main stumbling block was insuring the motorhome with an Australian drivers license... so Pat got a Canadian license, we got insurance, registration and we were off!

First priority was to bury Pats Moms ashes in Fairview, Northern Alberta. All of Colleens 4 children and 2 daughter in laws were at the burial and then we had a wake in our RV....she would have enjoyed the party!

Colleens family: Kathy, Pat, Loraine, Bernie, Jocelyn and Belinda at the burial.

Alaska was our next goal! It was a long drive from Edmonton to Anchorage, but we did it in a week (600km days) and met good friends Nevione and Don Crawford who were finishing a cruise there. Anchorage is a wonderful place and we free camped on the city streets from 6pm-9am when the meters were not working!

Fairbanks, Alaska was our most northern point, as the road further north is a rough, dirt road- no good for an RV! Valdez was a highlight in Alaska..watching the seals, sea otters and brown bears all catching the poor salmon trying to get upstream to mate.

Alaskan dogs love to run!

We got a big fright while camping at the end of Homer Spit one night. A Police car had it's sirens blaring and announcing to all that a tsunami was on its way and that everyone must evacuate immediately! The only road in or out was instantly blocked and no vehicles (except motorcycles) could move. We could only sit and wait our fate. It took an hour to make the 2km journey and once we reached the safety of the mainland it was announced that it was a false alarm!!

At Haines we caught a ferry (with the RV) to Prince Rupert via Juneau. It was very expensive due to the size of our RV, but we heard it was a beautiful stretch of water with amazing scenery. Usually we are lucky when it comes to weather...this time we were not, a strong storm followed the ferry for the whole 2 days and we didnt get to see much scenery..oh well! Another time!

Back in Canada, the same storm followed us all the way to Jasper and by then we realised that we had made the right decision to leave our motorbike at home.

Pat lived in Jasper for 10 years (Kate was born there) and has many awesome friends there, so we had a great time. Duncan (Pat's nephew) and Suraya got engaged, so we went back to Edmonton to help them celebrate. We went to Lorraine's (Pat's sister) lake cabin and Doug + Barbs cabin to celebrate Bernie's (Pat's brother) birthday hooning around on Doug's ATV's.

Barb, Doug, Jocelyn, Bernie and Pat on Doug's toys!

Back to Jasper, along the top of the Rockies (gorgeous drive) to Banff. We spent the next 2 months cruising around Calgary, Sparwood, Nelson, Kamloops, Mara, Kelowna, Whistler, Vancouver Island, Vancouver catching up with friends, (I wont mention everyone's name) some Pat hadn't seen in over 30 years!

British Columbia is really picturesque, very lush, green and mountainous, we will be back! Our Cairns neighbour, Caleb travelled with us for a fun filled week and we attended our first HU meeting in Nakusp where we finally met Grant and Susan Johnson. Good friends from Cairns, Skip and Rach were there as well and John and Jerry camped on our couch! We had 5 sleeping in our RV one night (all 3 men snoring and over 6 feet tall!!)- people were amazed how many big bodies piled out of the RV in the morning!! hehe

We crossed into USA mid Sept 2011. Pat is travelling on his Canadian passport, no problem can stay 6 months. Belinda with Australian passport only 3 months! Oh well, lets see as much as we can, then Mexico for Christmas! Next installment...our USA adventures..our goal..to see as many National Parks as we can with our yearly pass.