Text 32541, 84 rader
Skriven 2013-01-11 11:14:00 av JIM WELLER (1:123/140)
Ärende: trip 1
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Happy New Year Everyone...

Roslind kept herself occupied over many weekends before we started
our family Christmas trip making everyone's favourite seasonal
cookies including shortbread using my mom's old recipe. She rather
overdid it, filling up far more cans than we could pack into our
luggage without paying an extra baggage penalty. Ironically Raine
has become an accomplished baker as well since she became a mom and
had already made several batches herself, as did Ray's girlfriend
Becca (Rebecca), so we were completely overwhelmed with sweet
goodies everywhere; all three of us have several cans each packed
away in our deep freezers for future consumption.

The Saturday before the trip we attended my office Christmas party.
We had had a good year so it was held in a private dining room and
catered by Chef Pierre. Naturally the booze flowed very freely and
there was lots of great buffet food, the highlight of which was two
nicely seasoned, prime quality standing rib roasts, prime prime if
you will, one very rare, the other done medium with lots of crispy,
crusty cap meat for those of us who like that. I had a huge thick
slab of the rarest centre cut, well over a pound, garnished with a
half cup of burnt ends and even went back for a second slice.
Outstanding!

The trip down and back on Westjet was more pleasant than I expected,
not up to Canadian North's or First Air's standards of course but
certainly far better than Air Canada's. They are also the cheapest
of the four carriers and the one with the best air miles Visa
program so they have become my airline of choice. I am tired of
driving thousands of km every time I take a trip and plan to fly a
lot more in the future, renting a car upon arrival.

We spent Christmas at Ray's new place in Stony Plain, a small town
half an hour away from Edmonton, then went on to Fort McMurray with
Raine and family on Boxing Day until Jan 3, then back to Stony by
Red Arrow (a way better bus line than Greyhound - clean buses,
comfortable seats, lots of magazines, complimentary onboard snacks
and drinks, good movies, Wi-Fi, even a trip attendant, plus they
don't have mad men decapitating their fellow passengers) for 6 more
days before flying home.
                                             
Stony Plain doesn't have a real downtown, as it has become a bedroom
community of Edmonton, just rows of shopping malls lined up along
the highway so all the restaurants are chains. Fort McMurray isn't
much better in that respect so I'll mention just a few of the meals
we had out.

Christmas Eve: at Ray's home in Stony Plain. In attendance:
ourselves, Ray, Neekha, Becca and her three little ones, Roslind's
Ex, Raymond, and his partner Marlene plus Raine, Lyle, Lexi and
Charlee. Lots of tasty nibbles featuring shrimp and deer sausage
with good whisky all provided by Raymond.

Raymond has always enjoyed hunting and fishing a lot and now that he
has retired he can indulge himself. Among other things, he has now
acquired a 26 ft cabin cruiser that sleeps four. (I think I may have
mentioned this last summer; he had it trucked from Nanimo on Vancouver
Island where he lives up to Hay River, NWT and took it up the
Mackenzie River from its source (Great Slave Lake) to its mouth on
the Arctic Ocean just north of Inuvik while the truck drove there
via Whitehorse to pick him up and take him home. A dream trip... an
1800 km boat trip through pristine wilderness with just 5 small
scattered hamlets along the way, days without seeing another human
being, amazing scenery and fishing (also hunting) with a 10,300 km
round trip to set it up. (When he was in his 20s he made the same
trip by canoe.)

In any event he not only fishes, he shrimps and he brought several
pounds of truly delicious extra jumbo shrimp that he had caught and
frozen.

He also brought the damned fine venison sausage that he had shot,
butchered, ground, seasoned (secret recipe!), stuffed and smoked
himself.


YK Jim


... Road trip! Whoo Hooo!

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