A Business Trip

On April 9th Karl and I headed to Alberta to some machinery auctions.  We also know a few people out there so we made sure we stopped in for a visit to as many as we could get to... time wasn't always on our side.

The first day of travel we texted my brother and his wife who was coming back from a trip to Grand Forks... we met in Princeton for a coffee... they headed home (west)... we headed east.

We got as far as Grand Forks and decided to spend the night.. we went to the local grocery store and bought us a precooked chicken and some salad and that was our tasty supper! Not sure we needed all that but it was good.

The roads were clear on Hwy #3 (Crowsnest)  but it was still chilly as you can see the lake is still froze over

Beautiful scenery!  It was so nice I didn't even knit!

Here is the AB border! woohoo!

First stop was Iron Springs... where the first auction we were going to attend - close by was my friend Annemarie in Picture Butte so we HAD to visit... she has a sheep farm and can you believe it! I never took one photo of her sheep! She has a good 300 of them!

 This was one of the tractors we were looking at in Iron Springs... but when it goes for $70,000 you may as well buy it new!   The gentleman who was selling was a Japanese fellow who came to AB in 1942   with his family and worked in the sugar beet fields ... then in 1948 they bought this farm and farmed their own sugar beets.  The fellow was originally from Whonnock BC.  If you haven't put history together here... yes, when the Japanese invaded Purl Harbor in WWII, Vancouver and surrounding area gathered up all the Japanese and sent them to other places.  One being Alberta to work in the Sugar beet fields. 

Our next stop was Granum... we had friends that dairy farm here and we hadn't been to their place since our children were very small!  Their dog LOVES to ride on the quad!  I was surprised he didn't fall off.

 Some of their cows still have horns... pretty hard to have head gates for these gals! 

haha! our next stop was Claresholm!  Connie, Cam & Bryon... missing was napping Colin & middle brother was visiting his grandpa...  (I have a "better" photo but couldn't resist using the "bad" Cam)
I LOVE the taxidermy in the background with the mountain sheep on the rock.

Sadly we had to leave and head to Medicine Hat for another Auction... the weather was beautiful! Here is the truck we were looking to get... Karl was on it for $17,000 then it quickly jumped to $20,000 by other bidders... he was asked for $21,000 but for a 1984... nope... not when we have one exactly like it at home and we bought it for $16,000 when it was only 4 years old... this one is 24 years old!  Yes it was in excellent shape but we still had to get it home to BC... so someone else took it home.

Winter was striking AB again... heard that lots of snow was heading our way and we needed to get home so that 1 of our employees (Gary) could fly out to Holland for a family reunion (Granum friends are related to Gary and they were going to the same reunion.)  Also, Charlie wanted to make a trip to MB right after we got home.
This picture was taken outside our car window... we ran into a bit of snow from Fort McLeod and Pincher Creek...

We broke away from the snow and thanks to Twitter and AMA road condition updates... and DriveBC updates we missed all the bad weather. 
We thought this was a cool picture with the clouds settled over the mountain...

We made it all the way home but the trip ended for our car in Hope.  When we went through Princeton I said to Karl "we should stop for fuel".  Karl thought we had enough to get to Hope so we kept going... I kind of worried once we got to Manning Park that we may not make it so we stopped at a Mum & Pop shop and purchased $20 in fuel.  Karl wasn't comfortable getting fuel there but we did. He thought the fuel may not be any good.
We high tailed it to Hope but before getting more fuel we decided to stop at the DQ for dinner before finishing our 1 1/2 hour trip to home.
We came out of the DQ... started the car... and it sounded like someone had put a ruler in a bicycle tire spokes... not good.  We shut it off.. looked under the hood... nothing looked out of the ordinary... tried it again and it sounded terrible still. We thought "uh oh... bad fuel."   We tried to drive it out of the parking lot but was afraid we might do more damage than good.  It was definitely not firing on all cylinders!
We called BCAA and in 30 minutes we had a guy there that just so happened to be a past Mayor of Hope :)   He gave great service and towed us to a local mechanic. 

We called up Katie and the tow driver took us back to DQ... there we waited and Karl analysed... and analysed... and analysed... and... I should have taken out my knitting!

Katie arrived and we got a courtesy ride home :)

The next day we called the mechanic to let him know who had the dead car in his driveway!

He pulled the head off and yikes! Something had definitely gone through the motor... but what? We still don't know at this point.

Again, after much analysing and deliberating... we decided to bring the car home

Getting ready to winch it on board...

Loaded and locked...  Doesn't Karl have a cute butt? LOL

Oh yeah, did I mention the head to the motor is now in the trunk? 

Whose car is following us so closely?!  Geesh tailgaters these days!

Miserable weather... but a good day to get a dead car...

She's home now... but still  has another journey.  We have a guy that wants to analyse it and possibly put another motor in her... so tomorrow she heads to his place.