Three Sisters Fernie on the way back to Alberta
My journey through Southern Alberta took me back to Calgary for a few days, then up to Didsbury for an extended stay. I was going to be building a couple of sheds, upgrading a parking pad, and performing a few small build/maintenance items where I was staying. I thought I might get away with a month, but it turned into more like two months to get everything done. I’m not on a schedule or such, but that was a good chunk of time not out camping! But there were a few things on the way there, read on to see!
I only had a short visit in Calgary, taking care of a bit of business at my rented out home, that I still live in as far as the rest of the world is concerned. Remember, the system is not set up for “no fixed address” travelling in an RV, you need some sort of permanent residence to call home, even if you visit it very infrequently. Taking care of business also involved a few things at the step-mom’s house, but mostly it was to take stock of what I’d be back to do later in the season when I came back down that way. Painting was on the list. I hate painting, but I still would rather ‘pay myself’ and just do it. I’m retired on a budget, this is how you do things to keep your nest egg from being depleted too quickly.
Innova 3210RS OBD2 code reader.
Lastly, I got myself an Innova 3210RS OBD2 engine code reader. My check engine light had never gone off after the purge valve replacement in Yuma. While those things can take a while to reset, it had been plenty of time driving from Yuma! What put me over the top was a new problem: my RV was occasionally dropping its idle to almost stall, then recovering, then dropping it again 10 seconds later, repeat ad nauseum. It was time to see what the engine light was saying, and hopefully find out what this new problem might be. This code reader was on sale, so for the price of a really cheap code reader that just gives you a code you need to look up, this thing connects to your phone and gives you human readable error codes. I am still getting small leak in the fuel evaporative system, according to the code. So perhaps the purge valve is not the problem? I pulled no other codes on the strange low idle I had gotten driving, so we’ll have to monitor and see what is what. I like this code reader – I can monitor the engine while driving and see what comes up when the low idle happens. I may not know what it means, but I can give that info to a mechanic thanks to being able to save the data session.
I had one surprise on my drive to Didsbury. I have driven that stretch of highway 2 so many times that I know every stop, of which there are not many good ones for an RV. But I got surprised by the best stopping spot at a gas station complex having the whole north lot closed off. That left the side of the road, which had no parking signs all over, and the small south lot which was busy. A quick look at the googles made me decide this was my excuse to go explore Crossfield a bit. If something struck my fancy, lunch would be dine out rather than just a sandwich prepared in the rig.
Shorty’s from the entrance
A couple of backroads later, I was in town, parked in front of Banta Park. It’s not much to look at other than having a splash pad for the kids on hot summer days, but the picnic tables would be good for lunch outside if nothing appealed on the main street to my south. I ended up grabbing a seat at The Diner at Shorty’s, a former garage that has been redone as a restaurant. I’d heard of this place before, with the fish getting particularly rave reviews. I was not disappointed either, the cod was excellent, not too breaded and not too greasy. I will stop here again for that burger alone. My one complaint was the lack of local beer selections. Have at least one local brew bottle available – there are several breweries in the towns up and down the highway 2 here that you could represent with a selection or two.
Shorty’s Alberta licence plate wall
Shorty’s has a historic licence plate wall that is pretty cool, especially if you are a long time Albertan and actually remember seeing some of these old plates back in the day. But in my case, it is not only cool, but useful. I have a bunch of old pictures and slides from my Dad, a lot of which I only have a vague sense of when the picture was taken. A car plate can nail down the year, which is very nice trying to figure out some of the older unlabeled stuff for sure!
Faux restoration left and Ghostbusters Afterlife set in a real facade restoration
Crossfield is a pretty small town, just close enough to be a growing Calgary suburb town. Business along the strip look well maintained. A recent street renewal and old building restoration looks nice, if a bit fake in my opinion. Restoring old buildings is tricky – how much to rip out and replace with new, and how much to just build from scratch in the old style. Crossfield never was very big so it does not have a lot of old buildings to start with. I’d say they have done well with what they had, just a little overkill on the facade rebuilds taking away the old time character on some of the older buildings. Reviewing old street view imagery, I can see why there is a lot of new fake stuff. Some of those old buildings have had previous updates going back a ways that were pretty ugly. There probably wasn’t anything left of the original so you’re left with a faux version representing the historic feel. The better buildings were good enough to attract “Ghostbusters: Afterlife”, of which the Sherriff’s office was next door to Shorty’s as you can see in this historical Streetview image. That is a real restoration, now they need to get more businesses in there to fill up these buildings.
After lunch, it was onto Didsbury, and my two months of building stuff. But there was some fun stuff in there too. We’ll see you next time for that!
