My apologies in advance.

Happy Fathers Day! Hi Dad!

Not much to report here. It poured all morning. Everyone else has gone to the ruins at Calakmul, which are three hours away, so I opted out in favor of getting some work done at a leisurely pace and strolling around town to see what I can see later on. I'm happy with my decision, except for one thing. And this is why I'm writing.

I went back to bed for a little while after they left, and when I got up and walked out of my room, I felt a squish under my bare foot. It's been pouring for days, remember? So I figured it was a wet leaf that lost its way, or maybe some stray mud.

Then I looked.

It was an enormous cockroach. Emphasis on "was".

Thanks for reading, I couldn't suffer alone.

(At least it wasn't one of our little lizard friends, then I would have been upset in an entirely different way, kind of like when I ran over the prairie dog in Saskatchewan, which we never need to talk about again.)

Tree of the day: our coconut palm in the backyard, which has sustained some major branch damage after this morning's storm

Edited to add: Great to talk to you today, various family members who were spending Fathers Day together!

Oops, we were too busy being old ladies to post last night

Today (yesterday) we discovered the awesomeness of Jamie's eyesight. She was the first one to spot a 30 foot moose, annnd the first one to spot the prairie. We went to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and found that it should be easy to find a 30 foot moose, but it wasn't. As a side note, 75 year old motorcycle men from BC cannot take legit pictures of people AND a 30 foot moose. See pictures for details.

We discovered that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have not actually been on horseback for 50 years. Also, it is the USA's fault that the Mountees were created and everyone hates American whiskey traders. Colleen would like to add that it was not her people's fault, but only Katie's. Colleen and Amanda became Mountees in the child-sized costumes, although it may have cut off their breathing. Katie and Jamie combined make one Mountee. We watched a troop of RCMP doing drill practice which was sweet, and then we watched 1st graders do it which was creepy.

Then we drove to Saskatoon, and it was really flat with some random hills thrown in for kicks. We found that Saskatoon's downtown is only a block, despite the fact that it's Saskatchewan's largest city. Across from the hotel was a sandwich place called Badass Jack's, so of course we had to eat dinner there. When we enter the hotel, we found an alternate universe/igloo/hobbit hole on the second floor. Sadly, the rest of the hallway to the room did not match that. We went on a mini pub crawl through Saskatoon for Amanda's birthday and sampled some more Canadian beers. Great Western is brewed in Saskatoon, Rickard's White from P.E.I., and Grasshopper from Calgary (our next stop). Jamie and Amanda experienced the coldest temperatures ever when we went into the liquor store to find the Grasshopper, but they survived without frostbite.

After we finished the beer and uploaded some photos, we passed out because we are all secretly 80 years old.

Now we're on our way to Calgary, stopping at Beaver Conservation Area before we leave Saskatoon. This was a group effort, p.s., which is why it's so random. Amanda thanks everyone for the birthday wishes, and thanks to Mom Earp for the tinnybopper card!

We <3 Amanda!

IT IS AMANDA'S 22ND BIRTHDAY AND WE ARE EXCITED!!!

Oh, and we're safely in Saskatoon and we saw Royal Mounties, a 30 foot moose statue, and some prairie dogs today. Yay!

We have skipped time zones twice now and have a third one to go in a few days, so please know that I'm not really still awake at 2.07AM. That's just preposterous.

Hey Fozzie, where've we gone?

Today we drove from Winnipeg to Saskatoon. As mentioned, Winnipeg seemed oddly empty. We figured that's because we arrived on a Sunday evening, but here we are, Monday morning, and it still seems pretty empty. Amanda and I walked around the city a little bit while Jamie and Katie enjoyed sleeping in a little bit. We checked out the hotel's water slide before leaving for the open prairie.

Manitoba is beautiful in its vastness. Nothing but highway, fields, and sky stretching in every direction. We stopped for lunch in a place called White Horse, which featured a statue of a white horse, something about young lovers being killed instead of living happily ever after, the horse was a gift somewhere in there. At lunch we discovered that the oranges that caused us so much trouble at International Falls? One orange hid in the bottom of our bag and made it back through customs and into Canada again!

We have arrived safely in Saskatchewan. Our hostel for the night here in Regina is a really lovely old house. We're the only girls in the building so we have an enormous room to ourselves!