In July, I travelled to the beautiful city of Medicine Hat, Alberta to visit family. It had been six months since I'd seen my oldest daughter, Lisa, and her family in person. The only other time Lisa and I were apart this long was when she was travelling in Europe after completing university in Calgary. Both of those time periods felt like an eternity.
The past six months of not seeing her face-to-face, hugging her, and making in-person plans for our next book projects as authors and co-publishers was especially long with the added stress of COVID-19. I missed her and her husband, Kyle, and their two daughters, especially as the youngest was learning to talk. So when one of my closest friends invited me into her pandemic bubble to go along for a drive to Alberta, I gladly accepted. We'd both been careful about self-isolating, sanitizing, and wearing face masks when we occasionally went out in public in our city of Regina, and we continued with precautions on our journey west.
Medicine Hat is a lovely city, with the South Saskatchewan River, the hills and coulee/ravine adding to its beauty. Deer can be seen wandering through the neighbourhoods and the people who live there are typical, friendly Canadian Prairie folk who help each other out and care for their community.
The efforts to revitalize the downtown area of Medicine Hat include numerous wall murals that Lisa and I enjoyed during a morning work break.
We also talked about our newest book ventures - my two volumes of Flight: Stories of Canadian Aviation and the newest spiritual guidebook that Lisa is writing to add to her other three great guidebooks. This is exciting stuff!
Watch the video we shot in The Hat for details, including the title of Lisa's upcoming book!
All in all, it was a soul-filling visit with much opportunity to work and play with some of my favourite people.
