Walmart Canada

Flower and bumble bee in the Walmart parking lot.



We stayed in a Walmart parking lot in Red Deer. I wanted to have the camping in the parking lot adventure and it worked fine. We kept a low profile. Riva doesn't look like an RV. We parked in an isolated corner of the parking lot, closed the curtains and cooked some food that we bought at Walmart for dinner. In the morning, we didn't leave until after 8:30am because the store didn't open until 8am and we had some shopping to do.

I bought an atlas of North America from Walmart. They have a listing at the front of the book of all the Walmarts in North America.

Beeray and Boo were unhappy about the camp-at-walmart experience. Their complaint was the lack of internet service because they couldn't IM their friends. It will be interesting to see how they do when we are in a real camping experience.

Canadian Cell phone

I already had an unlocked phone that had been unlocked by ATT when I traveled to Asia. I don't think that ATT does that service any more. My main phone was not unlocked but it is legal to have it unlocked. There is an online service that unlocks the phones:
http://www.cell-unlock.com/

I paid $25 for the unlock code for my phone. They send you the unlock code, then you insert the foreign sim card and the phone asks for the unlock code. Type in the code and hit enter or OK and the phone is unlacked and able to be used with another provider.

ATT phones and T-Mobile phones are GSM which is the same network as most of the world but Canada, like the USA has many providers that use another network. In Canada, Roger's Cellular is on the GSM network. I believe that there is one other provider in Canada that also uses GSM.

We were too late on Thursday to get to the Rogers store. I needed to buy a sim card and then minutes for that card. As it turned out, though I didn't find out until Friday, Walmart sells sim cards and minutes. The cost for the sim card was $39 and I bought $20 worth of air time. I had to call Rogers using the Walmart phone department phone in order to activate the sim card and minutes. There were several prepay plans, none of them were particularly good deals. I opted for the 25 cents for the first 5 minutes, 15 cents thereafter + 60 cents per minute to call the USA. I am using the phone for just text massages and toll free numbers (though I think I still have to pay local air time). I do have to pay air time when DH calls me. :(

My intention is to use the phone for emergency calls, text messages and toll free numbers. It took me 3 phone calls and a total of 35 minutes on the phone to get the text feature and the phone to work. But it is working now and unlocked and the sim card works in both my unlocked phones. If the price of the sim card were less, I would have bought another sim card, but one will have to do.

Oh Canada

We are in Canada, Lethbridge to be exact. We stayed at a small room, shabby but clean motel called the Pepper Tree Inn. I chose it because they have wifi in all the rooms and the other hotels seem to only have either wired access or wifi in public areas. Apparently it is going to be harder to get on line now that I am in Alberta, Canada.

Crossing the boarder was pretty easy. There was a queue of aboot 30 cars. It took us 30 minutes to get through. At the crossing I presented the lady with our passports, the notarized letter from DH stating that he knows about us going out of the USA and a copy of proof of car insurance that is Canadian approved. The customs lady asked me if I had firearms or any weapons or pepper spray(no) or if I had any items for sale (no). Then she waved us through.

We didn't get a chance to buy sim cards for my unlocked phone and the one that is about to be unlocked. More later on how to do this if I manage. I need to buy a sim card for a gsm phone. Like the USA, Canada has two types of phones. TMsomething and Rogers are both gsm networks which is the kind of phones that I have. I need a Canadia sim card for that type of phone.

Tha Calgary Stampede starts today. For those of you who, like me, don't know what a stampede is, it is Canadian for rodeo. We will be driving through Calgary so we may stop for some portion of the stampede.