Lack of Camping

I got sick and we couldn't camp.  That doesn't mean we still didn't see a whole lot of Canada stuff on the remainder of our road trip.

We drove the Ice Fields Parkway between Banff and Jasper and we saw so much wildlife.

Not that kind of wildlife.  This kind of wildlife.

We saw glaciers.

We saw waterfalls.

And we even stopped to take a dip in an unusually shallow river.

See that little dot in this picture? That's Eddy! I'm standing on the shore and he's nearly halfway out into the river about up to his knees in water.

You can see in these pictures how much wildfire smoke we saw in Jasper. Because I was sick and because it was very smokey, we headed to Vancouver a few days earlier than planned.

We went straight to the Vancouver Aquarium, obvs.

We also crossed the Capilano Suspension Bridge (which we visited on vacation when I was a kid!)

The last thing we did before heading home was to check out a botanical garden.

They had pumpkins already!  This was mid summer. 

Right, also, we pulled over and excitedly took our picture here and giggled a bunch.

A great trip despite the sad lack of camping.

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Castle in the Woods

This summer we decided to drive to Canada.  For the first leg of our trip we stayed in a literal castle in the midst of Banff National Park.

It was stunning. 

Statues everywhere. Also, we had a fancy tea.

Then we walked down to check out the river.

Eddy put his feet in. It was severely cold.

Next, we were slated to camp in Banff and Jasper National Parks.

HOWEVER... Remember that fancy tea we had earlier on the trip? Turns out I got terrible food poisoning. So severe that we, unfortunately, had to cut our camping plans short. See how we coped in the next blog post.

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Valentine's Surprise

I have always maintained that the easiest way to ensure that someone is surprised is to present them with something at a time not in any way affiliated with that holiday. At least, that's what I'm telling myself. In reality, I just booked January 14th instead of February 14th by mistake and then later decided to leave it. He'll never suspect a Valentine's gift in January muahahahahaha.

And he didn't.

So early on a January morning, we headed out to one of our favorite neighborhood joints, Helser's, for breakfast. If you eat here on the weekend, plan on waiting multiple hours. If you show up around dawn on a Friday, you have the place to yourself.

We weren't long on the road before we started seeing the white stuff.

Norman was not impressed.

But it really was a very beautiful drive.

Finally, we got Eddy all outfitted for skiing.

In the evening we met up for some Cosmic Tubing complete with laser show, live DJ, and no walking or pulling your tubes back up a freaking hill!

Next morning, we headed out to the Timberline Lodge because we wanted to see some stuff from The Shining.

Turns out, what we liked most, though, was this crank meat slicer at the breakfast buffet.

Thanks so much to my dad for the skiing gift certificate!

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Cave Kayaking, The Wet Version

Remember that time we went to the Channel Islands and I promised that we'd share pictures from our underwater camera?  We finally got around to having them developed!  They came out with a very grainy patina, which I actually really love.

Here we are gearing up.

It was such a beautiful day.

From inside of a cave.

A harbor seal was very curious about us that day.

Look at us pretending like we didn't argue all day about which way to paddle.

The end of the day.

Hooray for traditional film photography.

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15 Wishes

When the road trip was over, we swung back through San Jose to pick up some stuff we packed specially for temporary housing and, of course, to pick up Molly and Rupert.

Also we had this 15¢ that we needed to "spend".

We found a dime and a nickel on our road trip and we hoarded them because we wanted to try to gamble them on the slots in NV. However, we were thwarted since all slots are electronic now and you can't just play coins in any machine you darned well please. Sad face.

But I had a plan. A plan for if we could find the time on our last day in CA to make it to the San Jose Rose Garden, where we loved to hang out and volunteer when we lived in the neighborhood.

We stood at the little fountain in the rose garden as dusk fell and we made 15 wishes (one per penny, that is) for our future together in Portland. Then we tossed our coins into the fountain!

Apparently, this is what I look like just after I throw something.

My coin made it into the second tier of the fountain!

We also, you know, looked at all the pretty roses.

Here's to a brand new future in a brand new city!  Look out, Portland, here we come!

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