Summer Vacation: Plan B

I guess if you've spent any time around Francesca or me, you've heard how we got shafted out of our vacation beach house on South Padre Island. Well, suffice it to say, if you're planning a trip to Padre, don't rent a house from a woman named Trish Smith. Just don't even think about it. God did provide something else, though. Something way better. He likes to do that! Here it is.



It has 4 bedrooms, sleeps 14 and has a kiddie pool in the deck! We're taking Mia and her friend Jordan and 7 of our kids. It's on Dauphin Island, Alabama and there appears to be nothing but sand and houses on that part of the island. We've already paid the down payment so it's on!

O Canada! Part Deux (the pictures)

I know it's taken a while to get these up, but I tell you, It takes forever to get a lot of pictures up at one time. And I still don't like how it looks. I just don't have time to study html in my free time right now! Is it this hard for everyone???


When we flew into Calgary, it was getting dark so there wasn't much to see. We checked into our hotel in Banff and hit the sack. The "sack" by the way, was apparently filled with concrete. I gather Canadians don't sleep much because their beds were extremely hard. I woke up the next morning when the sun came peeping through the curtains at 4:30 am, but decided that was a little too early so I went back to sleep and got up at around 6:15. I got dressed and went out into the town to take a few pictures.

Our hotel with beautiful mountains behind it.

 Cool, old, Presbyterian church.

Breakfast at a local hangout. Mmmmm...lots of crispy bacon!

I wanted one of these so bad. So.....I went back later and got one. I expected it to taste like a gigantic turtle. You know, chocolate, caramel and peanuts. It was called a Murtle and instead of peanuts it had cashews. It looks better than it actually was. (Not worth 6 Canadian dollars!)

I know you can't tell by the picture, but this hotel was spectacular! It's called the Fairmont Banff Springs and it was built in 1888. It was made in the style of a Scottish castle and it's just massive. It has 770 rooms and if you're thinking about staying there, a basic room for two will only set you back $459 Canadian.

Okay, this is Lake Louise and it was absolutely beautiful. The color is normally a turquoise green, but just 2 days earlier it was frozen over. The blurry looking stuff around the edge of the lake is the floating shards of ice because it had just recently melted. Close-up below. Anyway, the color comes from a mineral in the mountains you see behind the lake. It's a glacier fed lake, so the glaciers grind this mineral under them and they go into the lake with the water that comes off of them. The mineral floats in the water and absorbs all the colors in the spectrum except green and blue so that's why the lake is that color. Because it had just thawed, the pretty green color had only made it about half way across the lake.

 

  

Another picture of Lake Louise with the glaciers behind it.

Halfway up the trail to two other lakes up in the mountains. The first was Mirror Lake and the one higher up was Lake Agnes aka Lake Agony. My hiking distance so far is 4 miles.

At the top of the falls that come from Lake Agnes. There was a teahouse up there, but it was still closed for the winter. Arrrrgggggghhhh.

Day . Took the Jasper Tramway up to the top of Whistlers Mountain.

View from the top. That's Jasper down below. Cute little town.

I know it looks like an ant trail, but that's the hike up to the very top of the mountain ridge that Elliott and his brother Eric just had to climb. I only made it halfway up. I think I could've died. If you're counting, my mileage so far is 4.5 miles.

View from the top. Elliott, of course, took the picture.

My Moses, coming down from the mountain with the freshly inscribed tablets!

Beautiful lake. Look how clear and blue the water is!

Here we are in front of our cute cabin in Jasper at 10:00pm! Imagine trying to put your kids to bed when 10:00 looks like this!

We hiked on a trail through Maligne Canyon that followed a river. We saw a place by the bank where the water was bubbling out. What does my husband do? He decides to stick his arm in up to his elbow. Boys! It turns out, it was an underground river that was flowing into the main river.

This is Pyramid Lake. So beautiful and tranquil. Until.....

Elliott rents a kayak that is way too small for our weight combined, then starts rocking it to scare me. I had a camera around my neck with about 200 pictures in it. Is he insane? All you could hear on this lake of tranquility was me screaming at my husband to sit still!

How's that for the retired life? That's Elliott's mom rowing her newly retired husband around in a row boat! Elliott, don't get your hopes up!

If there's something to climb, the boys will climb it. Now I know where that comes from!

Couldn't go to Canada without taking a picture of a Moose. Or is that an Elk?

Last day we were there, it looked like the weather was going to turn bad. There were some low clouds that actually covered the tops of some of the mountains. John had said before we left that he wanted to see a cloud on the top of a mountain, so this picture is for him!

O Canada!

This is just one of the many breathtaking scenes I am going to experience on my vacation that starts the day after tomorrow! Woohoo! I thought I would go ahead and let everyone know that I will not be blogging again until next week. I can just hear the laughter since it's been a week since I last blogged! I started out only mildly excited about the whole trip, but now I'm pretty pumped. Elliott's dad just retired from teaching/coaching and for his retirement, he wanted to go to Canada with his family. So Elliott, his parents, his brother and wife, Katie, and I are heading north! I had the job of picking out all the accommodations, so we'll see if I have a future as a travel agent.

I am so looking forward to how beautiful everything is going to be. You would also think that I might feel closer to God in a place like that, but somehow, even at that altitude, I doubt I could feel any closer to Him than I do in my sweet home town of Clyde.

The kids are staying around here with family and everything seems to be in place....except Elliott's passport. My mother-in-law has everyone in the state of Texas, I think, working on getting that thing here. We both applied for one in the middle of March. (If you're needing a passport anytime in the near future, go now and get it done!) I was only renewing mine so I got it about a month ago, but Elliott's is only on it's way because we have hounded them about it. We even paid the extra $60 to have it expedited. I'm believing that it's going to be in the mailbox tomorrow!

I'm starting to get a little anxious about the packing. I'm trying to remember all the things I've forgotten on past trips or all the good ideas I've heard people say you shouldn't travel without. I've still got some laundry to do, but not too much since I'll be pulling out some of my fall clothes for this trip. The weather is supposed to be in the low 70's during the day and the low 40's at night. I'm not sure I'm hot enough yet to go back to fall weather!

I have my Ipod loaded with good worship music, soaking music and podcasts. I am taking several books I have been wanting to read - When Heaven Invades Earth (still haven't read it), Mindless Eating, The Omnivore's Dilemma and The Tipping Point. I haven't decided if I'm going to read a little of each book or one at a time. Ever since I was a kid, I would eat the food on my plate one food at a time. I never mixed. I wonder if that's how I'll be with reading. I've never had so many good books in my queue!

All in all, I'm going to miss all my besties, but I'm looking forward to good times with the family, alone time with Elliott, good food, rest, relaxation and some quality time with Jesus in some of the prettiest country there is. I'll see you all next week!