If you hold it up to your ear... you can hear the ocean!

Ok... Here's the deal. Lately, I've been starting my blog by letting you know where we are at in real time (since I'm still a few days behind on the blog). However, I've decided to do something a little different this time. Instead of me telling you... you tell me. I will not give any clues except for this one picture. The deal is, you need to tell me where we are (City and State or Province) and why the object in the picture is relevant or what it is. I'll even add to the stakes. For the first person who gets it right by posting the answer as a comment on my blog... We'll take you and your spouse out for dinner when we get back to IA/MN. So take a look and see for yourself. Here is the picture.

P.S. The flags are irrelevant.

REMEMBER: I want the name of the City,

State / Provence and why this picture is relavent or what makes it important. You may have to do a little research for this one!! Don't email the answer... post it as a comment on the blog.

If nobody comes up with the correct answer by the time I blog next, I'll add a clue. By the way, if you really know me, you'll know why I'd drive over 100 miles out of our way to go and see this place!!

Tuesday, September 2. (Happy Anniversary Craig and Shelley!)

We woke up to another gorgeous morning in Kelowna today. The sun was shining brightly and we had good tempertures throughout the night. After packing up our camp, we headed a few blocks over for breakfast. Now, if you're familiar with Canada, I'm sure you've heard of Tim Hortons. For the rest of us, including us up to this point...they are a chain of restaurants throughout Canada. We saw them everywhere, and I mean everywhere. They are on the corner, they are in the malls, they are in gas stations, they are combined with Wendy's... you get the picture. Anyway, Tim Horton was a Canadian who played hockey in the NHL. In 1964, he opened a coffee and donut shop in Ontario. He was tragically killed in a car accident in 1974 but his partner went on to franchise the brand - putting them everywhere. They are like the equilivant of Starbucks in the US except they have rockin' good donuts!! Bambi fell in love with a thing called timbits which are basically just donut holes. Any of you who really know Bambi, know how much she loves a good donut. Especially sour cream donuts with glaze from the Hy-Vee on Kimberly street in Davenport. To this day, we can't go near the Quad Cities without stopping at the Kimberly street Hy-Vee for a donut or two. Actually, the last time we went to Kentucky, we stopped by and Bambi told the gal at the counter that we went out of our way to get these donuts, so she gave them to her for free!

Anyway, these timbits were sour cream donut holes with liberal amounts of glaze, just the way she likes them. Almost enough for her to apply for dual-citizenship!!

We grabbed some timbits for the road (they were gone before we 20 miles down the road I think) and headed back towards the coast.

Before we left the area, I thought it was time for me to get adjusted again. All this driving was giving me a case of sciatica. So we stopped in at a Chiropractor called Dr. David Manns that we happened to drive past in Westbank. We went inside and I asked the receptionist if he could see me and as luck would have it, he was in between patients and took me right in. He was a really nice guy and he did a great job of adjusting me. I'm happy to report that even in light of a few thousand more miles, I'm sciatica free and loving it. I guess this chiropractic stuff really does work. I tell you though, I sure am missing my good friend Dr. Diehl. Since being under his care over the last 5 years, I've forgotten how good it was to get adjusted on a regular basis.

Anyway, we were drawing close to the coast and we noticed that we missed our last chance to take a non-toll road which would bring us to Vancouver. Bambi was reading one of our books to me out loud and we just missed the exit. The bad part about this was that the next sign informed us that vehicles pulling a trailer would be subject to a toll of $50 Canadian. We though that really bit but we were too far to turn back now. If we did, we'd waste more in fuel and time than if we just paid the toll. Now, here is a testament to the human spirit and Gods sense of humor or kindness. As we approached the toll, we were like; "well, we've never had to pay $50 to drive on a road before, but oh well." We saw that there were 6 different toll lanes available so I just chose one which was about two lanes over. We waited for the lady ahead of us and as she cleared the toll we pulled up. The gal in the tollbooth smiled at us and told us "no toll for you... the lady ahead of you already paid it for you." I kid you not... still thinking about it gives me goosebumps. We asked why, and the lady said..."Oh, sometimes people just do that." We asked her how much our toll would be and she said $10 - apparently, the $50 surcharge is for semis and vehicles above a certain GVW. But still $10. She went on to say... yeah, one time I had someone do it and the next person paid for the next and so it went until finally 11 cars had participated in this pay-it-forward mentality. Each one paying for the next until it reached someone who really needed it. I reached into my wallet and Bambi just smiled at me. As much as we are Dutch, and as much as we'd have loved to have saved the $10... we decided to pay it forward. It is our hope that somewhere down the line it reached someone who really needed it. We wondered if maybe it would make a difference in someones day. We know it will... God is good all the time.

We continued on and could see why it costs $10 to travel this road. First of all, it's worth it as we were privey to some of the most majestic mountain scenery we'd seen so far. We'd come over a mountain pass and the valleys were just full of misty fog. Then we'd look over and there was a 1000 foot waterfall cascading down the valley across the way. It was just stunning and we could only imagine the cost of building this road that they had to try to recoop by charging the toll. The bridges were really high in some areas and some spanned distances of several hundred feet.

Finally, we reached the last mountain pass and began a very steep descent into the town of Harrison Hot springs. The Chilliwack area is at an elevation of over 2000 feet while Harrison Hot Springs is at 33 feet above sea level. The descendt was incredible and we could see why there were mandatory "brake check" pullouts for trucks.

Anyway, we decided to go in off the highway and check out this town of Harrison Hot Springs. You'll never believe it if I tell you... but it's another beautiful little town with a lake....and you guessed it...it's surrounded by mountains. BC is Beautiful!!

What really makes Harrison popular though is it's natural hot springs. There is a public hot springs pool and a hotel that capitalizes on the health benefits by offering 3 different pools. The springs also flow into the lake but the temperature of the lake is cool because of the mountain run-off.

We stopped down town by the lake to have another picnic lunch and notices a flurry of activity on the beach. Turns out, they were getting ready to host the world championships of sandcastle building... I kid you not!!

We watched for a while as teams of two were building their sand towers, packing it into wooden forms with water, and then removing the forms (kind of like laying a concrete foundation or sidewalk). Then, the two would use all sorts of tools from shovels to knives to trowels to carve and shape the sand into the most unbelievable creations. You'll have to see the pictures to see for yourself. The team has 36 hours to build their design, then they spray them with some sort of laquer to hold the moisture and prevent erosion. They say, that if the weather is not too terrible, these sculptures can last for weeks. Again, we just couldn't believe how talented they were because both sculptors were working on the same vision. On top of that, they had to begin at the top and carve their way to the bottom so they had to have their proportions just right... there are no re-do's.

Anyway, after checking it out for a while, we decided to keep moving on. We finally hit Vancouver and the Pacific Ocean by late afternoon and for the first time in this trip we could tell we were in a major city. Traffic got a lot busier and the countryside disappeared revealing a web of freeways and skyscrapers. That aside, Vancouver is still a gorgeous city and is very green. Because it's in the Pacific NW, rainfall is abundant and everywhere you look there are huge stands of trees and everything that is not concrete, is covered in grass, trees and flowers. Truly a beautiful city.

We decided to check out another RV park so we plugged in Mandy our trusty GPS and she took us directly to Burnaby Carribou RV park. We could see that this was going to be a really nice place as we pulled up. Carefully manicured lawns and trees everywhere along with those really, really expensive motorhomes with like 5 slideouts. Our trailer has zero slideouts!!

Anyway, I got out of the truck and walked up to the counter and this punk kid says "can I help you." I'm like, "yeah, I wonder if you have room for us for two nights?" He looks over my shoulder and looks at our truck and trailer and says "that yours?" I'm like "yep" somewhat proud of my camper. He goes "but it just looks like a cargo trailer." Bambi and I looked at eachother and said, "yeah, I guess it does look like a cargo trailer." He was unamused and said, "you can't stay in THIS park with that kind of trailer. Only trailers that meet Canadian Camper Association standards are welcome in this park." Instantly, I could feel the hair on my neck starting to rise and I just wanted to pop this kid in the mouth... not because of what he said, but because of the way he said it. "you can't stay in THIS park..." Like there is some unknown upper eschelon of RV parks and this place was the pinnacle.

I'm like why not? you gotta problem with my trailer? He said in his snottly little punk way, unless you have a sticker showing that it conforms with North American Standards you could not only not stay in this park, there won't be an RV park in North America where you can stay. By now I'm just ticked!! I said, "that's funny, We've been all across the upper US and Southern Canada and stayed in several State parks and RV camps and NEVER even heard of this 'little standard' of yours." I think he was starting to see that I was ticked so another kid came over and said, "look we just have to follow the rules here but I can give you directions to another RV park not far from here, they'll take you."

He gave us the address for our GPS and we began walking back to our truck when I just snapped. I started to walk back to the office and the kid backed away from the counter. I reached over the counter and grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him back over to my side of the counter. I said, look you little snot nosed punk. I've just had it with your sniveling little Canadian styled Euro trash mouth and I'm going to teach you a little lesson in respect. I punched the kid right in the mouth and he started to cry. I then reached over on the desk where there was a huge sea shell. I picked it up and grabbed the kid again by the shirt and said, "look, if you hold it real close, you can probably hear the ocean!!" I took the shell and jammed it into the side of his skull... no wait. Actually I said to the kid, "well thanks anyway" and we got in the truck and went to the other RV park... but wouldn't you just love to.... never mind.

We took the short drive over to a place called Tynehead RV park. Not quite as manicured as the place before but still pretty nice. I walked into the office and a nice young oriental kid came up to the counter. His English was pretty good but still a little choppy. He said "you want to stay?" I'm like "yep." He looked outside at my rig and said "that your trailer?" Sensing a repeat of before I lowered my head and said "yep". He said... "you sleep in trailer?" I'm like "yep." He looks it over again and says... "is ok with me!" I'm like "sweet."

This kid and I had a really fun conversation. He was really nice and was curious about us and where we were from. I told him Iowa. He goes "OOOOOH Potatoes!!" I'm like... "No, Corn" He replied "OOOOOHHHHH, IOWA!!" I'm like "yep." He stops and thinks a while and after a few seconds, he looks at me like the light bulb just went on and says in a real low voice "If you build it, they will come???" I'm like "YEAH, that's IOWA!!" He started going "oooooh, field of dreams... you know Kevin Costner?" "I'm like yeah, that's the movie about Iowa all right, but no I don't know Kevin Costner." He seemed a little disappointed until I told him "I've been to the field of dreams though..." That seemed to satisfy him and we were finally able to finish the check-in process.

We spent the next two nights in Tynehead and it served as a nice place to home-base out of for our time in Vancouver.

The Okanagan

Today is actually Saturday, Sept 6th. We just pulled into a nice RV park in Portland Oregon.

Monday, September 1.

We woke up in Castlegar BC today to a beautifuly clear but cold morning. It was certainly a lot nicer here than it was last night in Cardston, especially since we seem to have left the rain behind as we head for the coast.
We enjoyed this little RV park, and the owner was a pretty cool guy who just wanted to talk American politics. Bambi and I did the best we could, but not having seen a TV in nearly 3 weeks left us feeling a little behind the times at best. I think this guy knew more about the candidates than we did.
Anyway, we packed up and renewed our quest for the coast, but before we could leave town we had to stop at a Safeway and stock up on some groceries. After all, I was nearly out of Dew and Dew to me is like spinach to Popeye... and we had a lot of miles to make today.
The trip down Highway 3, West across British Columbia does not disappoint. As you leave Alberta you can sense a change in the scenery. The souther part of Alberta was very much like that of Wyoming and Montana. You see some mountains in the distance but it is mostly rolling hills and vast areas of nothing with large ranches and hay fields. As you enter British Columbia though, the terrain becomes a little more rugged and things begin to get a whole lot greener.
Finally, after several hours of driving, we entered a part of BC called The Okanagan. From what we could tell, this is a mountanous area with a large and beautiful river valley that connects miles and miles of lakes in a seemingly unending chain of lakes winding from Osoyoos to Kelowna and beyond.
As we neared the area, the thing that becomes so evident is the number of fruit farms along the side of the road. Instead of high planes, you began to see acres upon acres of vineyards, apple orchards and other fruit bearing trees and vines. Our AAA book told us that this area provides over 1/3 of all fruit produced for Canada. We stopped by two separate little stands along the way and picked up some apples, peaches and cherries. They were just fantastic and you could really tell it had just been picked. The peaches were a bit like eating a waterbaloon. As soon as you bite into them, you instantly have peach juice all over your chin and shirt... but it's worth it!
We continued on and our first real glimpse of the river valley came as we crested a mountain outsde of Osoyoos. The view from here is just stunning as you look down some 2000 feet below you to see this little town layed out before you. As you crawl down the side of the mountain the view consists of a beautiful lake with the town nestled at the bottom. Actually, there are several lakes with areas of land in between which make up the town and contain restaruants, shops and hotels right on the thin slivers of land. There continue to be lush green vinyards on the sides of the mountain all the way down to the water adding to the beauty of the area. In the town of Osoyoos there are walkways along the edges of the lakes where Bambi and I decided to stop and have our lunch. I've never been to Italy but this area makes me think that this is what that area must look like. This is a resort community and the people were friendly and taking advantage of the beautiful sunshine as the lake was buzzing with boats, jet skis and even parasailing.
After eating lunch, we continued on toward Kelowna and the beautiful scenery just continued. Along this whole way, you just follow the chain of lakes / river valley from one town to the next. Each town consisting of 1000-4000 people until you finally hit the city of Kelowna which is nearly 30,000 people. The views all along the way are just fantastic as you twist and climb up the sides of mountains for panoramic views and then descend back down into the farm land where it is again rows and rows of fruit trees and vineyards.
We finally reached Kelowna where we decided to spend the night. We found another RV park in the city, across the street from the lake and only 6-7 blocks from the downtown area. We unhooked our "camper" and headed for downtown as it was getting time for supper. We walked the restaurant areas and finally ate out side at a bar-b-que place downtown. The food was great and we had our first exposure to a Canadian delight called "poutine." Now just imagine this... Poutine is a large pile of french fries, covered with shredded pork, all again completely covered in melted cheese and a thick smokey barbeque sauce. Sound good?? IT's AWESOME!!
After our run-in with poutine, we decided that a good walk would be in order so we headed through downtown toward the lake which was just a block or so away. Along the way we suddenly sensed that there was a ruckus across the street and some people were yelling "fight, fight". We looked across the street and two guys had indeed gotten into a pretty good fight. The one guy had his girlfriend or wife along, but by the looks of him, she was in no danger. This guy pummeled the other guy pretty good as he was bleading profusely from the mouth. The guy doing all the bleeding was seriously ticked. He was screaming at the other guy but he just stood there as if to say, "you want more, just come and get it." The irate guy was just storming up and down the sidewalk, screaming at the other guy and finally, he reached down into a garbage can and pulled out an empty bottle. He grabbed the bottle by the neck and cracked the bottom end off on the end of the garbage just like they do in the movies (it was pretty cool to watch) and started jabbing it toward the other guy from a distance like he was going to really do some damage. This other guys still just stands there like he's not afraid in the least. Finally his girl pulls him away by the arm and the other guy is still just screaming at him. I was enthralled, and wanted to see more but Bambi was pulling at me and saying, lets go. But I wanna see this guy get throttled, I said. She's like, sure then one of them pulls a gun and starts shooting across the street at inocent spectators... I've seen it a hundred times. Seeing how the scuffle had pretty much subsided, I agreed and we continued our walk.
We went past a playground where Bambi found her inner child for a while. We were watching three kids playing on this play set which had a little zip cord in between two posts. The kids were jumping from a platform and zipping across the line to see how far they could go. Bambi just had to give it a try (see picture). When she crawled up there and got in line with the other kids, I think they first thought... what are you crazy. When they could see that she was serious, they got all excited and started giving her tips on how to do it. She did really well and actually made it just as far across as any of the kids had. It was fun to watch her do this as she has always been willing to do this kind of stuff as long as I've known her... especially if I say that she probably can't. This is the kind of stuff she used to do before she became burdened down by EOB's and long hours... this is my Bambi coming back now.

Anyway, after some fun in the park, we continued our walk and watched the sun set over the Western mountain range with the lake in between which was just beautiful. We were really in the ritzy part of Kelowna now and there was even a large condo complex with it's own man-made marina coming off the lake. They even had their own little lock to let the boats in and out of the marina while maintaining the level of the water inside. It was fun to watch a boat go through and then the owners just pulled up right outside their condo, docked the boat and went inside. Later, Bambi was standing outside by the lake when a group of people walked by and one guy started to talk to her... actually he was hitting on her while I was in the bathroom... go figure!! Anyway, he told her that this area was like their Hamptons. It was nice, with sky-rise condo's, beautiful boats, and really cool cars all over the place. If one was prone to covet, this would be a good place to do it. Lucky for us there was no need because we had our fancy "camper" all set up at the RV park... certainly the envy of many a resident of Kelowna I'm sure!!

P.S. Bambi made me include the picture at the bottom. A few posts ago, I included a picture of me as "Rebel Ross" as named by the Sinclair family. So, I decided to have a little fun. Knowing that Bambi HATES it when I do this... and I just LOVE getting under her skin. I decided to shave off the beard, leaving the mustache and sideburns (The 70's are alive and well on this trip!!) Anyway, feel free to chime in on the "look" if you want to. I've since shaved the whole works but I made Bambi spend the whole day with me looking like this. She was sooooo embarased. I had a few store clerks give me some pretty weird looks too...but not the chicks... chicks dig it!! i'm thinking that this may have to be the official look

for Team Landshark for the 2009 race season.

What do you think???

Ok this is just getting ridiculous...Eh!!

Sunday, August 31st.

The title to this blog is appropriate because I think that's what we both said when we woke up early this morning. Sure it was nice and warm in our trailer as our little heater was just a working a way to keep it that way. But on the outside, it was pouring rain and very cold - near freezing anyway. Just another one of those miserable mornings where you wake up and have to go to the bathroom but in order to do that, to leave the warmth of the trailer, you have to put on like 3 layers of clothes and this time, we had to take an umbrella along too. This is just getting ridiculous.

Bambi got up and drove over to the office while I headed off to the shower. She pulled up weather.com and checked the forcast for where we were going. Our intentions at this point were to head further North - up to Banff, Calgary, Lake Louise and Jasper to see the ice fields. But, it was just cold and only getting colder. Now, I often tease Bambi on the fact that it can take her a while to make decisions sometimes. But not this time. One look at that 7 day forcast for the Banff area revealed freezing temperatures and constant rain mixing with snow and she made her decision. She's really been wanting to see Banff for a long time but this is not the way to do it we decided. We'll just have to go back sometime when it's warmer!

We made our decision. We'd head for the West coast!! So drive...drive...drive we did.

Before leaving the Glacier area for good though, we stoped to see the Canadian side and got some breakfast in Waterton AB which is inside the Canadian side. We ate our breakfast at a great little restaurant called Zumms and really enjoyed it. We also stopped to see the Prince of Whales hotel right near there. This hotel was old like it's American counterpart in Glacier but had the look of a Swiss Chalet which was cool.

But it was time to go - Head West where the sun still shines!!

We took Highway 3 all the way to the coast eventually. We stopped along the way to spend the night in Castlegar. We found another RV park with the luxury of electricity and WiFi and went into town to eat at a Bostons Grill. After a long day of driving, we were just both tired and ready to call it a day. Highway 3 across southern Canada was beautiful already, but as we'd find out the next day, we hadn't seen anything yet!!

Oh Canada...Eh!!

Today is Friday, Sept 5th. Still staying in the Seattle area tonight. We had a great time today and took in a Mariners / Yankees game tonight.

Saturday, August 30th.

Woke up today after finally getting another really great night of sleep. It pays to stay in a place with electricity to run our heater!! Again, although we were only there for a nights staty, we really enjoyed this RV park just outside of Glacier. It was really nice and clean and had a lot of great amenities such as a TV lounge with WiFi which was heated. They also had very clean bathrooms and showers and a nice laundry facility. Seizing her chance, Bambi got up in the morning and did a couple of loads of laundry. We didn't bring a lot of extra clothes on this trip and I guess we were both digging to the bottom of the barel so it was good to have all clean selections again.

We left the RV park and eaded around the South side of Glacier park. Again, with a trailer, you can not go on the going to the sun road which cuts across the park. So we headed over through East Glacier and stopped for lunch at the Glacier park lodge at the East entrance of the park. This was a nice old place and still has a lot of it's original charm. It just seemed like the kind of place where Roosevelt himself would have stayed after a big game hunt in the park. The grounds here were beautiful and included a golf course and the front yard even had a little miniature golf course and flower gardens as well. The views from the dining room were really spectacular as you could look over at the parks mountain range while eating. Food was good and we were on our way again.

We headed up the East side to a little town called Babb MT where we took a left and headed back into the park to "Many Glaciers" area. As soon as we pulled into the parking lot we could see something was getting people excited. People were all standing in the parking lot of the campground store area and looking up into the mountain with their binoculars and spotting scopes. So naturally, we were curious and walked over for a look ourselves. There up on the mountain, just above the store area was a huge grizzley bear. It was a long way up but a couple let us borrow thier binoculars and you could see him quite easily. Cool to see.

We saw that this trail afforded yet another opportunity to hike up to a mountain lake and see another waterfall. Once we saw that the name of the area was Red Rock Lake and Red Rock Falls, we just couldn't resist. It was a couple of miles hike up the lake but was once again just beautiful. We finally reached the falls and though they were not nearly as tall as the 2000 feet falls we'd seen the day before, they were spectacular none the less. The really cool thing about these was that they had huge rocks and boulders in the river and in the falls. So, if one dared, you could jump from rock to rock and really get up in the falls and experience the place. Of course, we took the challenge and it was fun to get so close where we actually got wet from the mist of the falls.

We checked out the many glacier hotel and took off again.

We were headed to Canada tonight and we needed to get going in order to get through the border and then find a place to sleep for the night so we needed to hit the road.

We finally hit the Canadian border and got checked through with no problem. We were a bit surprised at just how easy it was to go through. We handed the guy our passports and he asked us where we were from and where we were planning on going and why. We told him we were just here on vacation and would be heading toward Banff. He asked us what was in our trailer and we told him that we only had camping gear and our bikes etc. He kind of looked over at it and said "ok". Then he asked us one more question... He asked "When does Canada celebrate the 4th of July?" Now the average tourist may get a bit tripped up on that one but not us...oh no. We said "Canada celebrates the 4th of July.... on July 4th. It just so happens that the US also celebrates their independance on that date." We were glad that we got it right too because I think the penalty for getting it wrong is your choice of a body cavity search or having to join them in a rousing chorus of "Oh Canada."

Ok, so I made that all up. He did ask us though if we were carrying more that $10,000 in cash either US currancy or Canadian? We actually laughed a little when he asked us that because if you know us... we usually have right around $6 cash between the two of us. Besides, we're Dutch... if we had $10,000 in cash, we surely wouldn't be parading it around the country!!

Anyway, we finally found ourselves in the little city of Cardston Alberta. We decided to stop for the night before it got too dark and cold... and besides, we were getting hungry. We were just driving through town when we saw a sign for another RV camp so we pulled in. This place was descent but not anything as nice as what we'd had the night before. We knew we'd been spoiled forever now. But it did have electricity - which we'd be needing tonight as it was going to get very cold again.

We unhooked our trailer there at Lee Creek Campground and headed into town where our AAA book on Canada said to try a little downtown pizza place called "Pizza and Cream." Once again, the AAA book does not lie. It was really great pizza - we talked to the owner and he said that the reason it's so good is that everything is made from scratch right there including the crust and the sauce. His sign self proclaimes it to be the best pizza in the world. Don't know about that, but it was definitely up there alright. The whole experience was fun as the place resembled a 50's diner with juke boxes on the wall at each booth and movie memoriabilia on the walls. They even have a phone on the wall at each booth that rings to the kitchen if you want to "phone" in your order when you're ready. Cardston itself was an interesting little town. It was originally settled by members of the mormon church who fled the US because of their anti-poligamy laws. Here's a question. What the heck does a guy even do with more than one wife anyway... Ok, I get the jokes and all the overtones but seriously??? I can barely hang in there against one wife... can you imagine three? Everytime you'd want something, you'd be outvoted and at the end of the day you'd just have three wives with headaches anyway. No, no... not for me. One wife is more than enough for me.

I just have to add something here. The reason I put "Eh" in the title today is that while I was at Palmer, there were a lot of Canadian students. We made fun of them because they always say "Eh" in a lot of their sentences. Now, apparently the expression "Eh" can mean a variety of things... It can mean, "I didn't hear you", "Do you agree with me", or it can just be a thing that you throw in at any point of the conversation for reasons unknown. Now surely, we thought, not ALL Canadians use this expression right? I'm sure they don't but we were only in that pizza place for about 3 minutes when we heard a conversation between a lady at one table and a guy at the other when the lady asked "So, what's your son doing these days eh?" Bambi and I both heard it and began using it in our own conversation. You should try it sometime eh? I will admit that one of my younger exposures to Canadians was only through the movie strange brew with the McKenzie brothers where they are on a journey to get free beer and end every phrase with eh. They also refer to each other as hoser but we never did hear anyone use that expression... that would have just been awesome though...Eh!

Anyway, we went back to our park where we got to meet our campground hosts. The place was being run by a group of kids (I'll say kids because they're a fair bit younger than me anyway). there was two young guys who appeared to be in charge, but I think they had all their friends over too. It was just fun because Bambi and asked if we could hang out in their office a while to blog and check email which was fun. We got to talking to them and it turns out, during the evening they run this RV park but during the day they are all whitewater river guides. They were kicking back in the office as it was cold outside and they were joking around and making fun of us mostly. We were all having a good time but they were definitely a care-free type of crowd.

We enjoyed hanging out there, but eventually we had to go back to the trailer for the night. It got really cold during the night but our faithful little heater really did the job of keeping us warm and it was greatly appreciated because when we woke up in the early morning, it was near freezing and pouring rain.

I guess God knew we'd had enough of freezing at night and got us to an electric site just in time!!

Glacier National Park

In keeping with my new tradition of keeping you all up to date on our actual location: Today is Thursday, Sept 4th and we are spending the day today and tonight in Seattle. We plan to stay tomorrow night as well as I was able to get tickets to the Mariners / Yankees game for tomorrow night at 7pm.

8/29/08

We woke up this morning in Kalispell MT and we were just glad to have woken up once again...it was very cold again last night. Of course that's what happens when you sleep NEXT to the brand new / beautiful Holiday Inn Express instead of INSIDE the brand new / beautiful Holiday Inn Express. We really didn't intend to go parking lot slumming last night. It's just that it got to be very late by the time we hit Kalispell and we were just both very hungry and tired... maybe even a little crabby by this point!! Anyway, we just needed to sleep and we decided that we could tough it out tonight. I slept pretty poorly and Bambi slept even worse. I woke up to find that she had spent 1/2 the night sleeping in the truck again. Then and there, we decided that if we're going to stay on the road, we need to find a place to stop a little earlier in the evening and preferably with electricity so we can run our heater!!

Anyway... we actually went inside the Holiday Inn to "borrow" their electric plug and WiFi so that we could check some emails... we also borrowed some heat which felt great. Now I'll admit... a part of me wanted to "borrow" some of that awesome looking continental breakfast they had going on. I've never seen anything like it... a veritble smorgasbord of french toast, biscuits and gravy (yeah, you know I loves me some biscuits and gravy!!), bacon, sausage, cereal, and fruit (if you're into that sort of thing). But, you'll all be proud to know that the code of ethics when it comes to supermarket (or hotel parking lot) slumming says it's ok to "borrow" WiFi, but we don't steal breakfast. I'll have to admit though, it was tempting to just try a little taste. But NO.

So, off we went. We were hungry though, so we went over to a Great Harvest Bread Company and had some breakfast rolls in Kalispell. Then it was off to Whitefish. Whitefish is a really cool town that I believe I talked about in yesterdays blog. Bambi and I spent an hour or two just cruising the downtown shops. We had to get going to make it to Glacier but there was a lot of Whitefish we hadn't seen yet like the lake and the ski resort area. I'm sure that the area would be a lot of fun to vacation in both Summer and Winter time.

We finally drove over the Glacier area and by the time we got to the Glacier West Gate, we were both just tired. Neither one of us had slept much and we were both just feeling it from the fact that we'd been driving so much the last day or two. So, we pulled into a nice parking lot in West Glacier... and took a nap. Oh, it was a glorious nap too. Bambi stayed in the truck with the windows rolled up, sun streaming in, so that she could get really warm. I crawled back in the trailer and left the door open with the mountain breeze blowing through... it was great!!

After a nice little power nap, we decided to just stay right there and have some lunch that we had packed along... yep PB&J. You know, I'm really actually liking the PB&J thing. Being now well fed, and well rested, we felt like a whole new day had dawned and we were ready to hit the hiking trails. And hit them we did. It wasn't but a few miles into Glacier and we saw a great hiking trail called "Trail of the Cedars". This was truly a beautiful hike. It starts with a little jaunt to Avalanche falls which is the narrow little canyon falls that you'll see in the picture. The water was really rushing through this little narrow slit in the rock walls and made a beautiful sound as it did. The trail kept going on though, and so did we. We checked the hiking sign posted at the falls and it said "Avalanche Lake - 2 miles" Little did we know that the 2 miles was all uphill. As we got going, we talked to some people coming down and just asked about the lake and they said, you've got to go, it is so worth it. They were right.

Hiking the Trail of the Cedars is like hiking in 2-3 completely different ecosystems. At the bottom, there is the crashing river and the ground around us was just completely covered in vegitation such as ferns and mosses - like the rainforest in Brazil. Then, as we climbed higher, we saw that the canopy of the trees was completely covering us and very little to no sunlight was getting through which made the ground cover very sparse. Here we saw almost strictly lodge pole pines. In some areas, there were trees that had fallen over in the wind and taken up huge areas of dirt with them. Then, as we neared the top, the trees cleared and it revealed a mountain lake with huge cascading waterfalls all around it. It was like a scene from an alpine adventure film. Absolutely beautiful. When we walked down to the lake, we looked at the surrounding mountains which were draining into the lake and there were at least six different waterfalls. The sign said that the falls are dropping some 2000 feet from the mountains into the lake valley we were standing in. It's as if God said, here, see what I can do. I can take something as simple as water and turn it into one of the most beautiful sights you've ever seen. Just awesome.

Again, instead of hiking the 2 miles back down to the truck, we decided to make a challenge of it and ran most of the way back. It was downhill but still enough to burn off the PB&J we'd had earlier ( I knew I should have borrowed some Biscuits and Gravy from the hotel!!). We got back into the truck and headed on with the drive through Glacier. We finally reached a road called "Going to the Sun" road. If you've never been there, this is the perfect name for this road as it twists and turns back and forth all the way up to the continental divide. The road is very narrow!!!! There are parts where you can't meet another car and there is no shoulder and no guard rail. This is why no trailers are allowed on the road, we had to leave ours near the entrance to the park in a big parking lot they have there. Actually, the road is only even open for a few months out of the year because it is usually covered in snow. At one station, we learned that in places, as much as 90 feet of snow can cover the road and when spring comes, it takes a couple of months to plow the road open. There was one point where we were on a sharp and very narrow switchback where you could litterally look out the passenger window and look straight down like 500 feet. I think that in this case, the road should be renamed the "I'm going to see Jesus" road. If you go off the edge, that's who you'd see next.

Luckily, I'm quite an accomplished driver... just ask any of my youth group kids who got to ride to Wal-Mart with me last year to go Christmas shopping for our community outreach night. As we were heading back to the upper room to wrap gifts, one of the kids just had to egg me on by saying, "hey Ross, can this truck even do a 360 on the snow???" Naturally, I had to demonstrate.

Anyway, we finally made it up the mountain and over the continental divide. We got out to take some pictrues and the temperature was notably different from where we had started... in the picture, you'll see Bambi has her hood up. She stayed out there just long enough to look over the edge, take a picture with me and then sprint back to the truck to turn on the heater. Not me... I had to take some time to spit over the railing!! Yep, I'm still 12.

We decided to drive just a little further before turning back around to go back and get our trailer. Because the road to the sun is the only road across Glacier NP and no trailers are allowed, we had to go back and stay the night at West Glacier and then drive around the South side of the park the next day. Anyway, we were about to turn around when we saw a young girl standing on the side of the road. she was not dressed too well (only jeans,a light jacket and a backpack) and Bambi looked at her and said, "Oh, she's got to be freezing!!" She was hitchiking, so we stopped and picked her up. She was just a little thing and after my throwdown with the criminal in CDA the day before, I knew if she got out of hand, I could handle myself. Turns out she was from Taiwan. She was just here in the States for the summer to work at the park. She was a really nice young lady and it turns out she was hiking and missed the last shuttle to where she works. So Bambi and I decided to just drive her there since it wasn't too far out of our way and like I said, it was getting dark and getting very cold!

We turned around and headed back down the mountain pass and got back to West Glacier just in time to grab some supper at a cafe before it closed for the night. Then we headed back in the direction of Whitefish and found an RV park that is still to this time, the nicest place we've stayed. When we got there, the lights were all turned off but a sign hung on the front door of the office that said, after office is closed, ring bell for service. If it's after 10pm, it better be an emergency! I glanced at my watch, only 9:55 - so I rang the bell. The guy came down in his shorts and t-shirt - you could tell he had been sleeping and I thought he'd be pretty mad at me. Actually, we was really cool about it. Probably one of the most friendly guys we've come across so far. At one point, Bambi said it was taking me so long in there, she almost called for help... only her cell phone wasn't getting very good reception. Anyway, the guy was great and I was probably in there for a half hour or so just shootin' the breeze with him. He fixed us up with a really nice site and gave us access to the lounge which had WiFi and cable tv which was cool since I haven't seen tv in 2 weeks... did you know there is an election going 0n in this country???

Anyway, we had a great night there and if you are ever in West Glacier MT - just East of Whitefish, go ahead and check out North American RV park. They'll treat you right.