Three Peas in a Pod...
Friday, July 28, 2006
home
Twelve days, four thousand miles, and eleven thousand pictures later, we are home! I'm due back to work early tomorrow morning, though...so sorting through our photos to decide what to keep and what to delete will have to wait until later...as will blogging!
¶ 7/28/2006 06:01:00 PM 0 comments
Thursday, July 27, 2006
travelogue:
DAY ELEVEN Well, by late tomorrow afternoon we will be home again. It has been a fun, relaxing vacation! I never did write any more about our pack trip… As I wrote before, the trip in took much longer than expected. Which, would have been fine with me, at least!, had the last hour of the ride not turned hot and had we had something to drink. Actually, though, we had gorgeous weather all through this trip. It was unseasonably warm and dry while we were in the back country of the Rockies…not hot, just right (other than the last hour of our trip in). The only rain during our time in Canada was after we were in the van driving out of the mountains. It rained again last night in South Dakota…but, again it was AFTER we were tucked into our hotel for the night. The swimming area had full glass walls looking out to the east and west. The storm didn’t come until after we were down swimming. It was neat seeing the storm outside while we were playing in the pool. We made up a new game last night… Rayna and Doug stayed in the shallow end of the pool and would throw an inflated rubber ball out to the deep end where Darcy and I would use our feet to throw it back to them. The little kids could use their hands, but Darcy and I could only use our feet. We had the entire pool to ourselves (as well as the hot tub). Meanwhile, Grant could come out on our room’s balcony during commercial breaks and look out on the fun we were having below in the pool. (Ours was the only balcony.) Doug also took his power ranger action figure into the pool and spent a good deal of the evening diving beneath the water to retrieve his little guy off of the floor of the pool. The shallow end was 3 feet deep, so Doug had to really work at it to get the little guy off the bottom. Doug can’t swim yet, but he doesn’t have any aversion at all to going under water with his eyes and mouth wide open. (We have tried for TWO YEARS to teach him to CLOSE his mouth before he goes under water…but it is a lost cause. I don’t know how he keeps from choking and/or swallowing tons of water…but, it doesn’t seem to bother him at all to have his mouth WIDE OPEN the entire time he is under water.) Vonnie and John enjoyed the hot tub for about fifteen minutes and then retreated back to the room to eat popcorn!
Yesterday when we shopped around in Keystone, South Dakota, Darcy was going to spend her souvenir money that she had been given prior to the trip. Doug and Rayna both spent theirs in Canada at a Wal-Mart. I had pointed out “Canadian” type things to them (typical souvenir ware), but Doug chose a Power Ranger action figure and Rayna chose a generic Barbie doll that had clear, sparkly fairy wings. This was probably their way of protesting my cruelty earlier in the evening… Thinking they needed some new movies for the trip home, I had decided to buy some kid movies for them, but I had told them I was going to pick them. My criteria was that it had to be “G” rated and couldn’t be Barbie-anything (all that Rayna likes) or have violence (which cuts out all the Superhero things that Doug and Darcy are so fond of). They had packed 28 DVDs for the trip….every one of which was either Barbie themed or Justice League or Power Ranger themed. Rayna literally had dissolved into tears that I wouldn’t buy a new Barbie movie. Doug and Darcy were rather put out with me, too. They were all certain that they wouldn’t like the four movies I chose….Benji, Duke (another dog movie), Sheerluck Holmes (a Veggie Tales movie), and Pooh’s Heffalump. (As it turns out they have loved every one of them.) But, anyway, I think that it probably why Doug was so set on buying a Power Ranger with his money and Rayna was so set on buying a Barbie with hers. Darcy saved hers.
Then, yesterday, when we were at Keystone, Darcy decided she was going to use her money. She saw a crystal that she wanted to buy. Rayna was wanting one, badly, too. I felt bad for the two littler ones that they didn’t have any money left, so I told them that if they kept it under $5, I would let each of them get something too. Then, to be fair, I told Darcy that I would pay $5 of her $7.50 crystal. Rayna picked a $2 crystal and Doug picked a black horse figure that cost $4. Darcy, ever the frugal child with her OWN money (not with her mother’s!), decided to change which crystal she was getting. She switched to a $5 crystal so that she wouldn’t have to use any of her own money at all. Which, left me back in the same position…oldest child with money to spend and two little ones who had none left!!!! (Somehow, I felt like I had been outfoxed!)
Today, we stopped by Wall Drug in South Dakota. Incredibly, Vonnie and John had never HEARD of Wall Drug, before…so, of course we had to stop! Besides, Grant and I had gone there when we were on our honeymoon and this is the first time since then that we have been in South Dakota. Darcy FINALLY spent her money…well, at least the U.S. dollars that Pastor and Miss Alice had given her before we left. (She still has her Canadian money.) She bought a velvet bag full of magnetic rocks.
While we were at Wall Drug, the two littler ones were transfixed by the giant moving, roaring T-rex. He moves his head side to side and his eyes move in an eerily life-like manner…but, once every 12 minutes, he raises up from behind his neck high barricade and begins roaring fiercely as the alarm lights go off and the smoke begins rising. Doug, particularly was in awe of this. He begged to go back a second time…so, we found ourselves waiting twice for the monster to come to life. I had to take a photo of DOUG rather than the monster--Doug was just standing there in frozen horror/awe…his mouth wide open!
After Wall Drug, we stopped by 1880’s Town…where they have some of the set props from “Dances With Wolves” and some old Western buildings. We had looked through these when we were on our honeymoon fifteen years ago--but, there wasn’t a charge back then…or, if there was, it had been a nominal one. These days, however, it costs $8 per adult and $5 for kids. So, we didn’t go in. It just didn’t seem worth paying that much when we only had half an hour or so to look around anyway. Not sure I would have paid that much if we had had all day!…even though it held the sentiment of being one of the first things Grant and I experienced together as a married couple.
We are headed for Sioux City, Iowa tonight. I will post this on the web tonight when we get to our hotel room. (Right now we are on the road and I am just running my lap-top off battery and typing this up in my Word program.) ¶ 7/27/2006 06:21:00 PM 1 comments
DAY ELEVEN Well, by late tomorrow afternoon we will be home again. It has been a fun, relaxing vacation! I never did write any more about our pack trip… As I wrote before, the trip in took much longer than expected. Which, would have been fine with me, at least!, had the last hour of the ride not turned hot and had we had something to drink. Actually, though, we had gorgeous weather all through this trip. It was unseasonably warm and dry while we were in the back country of the Rockies…not hot, just right (other than the last hour of our trip in). The only rain during our time in Canada was after we were in the van driving out of the mountains. It rained again last night in South Dakota…but, again it was AFTER we were tucked into our hotel for the night. The swimming area had full glass walls looking out to the east and west. The storm didn’t come until after we were down swimming. It was neat seeing the storm outside while we were playing in the pool. We made up a new game last night… Rayna and Doug stayed in the shallow end of the pool and would throw an inflated rubber ball out to the deep end where Darcy and I would use our feet to throw it back to them. The little kids could use their hands, but Darcy and I could only use our feet. We had the entire pool to ourselves (as well as the hot tub). Meanwhile, Grant could come out on our room’s balcony during commercial breaks and look out on the fun we were having below in the pool. (Ours was the only balcony.) Doug also took his power ranger action figure into the pool and spent a good deal of the evening diving beneath the water to retrieve his little guy off of the floor of the pool. The shallow end was 3 feet deep, so Doug had to really work at it to get the little guy off the bottom. Doug can’t swim yet, but he doesn’t have any aversion at all to going under water with his eyes and mouth wide open. (We have tried for TWO YEARS to teach him to CLOSE his mouth before he goes under water…but it is a lost cause. I don’t know how he keeps from choking and/or swallowing tons of water…but, it doesn’t seem to bother him at all to have his mouth WIDE OPEN the entire time he is under water.) Vonnie and John enjoyed the hot tub for about fifteen minutes and then retreated back to the room to eat popcorn!
Yesterday when we shopped around in Keystone, South Dakota, Darcy was going to spend her souvenir money that she had been given prior to the trip. Doug and Rayna both spent theirs in Canada at a Wal-Mart. I had pointed out “Canadian” type things to them (typical souvenir ware), but Doug chose a Power Ranger action figure and Rayna chose a generic Barbie doll that had clear, sparkly fairy wings. This was probably their way of protesting my cruelty earlier in the evening… Thinking they needed some new movies for the trip home, I had decided to buy some kid movies for them, but I had told them I was going to pick them. My criteria was that it had to be “G” rated and couldn’t be Barbie-anything (all that Rayna likes) or have violence (which cuts out all the Superhero things that Doug and Darcy are so fond of). They had packed 28 DVDs for the trip….every one of which was either Barbie themed or Justice League or Power Ranger themed. Rayna literally had dissolved into tears that I wouldn’t buy a new Barbie movie. Doug and Darcy were rather put out with me, too. They were all certain that they wouldn’t like the four movies I chose….Benji, Duke (another dog movie), Sheerluck Holmes (a Veggie Tales movie), and Pooh’s Heffalump. (As it turns out they have loved every one of them.) But, anyway, I think that it probably why Doug was so set on buying a Power Ranger with his money and Rayna was so set on buying a Barbie with hers. Darcy saved hers.
Then, yesterday, when we were at Keystone, Darcy decided she was going to use her money. She saw a crystal that she wanted to buy. Rayna was wanting one, badly, too. I felt bad for the two littler ones that they didn’t have any money left, so I told them that if they kept it under $5, I would let each of them get something too. Then, to be fair, I told Darcy that I would pay $5 of her $7.50 crystal. Rayna picked a $2 crystal and Doug picked a black horse figure that cost $4. Darcy, ever the frugal child with her OWN money (not with her mother’s!), decided to change which crystal she was getting. She switched to a $5 crystal so that she wouldn’t have to use any of her own money at all. Which, left me back in the same position…oldest child with money to spend and two little ones who had none left!!!! (Somehow, I felt like I had been outfoxed!)
Today, we stopped by Wall Drug in South Dakota. Incredibly, Vonnie and John had never HEARD of Wall Drug, before…so, of course we had to stop! Besides, Grant and I had gone there when we were on our honeymoon and this is the first time since then that we have been in South Dakota. Darcy FINALLY spent her money…well, at least the U.S. dollars that Pastor and Miss Alice had given her before we left. (She still has her Canadian money.) She bought a velvet bag full of magnetic rocks.
While we were at Wall Drug, the two littler ones were transfixed by the giant moving, roaring T-rex. He moves his head side to side and his eyes move in an eerily life-like manner…but, once every 12 minutes, he raises up from behind his neck high barricade and begins roaring fiercely as the alarm lights go off and the smoke begins rising. Doug, particularly was in awe of this. He begged to go back a second time…so, we found ourselves waiting twice for the monster to come to life. I had to take a photo of DOUG rather than the monster--Doug was just standing there in frozen horror/awe…his mouth wide open!
After Wall Drug, we stopped by 1880’s Town…where they have some of the set props from “Dances With Wolves” and some old Western buildings. We had looked through these when we were on our honeymoon fifteen years ago--but, there wasn’t a charge back then…or, if there was, it had been a nominal one. These days, however, it costs $8 per adult and $5 for kids. So, we didn’t go in. It just didn’t seem worth paying that much when we only had half an hour or so to look around anyway. Not sure I would have paid that much if we had had all day!…even though it held the sentiment of being one of the first things Grant and I experienced together as a married couple.
We are headed for Sioux City, Iowa tonight. I will post this on the web tonight when we get to our hotel room. (Right now we are on the road and I am just running my lap-top off battery and typing this up in my Word program.) ¶ 7/27/2006 06:21:00 PM 1 comments
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Near the very end of our journey through the Rockies.
Darcy and Doug with our three guides: Brittany, Caleb, and Isabel. This photo taken after our pack trip. (Rayna was napping in her daddy's arms...she kept almost falling asleep on her horse the last hour of the trip, even though her horse was not being led.)
Grant and Darcy riding in the back of the truck with our luggage as we were transported back to our van after the pack trip. (The two younger kids and the Murrays rode up front with Caleb driving.)
Doug, Rayna, and Darcy today at Mount Rushmore! ¶ 7/26/2006 07:55:00 PM 0 comments
travelogue:
DAY TEN Well, we are working our way home! We have driven over 1,000 miles since leaving the Canadian Rockies. Last night we stayed in Dickinson, North Dakota at a Comfort Inn that had a really neat water park. The kids had a blast there! Tonight we are in a suite at another Comfort Inn...this time in Rapid City, South Dakota. (A suite was cheaper than two separate hotel rooms. We have the only balcony...and it overlooks the pool area. The kids thought that was pretty cool, too. Doug worried all day that we might be getting home today. He said he didn't want to ever go home! He wants to spend the rest of his life traveling from one hotel room to the next and swimming every evening. He also frequently tells me he misses his horse...but, I think he is talking about Pete. He has said several times that he wants to go back to Canada...NOW!
Today was a lot of fun... we retraced some of our Honeymoon trip from fifteen years ago! So much in the Black Hills has changed since then. It has gotten a lot more commercialized and there are many more businesses here now...kind of like we have seen Branson change over the years. Grant was planning on us having lunch in Keystone at Smokey's today. That is where we got food poisoning and experienced our first illness together as a married couple! Fifteen years ago, we had been here in early May (before tourist season). Not far from our hotel was a pizza place called "Smokey's". We were pretty much the only ones in the restaurant that first evening in Keystone. Just as we came in, their electricity went out. We thought it was so romantic that we got to eat (from necessity!) by candle light. Not long after, when we were both hanging our heads over the toilet in a decidedly less than romantic fashion, it dawned on us that if their electricity had been going on and off on them all week (as they had mentioned to us) the meat (my chicken, in particular--which Grant helped me finish) might have been a bit bacteria laden. Still, Smokeys held such a sentimental place in our memories, that that is where Grant wanted to go again on this trip (trusting that the food poisoning was a fluke thing!). We found an advertisement flyer offering a coupon for Smokeys at a town earlier today...so, we were hopeful that it still existed. Nope. Smokey's is gone. The building that used to be Smokeys is now American Family Restaurant. We ate there...sitting almost in the same place that we had fifteen years ago! The food was good and no one got sick!
After eating at Smokeys, we tracked down the photo studio where we had taken an old time photo together fifteen years ago. The nephew of the lady who took our photo fifteen years ago, took a photo of the kids and ourselves together today! It has been fun retracing our steps all these years later!
The kids played in the pool for over an hour tonight and now they are watching an old Andy Griffith episode and eating popcorn! It is sad to think that our vacation is almost over. The kids sure did love the pack trip in the Rockies. I really need to write a full account of it...telling the neat things, not just the challenging, frustrating things that I already wrote out! The kids loved riding the horses. Every day while we were there, Doug would beg me, "Ride horsey, Mommy? Ride horsey?" I would assure him that, yes, we were going to ride the horses again and then he would begin begging to put his helmut on. I would try to explain that it wasn't yet time to leave on the horse ride, but he and Rayna both would just be begging to put their helmuts on...feeling, I suppose, that the sooner they got those helmuts on, the sooner we would go saddle up the horses! We will go back and take another Timberline Tour again in a few years. Grant started out (before the pack trip was even over) conceeding that the kids loved it so much that we probably ought to bring them back again sometime, but, stipulated that HE would wait for the kids and I at a hotel. Today, however, he said, "I guess I will have to ride with you again. I would worry too much waiting for you at a hotel." Vonnie and John, however, are ADAMANT that we will NEVER get either one of them on the back of a horse EVER! At least, though, today they can admit that there WERE fun moments in it for them. I think it helps that their soreness is finally wearing off. I have noticed that they are getting no end of delight out of making me feel guilty for having drug them to the Rockies and having 'coerced' them into getting up on those horses! ¶ 7/26/2006 06:32:00 PM 0 comments
DAY TEN Well, we are working our way home! We have driven over 1,000 miles since leaving the Canadian Rockies. Last night we stayed in Dickinson, North Dakota at a Comfort Inn that had a really neat water park. The kids had a blast there! Tonight we are in a suite at another Comfort Inn...this time in Rapid City, South Dakota. (A suite was cheaper than two separate hotel rooms. We have the only balcony...and it overlooks the pool area. The kids thought that was pretty cool, too. Doug worried all day that we might be getting home today. He said he didn't want to ever go home! He wants to spend the rest of his life traveling from one hotel room to the next and swimming every evening. He also frequently tells me he misses his horse...but, I think he is talking about Pete. He has said several times that he wants to go back to Canada...NOW!
Today was a lot of fun... we retraced some of our Honeymoon trip from fifteen years ago! So much in the Black Hills has changed since then. It has gotten a lot more commercialized and there are many more businesses here now...kind of like we have seen Branson change over the years. Grant was planning on us having lunch in Keystone at Smokey's today. That is where we got food poisoning and experienced our first illness together as a married couple! Fifteen years ago, we had been here in early May (before tourist season). Not far from our hotel was a pizza place called "Smokey's". We were pretty much the only ones in the restaurant that first evening in Keystone. Just as we came in, their electricity went out. We thought it was so romantic that we got to eat (from necessity!) by candle light. Not long after, when we were both hanging our heads over the toilet in a decidedly less than romantic fashion, it dawned on us that if their electricity had been going on and off on them all week (as they had mentioned to us) the meat (my chicken, in particular--which Grant helped me finish) might have been a bit bacteria laden. Still, Smokeys held such a sentimental place in our memories, that that is where Grant wanted to go again on this trip (trusting that the food poisoning was a fluke thing!). We found an advertisement flyer offering a coupon for Smokeys at a town earlier today...so, we were hopeful that it still existed. Nope. Smokey's is gone. The building that used to be Smokeys is now American Family Restaurant. We ate there...sitting almost in the same place that we had fifteen years ago! The food was good and no one got sick!
After eating at Smokeys, we tracked down the photo studio where we had taken an old time photo together fifteen years ago. The nephew of the lady who took our photo fifteen years ago, took a photo of the kids and ourselves together today! It has been fun retracing our steps all these years later!
The kids played in the pool for over an hour tonight and now they are watching an old Andy Griffith episode and eating popcorn! It is sad to think that our vacation is almost over. The kids sure did love the pack trip in the Rockies. I really need to write a full account of it...telling the neat things, not just the challenging, frustrating things that I already wrote out! The kids loved riding the horses. Every day while we were there, Doug would beg me, "Ride horsey, Mommy? Ride horsey?" I would assure him that, yes, we were going to ride the horses again and then he would begin begging to put his helmut on. I would try to explain that it wasn't yet time to leave on the horse ride, but he and Rayna both would just be begging to put their helmuts on...feeling, I suppose, that the sooner they got those helmuts on, the sooner we would go saddle up the horses! We will go back and take another Timberline Tour again in a few years. Grant started out (before the pack trip was even over) conceeding that the kids loved it so much that we probably ought to bring them back again sometime, but, stipulated that HE would wait for the kids and I at a hotel. Today, however, he said, "I guess I will have to ride with you again. I would worry too much waiting for you at a hotel." Vonnie and John, however, are ADAMANT that we will NEVER get either one of them on the back of a horse EVER! At least, though, today they can admit that there WERE fun moments in it for them. I think it helps that their soreness is finally wearing off. I have noticed that they are getting no end of delight out of making me feel guilty for having drug them to the Rockies and having 'coerced' them into getting up on those horses! ¶ 7/26/2006 06:32:00 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
travelogue:
DAY NINE (early morning) Wow! Here in this part of Saskatchewan we are still on Mountain time...I got up at 5:30 this morning (Grant was already up) and saw that it was already fully daylight out when I peeked out of the light-blocking drapes of the patio door of our hotel room.
If my computer battery will hold up (and my eyes aren't too heavy...stayed up until almost 1:00am this morning and was wide awake again at 5:30am), I will write new entries for each day of our trip thus far and post them chronologically tonight when we reach our next hotel (internet accessibility!).
After I posted the text of yesterday's post, I began sorting through the 3,800 photos we had of the actual pack trip portion of our vacation (that figure is not counting our photos before and since the three day pack trip!) to find a few photos to put with the post. As I did so, I discovered some things about our trip that I missed when it was actually happening! I was near the front of the line-up when we packed in. (Right behind the leader, our sweet cook, Isabel, who was leading Doug's pony, Pete.) I never realized until I looked at the photos last night why it was that one of our group needed to lead Rayna's pony, rather than one of the two guides leading her. Isabel was already leading Doug's pony--that much I already realized--and you cannot lead two ponies who have riders at once (not safely). All this time I have thought Brittany didn't lead Rayna's pony simply because she didn't want to be bothered with it (which is why later, when she was adamant that a parent could NOT lead Rayna's pony, I was really annoyed). Wrong! While getting everyone lined up to begin our trek into the back country, Brittany had ridden up leading Rayna. Rayna's pony, Nada, was being a mess and wrapped herself around behind Zappy and under his tail so Brittany had to drop the lead rope momentarily. Being the closest rider, I had leaned down and picked it up to hand it to her. Then is when Isabel had asked if I could lead Rayna. I had said "Sure." But, then Brittany had pointed out that they hadn't ever used Snickers to lead before...that Rocky (Grant's horse) had been a guide horse with his former owners and would be a wiser choice for leading another pony. So, I was told to give Grant the lead rope. Grant's horse was being a mess...very obstinate and uncooperative...and Grant wasn't accustomed to riding regularly. I really thought that having the added responsibility of dealing with Nada (who clearly was not the jewel Pete (Doug's mount) was) was really going to stress out my husband (who had never wanted to get on the back of a horse and go into grizzly country and CAMP to begin with and was only there out of love for his wife)! So, a few minutes later when Nada wrapped himself around Rocky, forcing Grant to drop the lead rope, I rode over and picked up the dropped lead and took over leading Rayna's pony from that point on, until Caleb caught up with us when we stopped at the lake for lunch. (Caleb had been delayed because the food--packed on two horses--was not ready to leave when we were.) After meeting up with us at lunch, Caleb strung the two horses and Brittany's two mules (which had our personal stuff) together and took them the rest of the way and that is when Brittany took over leading Rayna's pony...telling me for the first time that really parents weren't ever suppose to lead their kids' ponies. What I didn't realize until I looked at the photos last night was that Brittany spent the first leg of our journey leading the two pack mules...THAT is why she could not lead Rayna's pony. She was the last one in our line and I was at the front (right behind the other guide, Isabel who was leading Doug's pony), so I never SAW Brittany during the trip in and I didn't realize she was leading the two mules. Duh! I didn't notice the two laden mules until later when they were in Caleb's string....even though I shot the photos that clearly SHOW the two mules being led by Brittany! How can that be?...well, I shot a great deal of photos over my shoulder without being able to see the screen at all when shooting...just taking it on faith that I would capture the action and people behind me! It worked great! I LOVE my camera!!! I got great photos BEHIND me, even while leading cantankerous, rotten old NADA. And now, I know the "rest of the story" as I finally get a chance, for the first time to really SEE those photos!
Well, Grant is nudging me to get off the computer and get ready to head out again, so, I will stop for now!.... ¶ 7/25/2006 04:45:00 AM 0 comments
DAY NINE (early morning) Wow! Here in this part of Saskatchewan we are still on Mountain time...I got up at 5:30 this morning (Grant was already up) and saw that it was already fully daylight out when I peeked out of the light-blocking drapes of the patio door of our hotel room.
If my computer battery will hold up (and my eyes aren't too heavy...stayed up until almost 1:00am this morning and was wide awake again at 5:30am), I will write new entries for each day of our trip thus far and post them chronologically tonight when we reach our next hotel (internet accessibility!).
After I posted the text of yesterday's post, I began sorting through the 3,800 photos we had of the actual pack trip portion of our vacation (that figure is not counting our photos before and since the three day pack trip!) to find a few photos to put with the post. As I did so, I discovered some things about our trip that I missed when it was actually happening! I was near the front of the line-up when we packed in. (Right behind the leader, our sweet cook, Isabel, who was leading Doug's pony, Pete.) I never realized until I looked at the photos last night why it was that one of our group needed to lead Rayna's pony, rather than one of the two guides leading her. Isabel was already leading Doug's pony--that much I already realized--and you cannot lead two ponies who have riders at once (not safely). All this time I have thought Brittany didn't lead Rayna's pony simply because she didn't want to be bothered with it (which is why later, when she was adamant that a parent could NOT lead Rayna's pony, I was really annoyed). Wrong! While getting everyone lined up to begin our trek into the back country, Brittany had ridden up leading Rayna. Rayna's pony, Nada, was being a mess and wrapped herself around behind Zappy and under his tail so Brittany had to drop the lead rope momentarily. Being the closest rider, I had leaned down and picked it up to hand it to her. Then is when Isabel had asked if I could lead Rayna. I had said "Sure." But, then Brittany had pointed out that they hadn't ever used Snickers to lead before...that Rocky (Grant's horse) had been a guide horse with his former owners and would be a wiser choice for leading another pony. So, I was told to give Grant the lead rope. Grant's horse was being a mess...very obstinate and uncooperative...and Grant wasn't accustomed to riding regularly. I really thought that having the added responsibility of dealing with Nada (who clearly was not the jewel Pete (Doug's mount) was) was really going to stress out my husband (who had never wanted to get on the back of a horse and go into grizzly country and CAMP to begin with and was only there out of love for his wife)! So, a few minutes later when Nada wrapped himself around Rocky, forcing Grant to drop the lead rope, I rode over and picked up the dropped lead and took over leading Rayna's pony from that point on, until Caleb caught up with us when we stopped at the lake for lunch. (Caleb had been delayed because the food--packed on two horses--was not ready to leave when we were.) After meeting up with us at lunch, Caleb strung the two horses and Brittany's two mules (which had our personal stuff) together and took them the rest of the way and that is when Brittany took over leading Rayna's pony...telling me for the first time that really parents weren't ever suppose to lead their kids' ponies. What I didn't realize until I looked at the photos last night was that Brittany spent the first leg of our journey leading the two pack mules...THAT is why she could not lead Rayna's pony. She was the last one in our line and I was at the front (right behind the other guide, Isabel who was leading Doug's pony), so I never SAW Brittany during the trip in and I didn't realize she was leading the two mules. Duh! I didn't notice the two laden mules until later when they were in Caleb's string....even though I shot the photos that clearly SHOW the two mules being led by Brittany! How can that be?...well, I shot a great deal of photos over my shoulder without being able to see the screen at all when shooting...just taking it on faith that I would capture the action and people behind me! It worked great! I LOVE my camera!!! I got great photos BEHIND me, even while leading cantankerous, rotten old NADA. And now, I know the "rest of the story" as I finally get a chance, for the first time to really SEE those photos!
Well, Grant is nudging me to get off the computer and get ready to head out again, so, I will stop for now!.... ¶ 7/25/2006 04:45:00 AM 0 comments
Monday, July 24, 2006
travelogue:
DAY EIGHT (Okay, I have gone back in and added this preface to my post for tonight:
Grant just read through it and said it sounded pretty pessimistic and was hard to follow...that I skip back and forth a lot. He is right! It needs a lot of reworking and editing...more than I have time to do tonight. We decided to leave the post here...but, I will go back in and rewrite our account more cohesively later. And, don't let the tone of the post mislead you...honestly, the pack trip we took was the most fun I have ever had on any vacation. I would do it again in a heartbeat, and plan to. It was exquisite...but we did get really exhausted and really dirty. But, there were many moments during our pack trip when I thought, "I could do this the rest of my life and be perfectly content!" It is so gorgeous up there...and 'my' horse was such a joy to be with. And I love the solitude of being in the back country so far from any roads or signs of civilization. All that said, here is my post...)
Wow! Where shall I begin?… First of all, I apologize for only posting a lone photo last night without even any commentary…but, I figured if I posted the photo, at least our friends and family would know we made it out of the wilds without becoming grizzly fodder. (Our guide DID find fresh bear tracks near our campsite the morning we packed out…and grizzlies have been sited near the place we camped earlier this summer, but, the bears didn’t bother us and we didn’t bother them!) We were so tired (a good tired!, but sheer bone-weary exhaustion, none-the-less) that we didn't have the umph to do much of anything Sunday night. I was too tired to take photos of the gorgeous mountains on our drive out (the light playing across them dramatically as a storm threatened to roll through). Considering, I am such a photo fanatic that I took over three thousand photos during the pack trip (exhausting my eight gigabyte supply of SD cards), being too tired to dig out my camera says a LOT. So, you can understand that I truly didn't have the energy to WRITE anything to post last night! I just was dying to crawl into a hot shower and scrub away the dirt and grime that was practically tattoed into my hide! We were suppose to camp at Lake Louise tent area both the night before our pack trip and again the night our pack trip ended...but we ended up just using the Lake Louise site long enough to repack our gear well enough to free up the kids' seats in back and traveled on to Calgary to spend the night in a hotel instead! I am sure we were a mystery to the other campers...we pulled in and pulled out our tents, but, instead of putting them up, we refolded them and packed them and the rest of our gear back into carrier on our roof, then pulled out and left. The guy at the front gate couldn't figure out why we were checking out twenty minutes after checking in! It really worried the poor fellow. He kept asking us what was wrong with our site. What was wrong with it was that it was outside!
There have been so many changes in that part of the Rockies since I was last there twenty years ago. I was saddened to see the highway lined with tall fencing…but I guess it is better for the wild-life…keeps them from crossing the highway and keeps people out of their area, too. Last time I drove through there, wildlife (moose, big horn sheep, elk, etc) would come right up to the edge of the woods and be clearly visible from the road if you were watching closely. I miss that NEARNESS….but, I am sure it is much better for the wild-life the way it is now. Also, camping was out in the open. Now days, the campsites (at least the one we stayed at the night before our pack trip into the back country began) are surrounded by tall electrical fences…sort of “people corrals” to keep the bears out. It was a little weird sleeping inside a fence, alongside a bunch of other folks. I felt a little like Begins and Lightening (our two horses back home)! Still, it was nice going to sleep at night with the knowledge that there was something between us and the bears other than the fabric of our tent wall. It made it more comfortable snuggling down into my sleeping bag when I didn’t have the little nibbling of doubt in the back corners of my mind that that same warm sleeping bag would become an entrapment if a bear came upon us…making us tasty little sandwiches! I also have to admit that even though each camp site was so small it couldn’t accommodate both the tiny tent we had brought for the Murrays and the six person tent we had brought for ourselves (we had to stake one side of our tent off the area meant for the tents on the slope of the plateau side) and the campsites were densely packed in together, still it was surprisingly private--giving the illusion of true camping. There were lots of pine trees lining all the camp sites. It was pretty. It was surprising how packed in we all were, and yet how it didn’t seem as packed in as it was. All night, though, we could hear road noise on the nearby highway…loud trucks, etc. This was at the Lake Louise tent camping area. Ironically enough, we never got around to actually SEEING Lake Louise! Oh well…next time!
One thing that was really surprising was that it always seemed to be daylight! It didn’t get dark until about 11:00pm (midnight Kansas City time!) and was light again by 6:00am.
We were so tired by the time we got our tents set up and our supper cooked over the campfire (hotdogs and s’mores) and our showers taken that we pretty much just went straight to bed that first night of camping. Then, the next morning it was a mad rush to get our campsite broken down and get off to Timberline Tours for our trip. In our haste, we abandoned the notion of figuring out how to get the newly unpacked tents back IN their canvas bags (they grow, you know, the first time you unpack them and put them up!) or getting everything strategically positioned back into our car roof carrier. Instead, we just folded up the car roof carrier and stuck it inside the car and folded up our tents and put them in the car (instead of on top of the car). We couldn’t even zip the tent containers shut…we just let the tents hang out of the bulging containers. Of course, our van was already PACKED TO THE HILT before we crammed all the on top of the roof stuff into the interior of the van…so, the very back of the van and even the back seat where the kids had ridden, were packed TIGHT clear up to the roof with stuff. Vonnie had to hold Rayna in her lap and I held Darcy in my lap and Doug sat on top of the cooler between my legs and Vonnie’s legs. That is how we made the short trip from Lake Louise to Timberline Tours. It was a funny sight! As we all climbed out of the van, people naturally thought we had driven all the way from Missouri like that!
One thing about the pack trip…no one ever seemed to be in any hurry for anything. There were no time tables or stress over how long it was taking to pack things (or unpack them)…everyone there was so laid back. That can be a bit disconcerting if you are used to organizing your life on timelines…but we all adjusted! Another thing we soon learned is they always underestimate how long something is going to take (and never seem to notice they have underestimated!). We had been told the pack trip in would take four hours and the trip out (by another route) would be five hours. Wrong! It took us SIX AND A HALF hours by horseback in. Before we packed out, John took our guide aside and told him he needed to switch our route out and take us by the shortest route possible (as the planned route out was even longer than the route in had been). Caleb (our seventeen year old guide) told John that we could go by the most direct route out…and he said that would take us about three hours. It took FIVE HOURS! I will add here, that our other seventeen year old guide didn’t want to lead Rayna’s horse out…but wouldn’t let me lead her horse out (as that is against their policy--letting parents lead another horse while riding themselves), so, Rayna handled her own horse by herself the entire ride out. She did great…though there were a few times I was really worried and I came very near just leading her horse whether the guide liked it or not. (Her horse tended to stop and graze, then go trotting down the mountain to catch up with the horse in front.) Rayna has always been sure-seated in the saddle, though…and the trotting didn’t bother her a bit. In fact, as the horse took off trotting the first time and I yelled to her, “Rayna pull back on the reigns and say ’Whoa’!” All she did was shake her head joyfully and yell encouragingly to her horse, “Whoopee!!!” She was a pretty cute sight…such a little girl astride her horse, handling him all by herself. As we were taking the most direct route out, we passed a number of hikers on our trip out and more than one oohed and ahhed over the littlest rider in our group as we passed them. (I don’t mean to make it sound like we had trouble with our guides. We were a little shocked that the only people leading us into the back country were a seventeen year old girl, a seventeen year old boy, and an eighteen year old girl (our cook)…but, they did a terrific job and were a lot of fun. Still, you know how mothers are with their babies…never cross a mother’s baby or that mother will have a tough time liking you. Our guide was sweet as could be, but she and I disagreed about what was safe for my youngest on the last leg of the journey out of the back country…so, my mamma bear personality reared it’s head momentarily.)
I must say, though, that our journey INTO the back country (that first day) was a marathon of endurance. I had naively assumed that the tour outfit would be packing bottled water in for us…and that bottled water would be available to us en route. Before we had left Missouri, Darcy had begged me to buy her a canteen for the trip. Dumb me…I had told her that would just be one more unnecessary thing to pack and that we already didn’t have space for the things we HAD packed (everything on the LIST we had been provided to pack by…long underwear, rain gear, etc). Canteens and water bottles were not on that list. (Guess the tour outfit just assumed we would have sense enough on our own to bring that!) Our guides (the two girls) both had water bottles of their own…so, I don’t think they realized how dehydrated the rest of us were by the last leg of our very hot, long, wearying journey into camp. It was unusually hot for that area…and (blessedly dry!). We never needed our long underwear, our coats, or our rain gear in the back country. (The first morning we had stayed at the crowded “people corral” at Lake Louise, it had been too hot for us to get into our sleeping bags when we had gone to bed that night, but, the temperature had dropped DRAMATICALLY during the night. Around 4:00am, Doug woke me up…skittering over to my side of the tent saying, “Green. Green. My green!” His skin was ice cold and he was asking me for his green sleeping bag. (I had just laid out their youth bags--fifty degree rating--but he knew there was a big green bag for him, an adult sized sleeping bag that was rated for thirty degree weather.) The girls were awake with chattering teeth, too. I scrambled around in the dark and pulled out the bigger bags for each child, placing their lighter, smaller youth bags inside the adult sized sleeping bags. This made wonderfully warm nests for each one of them and we had a hard time getting them OUT of their snuggly nests a few hours later when it was time to get dressed and break up camp to head out for our pack trip. We could see our breath and it was cold enough that the kids and I wore our winter coats. (Grant, meanwhile was sweating in short sleeves as he and John tore down our camp. But, the guys are always hot when the rest of us are freezing to death!) I was amazed at the HUGE temperature change in such a short time. When we had been listening to local radio the evening before, the DJ had been giving the weather report and had been complaining about the “stifling heat” they had had that day. We had laughed, because it was quite PLEASANT temperature-wise…like a pleasant Spring day. I would have guessed the temperature to be about 70 degrees Fahrenheit (course they listed the temp in Celsius…which doesn’t computer in my mind unless it is 37-39 degrees--normal body temperature or a fever). But awaking to a brisk WINTER morning, made me think of the previous afternoon as a heat-wave, too! Believe me, that morning as I sorted through our clothing to pick out what to take with us on the pack trip, I leaned towards the cold weather stuff. It turned out, though, that that first cold morning in the Lake Louise tent camping area was to be our only frosty morning. We had beautiful weather the whole time we were in the back country. Though it was HOT towards the end of our trek IN on that first day, the rest of the time in the back country wasn’t too hot through the day and very mild through the night…and no rain! (We heard that the previous summer they had only had twelve days that hadn’t had at least a little rain. Rain is VERY COMMON up there, I guess. And, it comes up on you with almost no warning since you cannot see much of the sky (surrounded on all sides by mountains). The skies can be completely clear one moment and stormy the next. We never had to break our rain gear or our winter clothing out a single time though!
Back to my account of our first day, though… The kids and I started out loving the experience. (Grant, John, & Vonnie were a little less enthusiastic…maybe DREADING the experience would better describe their starting frame of mind?) But, I have to admit that by the time we finally got to our campsite at Red Deer Lake, I was so miserable that I (secretly) considered maybe staying at camp the next day instead of going out for the horse-back day trip to the natural bridge. They were saying that was to be a three hour trip… The ’four hour trip’ we had just experienced that had become a six and a half hour marathon--the last hour, sheer torture as I baked in the sun was thirstier than I can ever remember being in my entire life didn’t really predispose me to looking forward to jumping right back into my saddle the next morning. I didn’t say so, though. (I mean I was the one who had drug us all up there!) I really thought Darcy would WANT to go on the trip the next day. Wrong! She told me she didn’t think she would go. Vonnie, John, and Grant had already made it clear (even BEFORE our six and a half hour torturous trek) that THEY planned on staying in camp and recuperating the second day. Doug and Rayna, though, WANTED to go back out on the horses. They had no more than gotten off their horses as we staggered into camp, than they began pestering me about when they could go back on another horse ride! Ironic, that the woman who arranges the tours had originally suggested we might need to alter our plans because of the two younger children. Turns out, they weathered the trip better than any of us…even DARCY. (Darcy, however, quickly recovered and had already decided by the time we went to bed that first night that she would go on the day trip with us PROVIDED Yea Yea lend her water bottle. (Only Vonnie had brought a plastic bottle of water with her when we left for the pack trip. We had THIRTY bottles of water in the van, but, none of us had brought one with us. I had left behind my empty Canada Dry bottle, too. So often in the trip, I would think longingly of that bottle I had emptied only moments before we left and had thrown back into the van! How wonderful it would have been to have had SOMETHING to hold water in, besides the small plastic coffee cups that were at the camp site…anything that I could have stuck in my saddle bag! That one plastic bottle of Vonnie’s became a prized possession! She gladly lent it to Darcy for the second day but only on the condition that Darcy guard it with her life! ….Just to help you understand, we had rushed around the morning before to get to Timberline Tours and had only had a single pop tart each (one of the two that are wrapped together) for breakfast and a few swallows of water. Then we had waited a long time in the sun for the journey to begin. We had ridden hours in the baking sun before stopping for lunch. Lunch had been some delicious ham and cheese sandwiches and one tiny juice box apiece--mixed berry. There was nothing else to drink after the five swallows it took to empty our juice boxes…except lake water. I was a bit dubious about drinking lake water, but Brittany (one of the guides) suggested we do just that, assuring me that she drank from the lake and it didn’t make her sick. (She, however, had water in a large travel mug that she had brought with her.) She told us to cut the top off our little drink boxes and dip them into the lake. We did. My instincts told me, “Not a good idea!…standing water…amoebas…”, but, my throat was so parched that it overcame my reservations. We had just finished guzzling down lake water when Caleb arrived with the pack team (his own mount and another horse and two mules laden with our luggage and the food we would be eating those three days in the back country.) Caleb saw us dipping our boxes back down into the lake for another refill and admonished us NOT to drink the LAKE water. He said, “The streams are glacier fed and they are safe to drink from. That is where all our camp water comes from, but, you shouldn’t drink from the LAKES.” I felt Montezuma’s revenge coming on! Fortunately, it was just psychological. I never got diarrhea, nor did Grant or Doug or Darcy. Rayna did…but, I am pretty sure hers was a virus that she got off Pop John. John was sick the first day and a half at camp--but it had started for him before any of us had drunk the forbidden lake water!
After our stop at that lake, we scorched in our saddles for many a miserable hour. Actually, in spite of my thirst, I ENJOYED our ride and the gorgeous scenery the first five and a half hours…but that last hour lasted an eternity for me (as I am sure the whole six and a half hours lasted an eternity for those in our group that never wanted to be on the back of a horse to begin with). By the time we got to camp, my tongue felt like it was three times thicker than its normal size. I have never felt such a dry mouth in all my life. We were all about half dizzy, I think, with thirst and exhaustion…well, at least everyone over the age of nine. The two younger ones were bouncing about having a blast. Darcy and the rest of us were whipped. Vonnie and Grant had really had a miserable time with their horses…having to constantly yank their heads up to keep them from stopping to graze. Vonnie’s hand was actually SWOLLEN AND BRUISED from gripping the reigns so tightly and getting banged against of the saddle horn when her horse, Midge, would swing his head in protest. Grant’s horse, Rocky, hadn’t cooperated very well, either. He was a huge horse that used to be a guide horse. At the beginning of the trip, when the two female guides (Caleb not with us, as he would be following later with the pack train) had realized that Rayna would need to be led, as well as Doug, they had originally suggested that Grant lead Rayna’s horse, since Rocky was a former guide horse and would take such an activity in stride. They weren’t considering, though, that Grant isn’t used to riding horses himself and expecting him to tow a very UNCOOPERATIVE horse behind him was not a good idea. After Grant lost his grip on the lead rope early on, I took over. Britany told me that my horse wasn’t used to leading, but I appealed that I was more comfortable leading the other horse than Grant would be and that it seemed like my horse was doing okay with that activity. (Turns out my horse, Snickers, was a jewel. He was so cooperative and hard working and such a STEADY, unflinchingly calm mount. Later, I learned that he was one of their “bear chasers”…horses used to chase grizzlies off. And, that he had formerly been a roping horse. My intuition of Snickers, without the benefit of that knowledge, proved sound…he did great dragging along stubborn, ornery old Nada (Rayna’s mount), not startling at all even though Nada was horrible at following and seemed bent on getting her rope wrapped under his tail (at which point I would DROP the rope and circle back around to retrieve it). Never once did Snickers freak. Many a horse would have. Indeed, Zappy, the guide’s horse did freak later when towing Nada and getting similar treatment from Nada. Anyway, I lead Nada (Rayna’s mount) until we stopped for lunch. I think the two girl guides got into a lot of trouble, though, with the more experienced (seventeen year old) Caleb when he caught up with us at the lake and found out they were having a rider lead another horse. I guess that is WAY against their rules…on the grounds that if trouble arises, a parent tends to instinctually have a death grip on the rope--even to the point of being scraped from the saddle themselves by that rope, rather than letting go of the lead rope with the understanding that their child’s mount won’t go far from the rest of the horses. I comprehended, though, when to drop the rope rather than getting knocked out of my saddle by the rope wrapping around me or getting bucked as the rope wrapped up under my horse’s tail and did fine with leading Nada. I know my opinion is biased, but I think I was doing a better job of keeping Nada in line that first half of the trip than the guide did the second half…when we kept losing the back end of our group because Nada wouldn’t cooperate. (All of which helps explain why I was irritated two days later when I felt like Rayna needed to be led and the guides were telling me I couldn’t lead her! But, like I said, I think the two girls must have gotten into a lot of trouble when it was discovered I had led Rayna all the way to the lake that first day…because arrangements had changed in a hurry the moment Caleb arrived. Honestly, though, Snickers was a much better choice, horse-wise, to lead another horse than the more flighty Zappy was.)
Well, it is late…so, I will wait until tomorrow to post about our succeeding days (which were SO MUCH BETTER than our first day--all would agree!).
I do want to quickly tell a few more things, though… One moment of excitement (not the good kind) occurred during our lunch break at the lake before Caleb caught up with us. The two girl guides had tied all our horses up to some small evergreen trees (bush sized) so we could have our lunch. Well, right off the bat, Zappy wound himself around his bush and somehow got his rope wrapped behind his hind legs and managed to flip himself over. The way his halter was wrapped tightly around him, he was quickly suffocating. He couldn’t breathe at all and was on his back. His body weight was holding the halter tightly around him, closing off his air way. It was a terrifying sight as Brittany struggled to save her horse and Isabel (new to this job--the eighteen year old cook) was momentarily confused about how to help. Brittany was fast acting and saved the horse…but it was a horrifying scene to watch…frozen in place, not knowing what to do to help. Later in the trip, flighty Zappy, tried to roll in the lake WITH BRITTANY still in the saddle. Again Brittany anticipated what Zappy was doing and managed, just at the last moment, to get her back up square on her feet before she could roll. It seems that Zappy came from Rivenstoke(?)…the same place our very capable guide Caleb haled from…where there are lots of streams and lakes and the horses are known for their love of the water and love of swimming. Brittany told us that on a trip shortly before ours, a regular rider had been on Zappy when Zappy had decided to roll in the lake. The woman got drenched (still in Zappy’s saddle when Zappy dropped down into the water and rolled) and her brand-new digital camera was ruined. I was quietly thankful that I wasn’t assigned Zappy! Brittany really liked Zappy a lot, though, and was pleased to be riding him. Zappy was a beautiful horse…and he couldn’t WALK, he pranced!…but, he was just too flighty and silly. Later, he sored his legs up into a bloody mess one night while hobbled and turned loose to graze. The other horses walked sensibly with their hobbles on…comprehending that they could not RUN while the hobbles were on. Zappy, however, never walked with the hobbles. He would rare up on his hind legs and jump like a rabbit to get around…which had to be really hard on him.
Another thing that sticks in my mind, was one of our trips to the privy…I was holding Rayna’s hand as we walked down the trail to the privy. Rayna beamed up at me and exclaimed, “This is just like a ‘Mother-Daughter Day’!” Bless her happy little heart! Only a four year old would view a trip to the outhouse as a “Mother-Daughter Day”!
Well, I will write more tomorrow! (Tonight we are staying in Swift Current in Saskatchewan. Alberta has some of the most stunning landscape I have seen anywhere in the world...but, Saskatchewan has such warm, open, friendly folks! They make you feel like you are already home!) ¶ 7/24/2006 08:33:00 PM 0 comments
DAY EIGHT (Okay, I have gone back in and added this preface to my post for tonight:
Grant just read through it and said it sounded pretty pessimistic and was hard to follow...that I skip back and forth a lot. He is right! It needs a lot of reworking and editing...more than I have time to do tonight. We decided to leave the post here...but, I will go back in and rewrite our account more cohesively later. And, don't let the tone of the post mislead you...honestly, the pack trip we took was the most fun I have ever had on any vacation. I would do it again in a heartbeat, and plan to. It was exquisite...but we did get really exhausted and really dirty. But, there were many moments during our pack trip when I thought, "I could do this the rest of my life and be perfectly content!" It is so gorgeous up there...and 'my' horse was such a joy to be with. And I love the solitude of being in the back country so far from any roads or signs of civilization. All that said, here is my post...)
Wow! Where shall I begin?… First of all, I apologize for only posting a lone photo last night without even any commentary…but, I figured if I posted the photo, at least our friends and family would know we made it out of the wilds without becoming grizzly fodder. (Our guide DID find fresh bear tracks near our campsite the morning we packed out…and grizzlies have been sited near the place we camped earlier this summer, but, the bears didn’t bother us and we didn’t bother them!) We were so tired (a good tired!, but sheer bone-weary exhaustion, none-the-less) that we didn't have the umph to do much of anything Sunday night. I was too tired to take photos of the gorgeous mountains on our drive out (the light playing across them dramatically as a storm threatened to roll through). Considering, I am such a photo fanatic that I took over three thousand photos during the pack trip (exhausting my eight gigabyte supply of SD cards), being too tired to dig out my camera says a LOT. So, you can understand that I truly didn't have the energy to WRITE anything to post last night! I just was dying to crawl into a hot shower and scrub away the dirt and grime that was practically tattoed into my hide! We were suppose to camp at Lake Louise tent area both the night before our pack trip and again the night our pack trip ended...but we ended up just using the Lake Louise site long enough to repack our gear well enough to free up the kids' seats in back and traveled on to Calgary to spend the night in a hotel instead! I am sure we were a mystery to the other campers...we pulled in and pulled out our tents, but, instead of putting them up, we refolded them and packed them and the rest of our gear back into carrier on our roof, then pulled out and left. The guy at the front gate couldn't figure out why we were checking out twenty minutes after checking in! It really worried the poor fellow. He kept asking us what was wrong with our site. What was wrong with it was that it was outside!
There have been so many changes in that part of the Rockies since I was last there twenty years ago. I was saddened to see the highway lined with tall fencing…but I guess it is better for the wild-life…keeps them from crossing the highway and keeps people out of their area, too. Last time I drove through there, wildlife (moose, big horn sheep, elk, etc) would come right up to the edge of the woods and be clearly visible from the road if you were watching closely. I miss that NEARNESS….but, I am sure it is much better for the wild-life the way it is now. Also, camping was out in the open. Now days, the campsites (at least the one we stayed at the night before our pack trip into the back country began) are surrounded by tall electrical fences…sort of “people corrals” to keep the bears out. It was a little weird sleeping inside a fence, alongside a bunch of other folks. I felt a little like Begins and Lightening (our two horses back home)! Still, it was nice going to sleep at night with the knowledge that there was something between us and the bears other than the fabric of our tent wall. It made it more comfortable snuggling down into my sleeping bag when I didn’t have the little nibbling of doubt in the back corners of my mind that that same warm sleeping bag would become an entrapment if a bear came upon us…making us tasty little sandwiches! I also have to admit that even though each camp site was so small it couldn’t accommodate both the tiny tent we had brought for the Murrays and the six person tent we had brought for ourselves (we had to stake one side of our tent off the area meant for the tents on the slope of the plateau side) and the campsites were densely packed in together, still it was surprisingly private--giving the illusion of true camping. There were lots of pine trees lining all the camp sites. It was pretty. It was surprising how packed in we all were, and yet how it didn’t seem as packed in as it was. All night, though, we could hear road noise on the nearby highway…loud trucks, etc. This was at the Lake Louise tent camping area. Ironically enough, we never got around to actually SEEING Lake Louise! Oh well…next time!
One thing that was really surprising was that it always seemed to be daylight! It didn’t get dark until about 11:00pm (midnight Kansas City time!) and was light again by 6:00am.
We were so tired by the time we got our tents set up and our supper cooked over the campfire (hotdogs and s’mores) and our showers taken that we pretty much just went straight to bed that first night of camping. Then, the next morning it was a mad rush to get our campsite broken down and get off to Timberline Tours for our trip. In our haste, we abandoned the notion of figuring out how to get the newly unpacked tents back IN their canvas bags (they grow, you know, the first time you unpack them and put them up!) or getting everything strategically positioned back into our car roof carrier. Instead, we just folded up the car roof carrier and stuck it inside the car and folded up our tents and put them in the car (instead of on top of the car). We couldn’t even zip the tent containers shut…we just let the tents hang out of the bulging containers. Of course, our van was already PACKED TO THE HILT before we crammed all the on top of the roof stuff into the interior of the van…so, the very back of the van and even the back seat where the kids had ridden, were packed TIGHT clear up to the roof with stuff. Vonnie had to hold Rayna in her lap and I held Darcy in my lap and Doug sat on top of the cooler between my legs and Vonnie’s legs. That is how we made the short trip from Lake Louise to Timberline Tours. It was a funny sight! As we all climbed out of the van, people naturally thought we had driven all the way from Missouri like that!
One thing about the pack trip…no one ever seemed to be in any hurry for anything. There were no time tables or stress over how long it was taking to pack things (or unpack them)…everyone there was so laid back. That can be a bit disconcerting if you are used to organizing your life on timelines…but we all adjusted! Another thing we soon learned is they always underestimate how long something is going to take (and never seem to notice they have underestimated!). We had been told the pack trip in would take four hours and the trip out (by another route) would be five hours. Wrong! It took us SIX AND A HALF hours by horseback in. Before we packed out, John took our guide aside and told him he needed to switch our route out and take us by the shortest route possible (as the planned route out was even longer than the route in had been). Caleb (our seventeen year old guide) told John that we could go by the most direct route out…and he said that would take us about three hours. It took FIVE HOURS! I will add here, that our other seventeen year old guide didn’t want to lead Rayna’s horse out…but wouldn’t let me lead her horse out (as that is against their policy--letting parents lead another horse while riding themselves), so, Rayna handled her own horse by herself the entire ride out. She did great…though there were a few times I was really worried and I came very near just leading her horse whether the guide liked it or not. (Her horse tended to stop and graze, then go trotting down the mountain to catch up with the horse in front.) Rayna has always been sure-seated in the saddle, though…and the trotting didn’t bother her a bit. In fact, as the horse took off trotting the first time and I yelled to her, “Rayna pull back on the reigns and say ’Whoa’!” All she did was shake her head joyfully and yell encouragingly to her horse, “Whoopee!!!” She was a pretty cute sight…such a little girl astride her horse, handling him all by herself. As we were taking the most direct route out, we passed a number of hikers on our trip out and more than one oohed and ahhed over the littlest rider in our group as we passed them. (I don’t mean to make it sound like we had trouble with our guides. We were a little shocked that the only people leading us into the back country were a seventeen year old girl, a seventeen year old boy, and an eighteen year old girl (our cook)…but, they did a terrific job and were a lot of fun. Still, you know how mothers are with their babies…never cross a mother’s baby or that mother will have a tough time liking you. Our guide was sweet as could be, but she and I disagreed about what was safe for my youngest on the last leg of the journey out of the back country…so, my mamma bear personality reared it’s head momentarily.)
I must say, though, that our journey INTO the back country (that first day) was a marathon of endurance. I had naively assumed that the tour outfit would be packing bottled water in for us…and that bottled water would be available to us en route. Before we had left Missouri, Darcy had begged me to buy her a canteen for the trip. Dumb me…I had told her that would just be one more unnecessary thing to pack and that we already didn’t have space for the things we HAD packed (everything on the LIST we had been provided to pack by…long underwear, rain gear, etc). Canteens and water bottles were not on that list. (Guess the tour outfit just assumed we would have sense enough on our own to bring that!) Our guides (the two girls) both had water bottles of their own…so, I don’t think they realized how dehydrated the rest of us were by the last leg of our very hot, long, wearying journey into camp. It was unusually hot for that area…and (blessedly dry!). We never needed our long underwear, our coats, or our rain gear in the back country. (The first morning we had stayed at the crowded “people corral” at Lake Louise, it had been too hot for us to get into our sleeping bags when we had gone to bed that night, but, the temperature had dropped DRAMATICALLY during the night. Around 4:00am, Doug woke me up…skittering over to my side of the tent saying, “Green. Green. My green!” His skin was ice cold and he was asking me for his green sleeping bag. (I had just laid out their youth bags--fifty degree rating--but he knew there was a big green bag for him, an adult sized sleeping bag that was rated for thirty degree weather.) The girls were awake with chattering teeth, too. I scrambled around in the dark and pulled out the bigger bags for each child, placing their lighter, smaller youth bags inside the adult sized sleeping bags. This made wonderfully warm nests for each one of them and we had a hard time getting them OUT of their snuggly nests a few hours later when it was time to get dressed and break up camp to head out for our pack trip. We could see our breath and it was cold enough that the kids and I wore our winter coats. (Grant, meanwhile was sweating in short sleeves as he and John tore down our camp. But, the guys are always hot when the rest of us are freezing to death!) I was amazed at the HUGE temperature change in such a short time. When we had been listening to local radio the evening before, the DJ had been giving the weather report and had been complaining about the “stifling heat” they had had that day. We had laughed, because it was quite PLEASANT temperature-wise…like a pleasant Spring day. I would have guessed the temperature to be about 70 degrees Fahrenheit (course they listed the temp in Celsius…which doesn’t computer in my mind unless it is 37-39 degrees--normal body temperature or a fever). But awaking to a brisk WINTER morning, made me think of the previous afternoon as a heat-wave, too! Believe me, that morning as I sorted through our clothing to pick out what to take with us on the pack trip, I leaned towards the cold weather stuff. It turned out, though, that that first cold morning in the Lake Louise tent camping area was to be our only frosty morning. We had beautiful weather the whole time we were in the back country. Though it was HOT towards the end of our trek IN on that first day, the rest of the time in the back country wasn’t too hot through the day and very mild through the night…and no rain! (We heard that the previous summer they had only had twelve days that hadn’t had at least a little rain. Rain is VERY COMMON up there, I guess. And, it comes up on you with almost no warning since you cannot see much of the sky (surrounded on all sides by mountains). The skies can be completely clear one moment and stormy the next. We never had to break our rain gear or our winter clothing out a single time though!
Back to my account of our first day, though… The kids and I started out loving the experience. (Grant, John, & Vonnie were a little less enthusiastic…maybe DREADING the experience would better describe their starting frame of mind?) But, I have to admit that by the time we finally got to our campsite at Red Deer Lake, I was so miserable that I (secretly) considered maybe staying at camp the next day instead of going out for the horse-back day trip to the natural bridge. They were saying that was to be a three hour trip… The ’four hour trip’ we had just experienced that had become a six and a half hour marathon--the last hour, sheer torture as I baked in the sun was thirstier than I can ever remember being in my entire life didn’t really predispose me to looking forward to jumping right back into my saddle the next morning. I didn’t say so, though. (I mean I was the one who had drug us all up there!) I really thought Darcy would WANT to go on the trip the next day. Wrong! She told me she didn’t think she would go. Vonnie, John, and Grant had already made it clear (even BEFORE our six and a half hour torturous trek) that THEY planned on staying in camp and recuperating the second day. Doug and Rayna, though, WANTED to go back out on the horses. They had no more than gotten off their horses as we staggered into camp, than they began pestering me about when they could go back on another horse ride! Ironic, that the woman who arranges the tours had originally suggested we might need to alter our plans because of the two younger children. Turns out, they weathered the trip better than any of us…even DARCY. (Darcy, however, quickly recovered and had already decided by the time we went to bed that first night that she would go on the day trip with us PROVIDED Yea Yea lend her water bottle. (Only Vonnie had brought a plastic bottle of water with her when we left for the pack trip. We had THIRTY bottles of water in the van, but, none of us had brought one with us. I had left behind my empty Canada Dry bottle, too. So often in the trip, I would think longingly of that bottle I had emptied only moments before we left and had thrown back into the van! How wonderful it would have been to have had SOMETHING to hold water in, besides the small plastic coffee cups that were at the camp site…anything that I could have stuck in my saddle bag! That one plastic bottle of Vonnie’s became a prized possession! She gladly lent it to Darcy for the second day but only on the condition that Darcy guard it with her life! ….Just to help you understand, we had rushed around the morning before to get to Timberline Tours and had only had a single pop tart each (one of the two that are wrapped together) for breakfast and a few swallows of water. Then we had waited a long time in the sun for the journey to begin. We had ridden hours in the baking sun before stopping for lunch. Lunch had been some delicious ham and cheese sandwiches and one tiny juice box apiece--mixed berry. There was nothing else to drink after the five swallows it took to empty our juice boxes…except lake water. I was a bit dubious about drinking lake water, but Brittany (one of the guides) suggested we do just that, assuring me that she drank from the lake and it didn’t make her sick. (She, however, had water in a large travel mug that she had brought with her.) She told us to cut the top off our little drink boxes and dip them into the lake. We did. My instincts told me, “Not a good idea!…standing water…amoebas…”, but, my throat was so parched that it overcame my reservations. We had just finished guzzling down lake water when Caleb arrived with the pack team (his own mount and another horse and two mules laden with our luggage and the food we would be eating those three days in the back country.) Caleb saw us dipping our boxes back down into the lake for another refill and admonished us NOT to drink the LAKE water. He said, “The streams are glacier fed and they are safe to drink from. That is where all our camp water comes from, but, you shouldn’t drink from the LAKES.” I felt Montezuma’s revenge coming on! Fortunately, it was just psychological. I never got diarrhea, nor did Grant or Doug or Darcy. Rayna did…but, I am pretty sure hers was a virus that she got off Pop John. John was sick the first day and a half at camp--but it had started for him before any of us had drunk the forbidden lake water!
After our stop at that lake, we scorched in our saddles for many a miserable hour. Actually, in spite of my thirst, I ENJOYED our ride and the gorgeous scenery the first five and a half hours…but that last hour lasted an eternity for me (as I am sure the whole six and a half hours lasted an eternity for those in our group that never wanted to be on the back of a horse to begin with). By the time we got to camp, my tongue felt like it was three times thicker than its normal size. I have never felt such a dry mouth in all my life. We were all about half dizzy, I think, with thirst and exhaustion…well, at least everyone over the age of nine. The two younger ones were bouncing about having a blast. Darcy and the rest of us were whipped. Vonnie and Grant had really had a miserable time with their horses…having to constantly yank their heads up to keep them from stopping to graze. Vonnie’s hand was actually SWOLLEN AND BRUISED from gripping the reigns so tightly and getting banged against of the saddle horn when her horse, Midge, would swing his head in protest. Grant’s horse, Rocky, hadn’t cooperated very well, either. He was a huge horse that used to be a guide horse. At the beginning of the trip, when the two female guides (Caleb not with us, as he would be following later with the pack train) had realized that Rayna would need to be led, as well as Doug, they had originally suggested that Grant lead Rayna’s horse, since Rocky was a former guide horse and would take such an activity in stride. They weren’t considering, though, that Grant isn’t used to riding horses himself and expecting him to tow a very UNCOOPERATIVE horse behind him was not a good idea. After Grant lost his grip on the lead rope early on, I took over. Britany told me that my horse wasn’t used to leading, but I appealed that I was more comfortable leading the other horse than Grant would be and that it seemed like my horse was doing okay with that activity. (Turns out my horse, Snickers, was a jewel. He was so cooperative and hard working and such a STEADY, unflinchingly calm mount. Later, I learned that he was one of their “bear chasers”…horses used to chase grizzlies off. And, that he had formerly been a roping horse. My intuition of Snickers, without the benefit of that knowledge, proved sound…he did great dragging along stubborn, ornery old Nada (Rayna’s mount), not startling at all even though Nada was horrible at following and seemed bent on getting her rope wrapped under his tail (at which point I would DROP the rope and circle back around to retrieve it). Never once did Snickers freak. Many a horse would have. Indeed, Zappy, the guide’s horse did freak later when towing Nada and getting similar treatment from Nada. Anyway, I lead Nada (Rayna’s mount) until we stopped for lunch. I think the two girl guides got into a lot of trouble, though, with the more experienced (seventeen year old) Caleb when he caught up with us at the lake and found out they were having a rider lead another horse. I guess that is WAY against their rules…on the grounds that if trouble arises, a parent tends to instinctually have a death grip on the rope--even to the point of being scraped from the saddle themselves by that rope, rather than letting go of the lead rope with the understanding that their child’s mount won’t go far from the rest of the horses. I comprehended, though, when to drop the rope rather than getting knocked out of my saddle by the rope wrapping around me or getting bucked as the rope wrapped up under my horse’s tail and did fine with leading Nada. I know my opinion is biased, but I think I was doing a better job of keeping Nada in line that first half of the trip than the guide did the second half…when we kept losing the back end of our group because Nada wouldn’t cooperate. (All of which helps explain why I was irritated two days later when I felt like Rayna needed to be led and the guides were telling me I couldn’t lead her! But, like I said, I think the two girls must have gotten into a lot of trouble when it was discovered I had led Rayna all the way to the lake that first day…because arrangements had changed in a hurry the moment Caleb arrived. Honestly, though, Snickers was a much better choice, horse-wise, to lead another horse than the more flighty Zappy was.)
Well, it is late…so, I will wait until tomorrow to post about our succeeding days (which were SO MUCH BETTER than our first day--all would agree!).
I do want to quickly tell a few more things, though… One moment of excitement (not the good kind) occurred during our lunch break at the lake before Caleb caught up with us. The two girl guides had tied all our horses up to some small evergreen trees (bush sized) so we could have our lunch. Well, right off the bat, Zappy wound himself around his bush and somehow got his rope wrapped behind his hind legs and managed to flip himself over. The way his halter was wrapped tightly around him, he was quickly suffocating. He couldn’t breathe at all and was on his back. His body weight was holding the halter tightly around him, closing off his air way. It was a terrifying sight as Brittany struggled to save her horse and Isabel (new to this job--the eighteen year old cook) was momentarily confused about how to help. Brittany was fast acting and saved the horse…but it was a horrifying scene to watch…frozen in place, not knowing what to do to help. Later in the trip, flighty Zappy, tried to roll in the lake WITH BRITTANY still in the saddle. Again Brittany anticipated what Zappy was doing and managed, just at the last moment, to get her back up square on her feet before she could roll. It seems that Zappy came from Rivenstoke(?)…the same place our very capable guide Caleb haled from…where there are lots of streams and lakes and the horses are known for their love of the water and love of swimming. Brittany told us that on a trip shortly before ours, a regular rider had been on Zappy when Zappy had decided to roll in the lake. The woman got drenched (still in Zappy’s saddle when Zappy dropped down into the water and rolled) and her brand-new digital camera was ruined. I was quietly thankful that I wasn’t assigned Zappy! Brittany really liked Zappy a lot, though, and was pleased to be riding him. Zappy was a beautiful horse…and he couldn’t WALK, he pranced!…but, he was just too flighty and silly. Later, he sored his legs up into a bloody mess one night while hobbled and turned loose to graze. The other horses walked sensibly with their hobbles on…comprehending that they could not RUN while the hobbles were on. Zappy, however, never walked with the hobbles. He would rare up on his hind legs and jump like a rabbit to get around…which had to be really hard on him.
Another thing that sticks in my mind, was one of our trips to the privy…I was holding Rayna’s hand as we walked down the trail to the privy. Rayna beamed up at me and exclaimed, “This is just like a ‘Mother-Daughter Day’!” Bless her happy little heart! Only a four year old would view a trip to the outhouse as a “Mother-Daughter Day”!
Well, I will write more tomorrow! (Tonight we are staying in Swift Current in Saskatchewan. Alberta has some of the most stunning landscape I have seen anywhere in the world...but, Saskatchewan has such warm, open, friendly folks! They make you feel like you are already home!) ¶ 7/24/2006 08:33:00 PM 0 comments
Nearing the lake and our first break as we trekked into the back country that first day.
Our first glimpse of that particular lake.
The kids were really excited to see the snow that hadn't yet melted (though the weather was warm). After lunch, they had a snowball fight!
The lake was gorgeous!
When Zappy first went down...before I realized he was strangling.
Zappy back up on his feet, able to breathe again.
Grant's horse, Rocky, made the oddest sounds...Grant said it was a grizzly call!
¶ 7/24/2006 05:59:00 PM 1 comments
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Thursday, July 20, 2006
travelogue:
DAY FOUR One thing I haven't written much about is how much the kids have been enjoying the hotel pools. All our bookings have been at Comfort Inns. Pop John was organized and planned out our route in advance as well as making all our hotel reservations...and he did great! All three of the hotels we have stayed at have been really good. The one we are at now (in the little town of Shelby, Montana) is my favorite so far. It's pool is smaller than any of the others have been (none of them have been huge)...but it wound up being so much more user-friendly for the kids. At our previous two hotels, the water has been over Doug and Rayna's head (even at the most shallow point). Notwithstanding, we still managed to swim an hour each evening before I pulled the kids out. But, last night, our hotel had a little pool that is designed for swimming in place. It was four feet deep all the way through (up to Darcy's neck), but it had a nice wide ledge wrapping around three sides of it that the two little ones could stand on and be above water. It also had "twirl jets" that made the water in the ledged end of the pool choppy--much to the kids' delight!--and it had "swim jets" on the other end that produced a current in the pool, so that, I could swim in place. I had read about such pools, but had never experienced one before. I really liked it. I spent quite a while swimming in place on my back, completely able to watch the two littler ones and never having to worry about running into the end of the pool! (You can't swim HARD or you will overcome the current...but swimming at a relaxed pace, you just stay in one spot!)
Of course, all the hotels have had hot tubs, too, next to the pools. Pop John and Yea Yea (Vonnie) relaxed in the hot tub last night while the kids popped in and out (gleefully torturing themselves going from very hot water to very cold water!). The kids swam an hour and a half last night before I finally pulled them out. Then they spent a considerable amount of time in the shower up in the hotel room rinsing down. They all LOVE the "hotel experience". Doug keeps asking (ad infinitum) "Home?", "Home?". Then we tell him, "No. We are going to another hotel," he whoops with joy. He doesn't "get" the concept of "Canada". We keep telling the kids "We are going to CANADA", but then we never get there! Yesterday when we pulled over at a little rest stop to eat our PB sandwiches (just a grassy area by the side of the road...no tables or anything (turns out we stopped two miles too early!...but it was a serendipitous error, as the kids had a really good time there and discovered a tiny, little well-hidden crooked trail that led down to the mountain stream)), but, anyway, as we piled out of the car in the middle of nowhere, Doug looked around and asked expectantly "CANADUN?". No, Doug...this isn't Canada, yet!
John took photos last night of the kids at the pool, but I don't have those photos on my computer yet, so I will post some pool photos from a few nights ago...
(Last night was the first night Vonnie got to swim with us. She had forgotten to pack her swim suit...thus our excuse for stopping at the last three Wal-Marts we have gone to! (Takes a while to find a suit that fits...especially in the "off season"...all the Wal-Marts up this way have already put their summer stuff on clearance and have the fall inventory out. All three of the kids got new swim suits a couple of days ago (the girls insisting their old ones were tight and their mom not able to pass up a good clearance price!...then I had to buy Doug a new pair of trunks because they had SUPERMAN trunks on clearance and the poor child has never had any super-hero swim trunks of any sort (always just plain black ones or navy blue ones)...so, of course, I had to get those for him, even though his trunks are no where near too small yet!) Vonnie found a swim top that fit a few Wal-Marts back...but no bottoms...so she didn't get them. This last Wal-Mart, she just settled for some gymn shorts and a gymn top that would work as swim wear in a pinch. However, the over exuberant jets in last nights' hot tub (these were jets in OVERDRIVE...making the water shoot up about five inches} had an amusing effect on her swim wear. As she began inflating, we all got cracked up. (Well, GRANT, didn't...because he wasn't there! He has managed to avoid all of the pool experiences so far! He gets to channel surf and relax in solitude up in the hotel room while we swim. He has offered to put in his time at the pool, but has been really relieved when told he doesn't have to! Poor guy...he needs time to relax...he is REALLY dreading the next five days. It is stressful to him to think about going into another country where the money is different...and he HATES camping....and he doesn't like horses...and he has a deep-seated aversion to grizzly bears (and is certain that we are about to place ourselves in the midst of them). He truly does love me to go on this trip for me. He keeps telling me, though, that this is "to get Canada out of your system...we are NEVER going back!"...and that before we have even GOTTEN to Canada! I'm not worried, though...I remember how he dreaded China. Now, he would go back in a heartbeat...in fact, he wants to go back and keeps promising the kids that we will all go back again, once Rayna is old enough to really absorb the experience!
You wouldn't think car riding would tire children out much (but, then, MY CHILDREN have NEVER slept while riding, even when they were babies). Maybe the swimming each night has worn them out. Whatever the case, Rayna told me at supper our first night on the road that she was tired and wanted to go to bed! (We had left the hotel to get a bite to eat.) True enough, she climbed straight into bed as soon as we got back (about 8:00pm) and drifted off to sleep before she had to. Then, the second night, it was DOUG who declared, "Nap. Nap, pease." And HE fell asleep before we turned the lights out or the TV off! And, last night, they both went to sleep again very quickly...and before the lights were turned out. The kids LOVE the whole "hotel" thing. I think, just all sleeping in the same room is something that is so novel to them....like a giant family slumber party every night!
Vonnie and I have to do some planning now...we are all out of excuses to make the men stop at various Wal-Marts. Of course, we won't have to worry about that these next five days as there are no Wal-Marts out with the grizzlies...but, we need a reasonable persusion to get the men to let us shop on the five days journey back home again. (They HATE having to make Wal-Mart stops and keep insisting, "You can shop at Wal-Mart AT HOME...THIS IS VACATION!" What they don't GET is that each Wal-Mart is a unique experience. They just do not comprehend it at all. When Vonnie didn't have a swim suit, we had an iron-clad NEED to stop at at least one Wal-Mart a day...but, now, alas, she bought something to wear in the pool...so, now we need a new reason to HAVE to stop at Wal-Marts on our way back home (we are going a different route...all new towns, all new Wal-Marts!)...anybody have any tactical suggestions???? ¶ 7/20/2006 02:54:00 AM 3 comments
DAY FOUR One thing I haven't written much about is how much the kids have been enjoying the hotel pools. All our bookings have been at Comfort Inns. Pop John was organized and planned out our route in advance as well as making all our hotel reservations...and he did great! All three of the hotels we have stayed at have been really good. The one we are at now (in the little town of Shelby, Montana) is my favorite so far. It's pool is smaller than any of the others have been (none of them have been huge)...but it wound up being so much more user-friendly for the kids. At our previous two hotels, the water has been over Doug and Rayna's head (even at the most shallow point). Notwithstanding, we still managed to swim an hour each evening before I pulled the kids out. But, last night, our hotel had a little pool that is designed for swimming in place. It was four feet deep all the way through (up to Darcy's neck), but it had a nice wide ledge wrapping around three sides of it that the two little ones could stand on and be above water. It also had "twirl jets" that made the water in the ledged end of the pool choppy--much to the kids' delight!--and it had "swim jets" on the other end that produced a current in the pool, so that, I could swim in place. I had read about such pools, but had never experienced one before. I really liked it. I spent quite a while swimming in place on my back, completely able to watch the two littler ones and never having to worry about running into the end of the pool! (You can't swim HARD or you will overcome the current...but swimming at a relaxed pace, you just stay in one spot!)
Of course, all the hotels have had hot tubs, too, next to the pools. Pop John and Yea Yea (Vonnie) relaxed in the hot tub last night while the kids popped in and out (gleefully torturing themselves going from very hot water to very cold water!). The kids swam an hour and a half last night before I finally pulled them out. Then they spent a considerable amount of time in the shower up in the hotel room rinsing down. They all LOVE the "hotel experience". Doug keeps asking (ad infinitum) "Home?", "Home?". Then we tell him, "No. We are going to another hotel," he whoops with joy. He doesn't "get" the concept of "Canada". We keep telling the kids "We are going to CANADA", but then we never get there! Yesterday when we pulled over at a little rest stop to eat our PB sandwiches (just a grassy area by the side of the road...no tables or anything (turns out we stopped two miles too early!...but it was a serendipitous error, as the kids had a really good time there and discovered a tiny, little well-hidden crooked trail that led down to the mountain stream)), but, anyway, as we piled out of the car in the middle of nowhere, Doug looked around and asked expectantly "CANADUN?". No, Doug...this isn't Canada, yet!
John took photos last night of the kids at the pool, but I don't have those photos on my computer yet, so I will post some pool photos from a few nights ago...
(Last night was the first night Vonnie got to swim with us. She had forgotten to pack her swim suit...thus our excuse for stopping at the last three Wal-Marts we have gone to! (Takes a while to find a suit that fits...especially in the "off season"...all the Wal-Marts up this way have already put their summer stuff on clearance and have the fall inventory out. All three of the kids got new swim suits a couple of days ago (the girls insisting their old ones were tight and their mom not able to pass up a good clearance price!...then I had to buy Doug a new pair of trunks because they had SUPERMAN trunks on clearance and the poor child has never had any super-hero swim trunks of any sort (always just plain black ones or navy blue ones)...so, of course, I had to get those for him, even though his trunks are no where near too small yet!) Vonnie found a swim top that fit a few Wal-Marts back...but no bottoms...so she didn't get them. This last Wal-Mart, she just settled for some gymn shorts and a gymn top that would work as swim wear in a pinch. However, the over exuberant jets in last nights' hot tub (these were jets in OVERDRIVE...making the water shoot up about five inches} had an amusing effect on her swim wear. As she began inflating, we all got cracked up. (Well, GRANT, didn't...because he wasn't there! He has managed to avoid all of the pool experiences so far! He gets to channel surf and relax in solitude up in the hotel room while we swim. He has offered to put in his time at the pool, but has been really relieved when told he doesn't have to! Poor guy...he needs time to relax...he is REALLY dreading the next five days. It is stressful to him to think about going into another country where the money is different...and he HATES camping....and he doesn't like horses...and he has a deep-seated aversion to grizzly bears (and is certain that we are about to place ourselves in the midst of them). He truly does love me to go on this trip for me. He keeps telling me, though, that this is "to get Canada out of your system...we are NEVER going back!"...and that before we have even GOTTEN to Canada! I'm not worried, though...I remember how he dreaded China. Now, he would go back in a heartbeat...in fact, he wants to go back and keeps promising the kids that we will all go back again, once Rayna is old enough to really absorb the experience!
You wouldn't think car riding would tire children out much (but, then, MY CHILDREN have NEVER slept while riding, even when they were babies). Maybe the swimming each night has worn them out. Whatever the case, Rayna told me at supper our first night on the road that she was tired and wanted to go to bed! (We had left the hotel to get a bite to eat.) True enough, she climbed straight into bed as soon as we got back (about 8:00pm) and drifted off to sleep before she had to. Then, the second night, it was DOUG who declared, "Nap. Nap, pease." And HE fell asleep before we turned the lights out or the TV off! And, last night, they both went to sleep again very quickly...and before the lights were turned out. The kids LOVE the whole "hotel" thing. I think, just all sleeping in the same room is something that is so novel to them....like a giant family slumber party every night!
Vonnie and I have to do some planning now...we are all out of excuses to make the men stop at various Wal-Marts. Of course, we won't have to worry about that these next five days as there are no Wal-Marts out with the grizzlies...but, we need a reasonable persusion to get the men to let us shop on the five days journey back home again. (They HATE having to make Wal-Mart stops and keep insisting, "You can shop at Wal-Mart AT HOME...THIS IS VACATION!" What they don't GET is that each Wal-Mart is a unique experience. They just do not comprehend it at all. When Vonnie didn't have a swim suit, we had an iron-clad NEED to stop at at least one Wal-Mart a day...but, now, alas, she bought something to wear in the pool...so, now we need a new reason to HAVE to stop at Wal-Marts on our way back home (we are going a different route...all new towns, all new Wal-Marts!)...anybody have any tactical suggestions???? ¶ 7/20/2006 02:54:00 AM 3 comments
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
travelogue:
DAY THREE
Yesterday morning in Wyoming, we watched as three antlered deer bounded across the road. Today, in Montana, we watched as a lone antlered deer ran and lept across the highway. It looked for all the world like he was racing to the Wal-Mart!
Speaking of Wal-Mart...Vonnie, the kids and I had a blast looking through the Wal-Mart in Bozeman, Montana today. The inventory in that Wal-Mart was a LOT different than the Wal-Marts in Missouri...especially the clothing. We could have easily spent several hours there if the men in our group hadn't been out to conquer the time time schedule! Oh well! At least they let us go! (We have to keep thinking up reasons why we HAVE to stop and shop!)
Later, we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at a little rest area. The kids discovered a trail that ran down to a mountain stream. We have really enjoyed our three days of traveling....amazingly enough! The drive has been fun. Today we got a taste of some great scenery...but, I think we are going to see a lot more dramatic scenery tomorrow as we go to Lake Louise in Canada. We will be camping, beginning tomorrow. We won't hit another hotel until Monday evening...so, this blog will be quiet until then! I am sure we will have LOTS of photos to post Monday!!!
¶ 7/19/2006 07:48:00 PM 0 comments
DAY THREE
Yesterday morning in Wyoming, we watched as three antlered deer bounded across the road. Today, in Montana, we watched as a lone antlered deer ran and lept across the highway. It looked for all the world like he was racing to the Wal-Mart!
Speaking of Wal-Mart...Vonnie, the kids and I had a blast looking through the Wal-Mart in Bozeman, Montana today. The inventory in that Wal-Mart was a LOT different than the Wal-Marts in Missouri...especially the clothing. We could have easily spent several hours there if the men in our group hadn't been out to conquer the time time schedule! Oh well! At least they let us go! (We have to keep thinking up reasons why we HAVE to stop and shop!)
Later, we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at a little rest area. The kids discovered a trail that ran down to a mountain stream. We have really enjoyed our three days of traveling....amazingly enough! The drive has been fun. Today we got a taste of some great scenery...but, I think we are going to see a lot more dramatic scenery tomorrow as we go to Lake Louise in Canada. We will be camping, beginning tomorrow. We won't hit another hotel until Monday evening...so, this blog will be quiet until then! I am sure we will have LOTS of photos to post Monday!!!
¶ 7/19/2006 07:48:00 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
travelogue:
DAY TWO
(This is where Buffalo Bill lodged in Sheridan, Wyoming.)
(The girls were competing with each other on their game boys...playing Frogger. The giggling got pretty loud!)
On to Crow Agency, Montana...
(These were photos of the Crow Indian Expo in Crow Agency, Montana. As we drove along the highway, we saw a bunch of Indians GALLOPING bare-back, kicking up all kinds of dust. By the time we circled back and got out to take photos, the activity had calmed considerably. The kids were really intrigued, though, and we stayed and watched a while. We think they were celebrating the defeat of Custer.)
¶ 7/18/2006 04:27:00 PM 0 comments
DAY TWO
(This is where Buffalo Bill lodged in Sheridan, Wyoming.)
(The girls were competing with each other on their game boys...playing Frogger. The giggling got pretty loud!)
On to Crow Agency, Montana...
(These were photos of the Crow Indian Expo in Crow Agency, Montana. As we drove along the highway, we saw a bunch of Indians GALLOPING bare-back, kicking up all kinds of dust. By the time we circled back and got out to take photos, the activity had calmed considerably. The kids were really intrigued, though, and we stayed and watched a while. We think they were celebrating the defeat of Custer.)
¶ 7/18/2006 04:27:00 PM 0 comments
Monday, July 17, 2006
travelogue:
DAY ONE Well....day one of our vacation has come! I put the kids to bed last night dressed in their traveling clothes and had their sandals lined up by the front door. Grant and John had the van packed (to the gills!) and backed into the drive-way facing the road before we went to bed last night. All our camping gear (two tents, most of the sleeping bags, air mattresses, etc) are in a canvass pack bunjee corded onto the roof of our van. And the inside of our van is so full you about can't close the doors!
We left the house ahead of schedule, a little before 5:00am this morning. A mile or two from home we realized that Doug's ritalin was packed in my duffel bag somewhere near the bottom of the pile of duffle bags tightly fitted jigsaw fashion behind the rear most seat of the van. We didn't want to UNPACK all those things until tonight when we hit the hotel, so, we turned around and went back home to grab his back-up supply of ritalin. That didn't put us behind any...we still left by 5:00am...and that way we were able to give him his ritalin with breakfast, a few hours later, without having to unpack.
I NEVER thought I would ever put any child of mine on ritalin. Six months after Doug came home to us, the school staff were begging and pleading with me to try him on ritalin. I did...fully planning not to keep him on it if I didn't think it was benefitting HIM. (I wouldn't put him on any medication for my convenience or the school's.) The Ritalin made a DRAMATIC difference. His ability to FOCUS and concentrate went from absolute nil to a little bit. That might not sound impressive...but it is HUGE. He still has to work really hard to focus at all, but now he CAN focus....and he can self-control. When I forget to give him his ritalin, he is just spastic...and frenic in his acting out and impulsivity. He is extremely difficult to be near when he doesn't have the ritalin helping him self-modulate. And he doesn't handle correcton gracefully when he is trying to manage without the ritalin. He gets very defiant and sullen...which, anyone who knows Doug, knows that just ISN'T him. He is such an easy-going, HAPPY, loveable little kid. The ritalin doesn't make him something he isn't (zombied--or something)...it just allows him to BE himself. It gives him a measure of freedom. It is such a blessing that there is medication that can help him help himself. His brain injury has left him with such a overwhelming legacy....disabilities in speech, memory, learning, concentration....that everything is harder for him than it would have been had he never been injured....but, the ritalin gives him back a small measure of the normalacy his brain has lost. Neither he, nor I, would opt to skip his medicine for the day just once, even. It is miserable for him (and those around him) when it is even just late because we have momentarily forgotten it. His ability to self-control, self-modulate is dramatically enhanced by the ritalin. His ability to FOCUS is also dramatically effected. His ability to focus and concentrate is still really impaired, even with the ritalin, but, at least with the ritalin he CAN focus with effort. Without it, he genuinely can't. He feels better and enjoys life so much more when his brain and his body aren't locked in a frenic state of disjointed activity. Sometimes I worry about the possible long-term effects of ritalin....increased blood pressure, stunted growth, Turrette's Syndrome. There are some pretty somber possibilities. Yet, I fully believe the benefits of this medication are worth the risks for my son. It is worth taking the risks for the measure (small though it may be) of normalacy it gives him....for the measure of success it makes possible for him.
2:45pm....
We are passing through Osh Kosh, Nebraska. The sign at the edge of town proclaims it is the "goose hunting capital of the world". Two farmers were out spraying their tractor with a hose, but, I didn't get my camera out fast enough to take their photo. Sorry!
We are making fantastic time. Just passed a sign saying that Scottsbluff, Nebraska is just 80 miles down the road. Uncle John's time-table had us entering Scottsbluff at 7:00pm tonight...currently, we could be there by 4:30!!!! (Our first hotel reservation is in Scottsbluff....630 miles from our front porch!) The gender differences in this van are rapidly becoming apparent. The front section of the van (all the guys) are beamingly smug over the unexpectedly quick time we are making. Meanwhile, the middle seat (all the women) are discussing how we can USE the time we have gained....WAL-MART!!!!!! (Aunt Vonnie has been relating things left and right to shopping all day, already. We hit Osh Kosh and she tells the children, "Look! The town where they make those clothes!" Uncle John argues, "No. Osh Kosh is where they have that air show every year...it's airport is the busiest one in the country on that day every year. There aren't any hotel rooms to be found...people camp out under the wings of the planes, even." (Later he admits that actually this is the Osh Kosh in WISCONSIN, not NEBRASKA that has the famous annual air show). Meanwhile, we see a sign for Cold Water Creek and Aunt Vonnie is back to telling the children about clothes and the towns they are made in!
Oh my!!! The guys in the front seat are REALLY high fiving each other now!!! They just realized that we have crossed into another time zone...so it is actually 2:10 rather than 3:10. We are unbelieveably ahead of schedule now! They are really in high spirits! Grant is planning on stopping off at Chimney Rock for a photo op! That might be almost as good as Wal-Mart!
Up ahead is "Car Henge". You have heard of "Stone Henge"?....well, this is Nebraska's answer to that....an arrangment of cars turned up on end. Don't know if we will actually get to see this marvel or not...it is fifty miles ahead, but we aren't yet sure if it is on our actual path or not. I feel badly that I missed Grant's subtle hinting that we stop at the free Buffalo Bill Cody Museum in North Platte. He and I had stopped at that tourist trap on our way to the Black Hills fifteen years ago on our Honeymoon. I didn't realize he actually DID want to stop there until we were way on down the road today. He just doesn't come right out and say things as loudly and clearly as he needs to for me to pick up on his wishes! I wish we HAD stopped. The kids would have enjoyed running around a bit there and he and I could have reminisced. Had we realized we were making such great time, I'm sure we would have stopped. Hindsight! And, we are coming back home a different way.....so, guess it will have to wait until next time. (Today is our hardest day of driving....the day we had to get the most miles covered. We would have planned our stop-over in Cheyenne, Wyoming for tonight but they had some town celebration that had all the hotels booked solid.....thus, our heading to Scottsbluff, Nebraska instead (and a completely different traveling route).) .........just passed a more specific billboard....Car Henge would take us thirty-six miles the wrong direction (adding 62 miles to our trip), so, no Car Henge for us. Guess the guys will have to let us go to Wal-Mart afterall!
The kids have been pretty great! Our three really are good travelers. (We will see if I am singing the same tune in a few more days!)
...well, it is not 8:30pm (Nebraska time). The kids swam in the hotel pool for an hour tonight. Then we had a pizza delivered to our hotel room and watched an old Andy Griffith episode (that amazingly enough we have NEVER seen before) as we ate. The kids are sound asleep now and I have to admit, I am tired too! ¶ 7/17/2006 02:52:00 PM 0 comments
DAY ONE Well....day one of our vacation has come! I put the kids to bed last night dressed in their traveling clothes and had their sandals lined up by the front door. Grant and John had the van packed (to the gills!) and backed into the drive-way facing the road before we went to bed last night. All our camping gear (two tents, most of the sleeping bags, air mattresses, etc) are in a canvass pack bunjee corded onto the roof of our van. And the inside of our van is so full you about can't close the doors!
We left the house ahead of schedule, a little before 5:00am this morning. A mile or two from home we realized that Doug's ritalin was packed in my duffel bag somewhere near the bottom of the pile of duffle bags tightly fitted jigsaw fashion behind the rear most seat of the van. We didn't want to UNPACK all those things until tonight when we hit the hotel, so, we turned around and went back home to grab his back-up supply of ritalin. That didn't put us behind any...we still left by 5:00am...and that way we were able to give him his ritalin with breakfast, a few hours later, without having to unpack.
I NEVER thought I would ever put any child of mine on ritalin. Six months after Doug came home to us, the school staff were begging and pleading with me to try him on ritalin. I did...fully planning not to keep him on it if I didn't think it was benefitting HIM. (I wouldn't put him on any medication for my convenience or the school's.) The Ritalin made a DRAMATIC difference. His ability to FOCUS and concentrate went from absolute nil to a little bit. That might not sound impressive...but it is HUGE. He still has to work really hard to focus at all, but now he CAN focus....and he can self-control. When I forget to give him his ritalin, he is just spastic...and frenic in his acting out and impulsivity. He is extremely difficult to be near when he doesn't have the ritalin helping him self-modulate. And he doesn't handle correcton gracefully when he is trying to manage without the ritalin. He gets very defiant and sullen...which, anyone who knows Doug, knows that just ISN'T him. He is such an easy-going, HAPPY, loveable little kid. The ritalin doesn't make him something he isn't (zombied--or something)...it just allows him to BE himself. It gives him a measure of freedom. It is such a blessing that there is medication that can help him help himself. His brain injury has left him with such a overwhelming legacy....disabilities in speech, memory, learning, concentration....that everything is harder for him than it would have been had he never been injured....but, the ritalin gives him back a small measure of the normalacy his brain has lost. Neither he, nor I, would opt to skip his medicine for the day just once, even. It is miserable for him (and those around him) when it is even just late because we have momentarily forgotten it. His ability to self-control, self-modulate is dramatically enhanced by the ritalin. His ability to FOCUS is also dramatically effected. His ability to focus and concentrate is still really impaired, even with the ritalin, but, at least with the ritalin he CAN focus with effort. Without it, he genuinely can't. He feels better and enjoys life so much more when his brain and his body aren't locked in a frenic state of disjointed activity. Sometimes I worry about the possible long-term effects of ritalin....increased blood pressure, stunted growth, Turrette's Syndrome. There are some pretty somber possibilities. Yet, I fully believe the benefits of this medication are worth the risks for my son. It is worth taking the risks for the measure (small though it may be) of normalacy it gives him....for the measure of success it makes possible for him.
2:45pm....
We are passing through Osh Kosh, Nebraska. The sign at the edge of town proclaims it is the "goose hunting capital of the world". Two farmers were out spraying their tractor with a hose, but, I didn't get my camera out fast enough to take their photo. Sorry!
We are making fantastic time. Just passed a sign saying that Scottsbluff, Nebraska is just 80 miles down the road. Uncle John's time-table had us entering Scottsbluff at 7:00pm tonight...currently, we could be there by 4:30!!!! (Our first hotel reservation is in Scottsbluff....630 miles from our front porch!) The gender differences in this van are rapidly becoming apparent. The front section of the van (all the guys) are beamingly smug over the unexpectedly quick time we are making. Meanwhile, the middle seat (all the women) are discussing how we can USE the time we have gained....WAL-MART!!!!!! (Aunt Vonnie has been relating things left and right to shopping all day, already. We hit Osh Kosh and she tells the children, "Look! The town where they make those clothes!" Uncle John argues, "No. Osh Kosh is where they have that air show every year...it's airport is the busiest one in the country on that day every year. There aren't any hotel rooms to be found...people camp out under the wings of the planes, even." (Later he admits that actually this is the Osh Kosh in WISCONSIN, not NEBRASKA that has the famous annual air show). Meanwhile, we see a sign for Cold Water Creek and Aunt Vonnie is back to telling the children about clothes and the towns they are made in!
Oh my!!! The guys in the front seat are REALLY high fiving each other now!!! They just realized that we have crossed into another time zone...so it is actually 2:10 rather than 3:10. We are unbelieveably ahead of schedule now! They are really in high spirits! Grant is planning on stopping off at Chimney Rock for a photo op! That might be almost as good as Wal-Mart!
Up ahead is "Car Henge". You have heard of "Stone Henge"?....well, this is Nebraska's answer to that....an arrangment of cars turned up on end. Don't know if we will actually get to see this marvel or not...it is fifty miles ahead, but we aren't yet sure if it is on our actual path or not. I feel badly that I missed Grant's subtle hinting that we stop at the free Buffalo Bill Cody Museum in North Platte. He and I had stopped at that tourist trap on our way to the Black Hills fifteen years ago on our Honeymoon. I didn't realize he actually DID want to stop there until we were way on down the road today. He just doesn't come right out and say things as loudly and clearly as he needs to for me to pick up on his wishes! I wish we HAD stopped. The kids would have enjoyed running around a bit there and he and I could have reminisced. Had we realized we were making such great time, I'm sure we would have stopped. Hindsight! And, we are coming back home a different way.....so, guess it will have to wait until next time. (Today is our hardest day of driving....the day we had to get the most miles covered. We would have planned our stop-over in Cheyenne, Wyoming for tonight but they had some town celebration that had all the hotels booked solid.....thus, our heading to Scottsbluff, Nebraska instead (and a completely different traveling route).) .........just passed a more specific billboard....Car Henge would take us thirty-six miles the wrong direction (adding 62 miles to our trip), so, no Car Henge for us. Guess the guys will have to let us go to Wal-Mart afterall!
The kids have been pretty great! Our three really are good travelers. (We will see if I am singing the same tune in a few more days!)
...well, it is not 8:30pm (Nebraska time). The kids swam in the hotel pool for an hour tonight. Then we had a pizza delivered to our hotel room and watched an old Andy Griffith episode (that amazingly enough we have NEVER seen before) as we ate. The kids are sound asleep now and I have to admit, I am tired too! ¶ 7/17/2006 02:52:00 PM 0 comments
