Because you asked... Jean sent me an e-mail yesterday asking me to fill Amanda in on the details of our upcoming trip. So...this post!

Back in my young days (before I had met Grant, even) I just worked PRN (substitute nursing). My philosophy was, just work enough to pay my bills and have the rest of the time to travel and do as I wished. Since I worked 12 hour shifts, it was no problem to get a couple of weeks off every month, without "killing" myself with my work schedule the other two weeks of the month. Anyway, I read a newspaper article about the neighboring U.S. and Canadian National Parks through the Rocky Mountains and I decided that would be a fun trip. Off I went in my beloved pick-up (complete with shell on the back). It was GORGEOUS both on the U.S. side and the Canadian...and quite a cheap trip since I never once had to stay in a hotel. I just slept in the back of my truck at truck stops on the U.S. side and in the camp areas on the Canadian side.

The absolute HIGHLIGHT of my trip was something that I just discovered along the way...Timberline Tours. I had taken a trail ride in Montana that trip...okay, but the horses were definitely very bored and lifeless. But, as I drove throught the Lake Louise area of Banf National Park in Canada, I came upon another horse ride outfit. It was NOTHING like the trail ride I had taken earlier in the trip! The three hour ride was a trek up a very steep, narrow mountain hiking trail. The horses were lively and engaged. My deepest regret was that I didn't find Timberline Tours until my next to the last day in Canada.

I grabbed up brochures though, and finding out that they did multi-day trips into the back country of the Rockies, I decided right then and there that I would return the next Fall and take a two week trip with them...riding by horseback each day to a new campsite...living in a tent by night with my meals cooked on a campfire. Wow! That was my dream vacation. I already did a lot of primative camping...but I didn't have HORSES or MOUNTAINS on those outings.

As soon as I got back home, I began saving for my return trip. Later that year, I decided I would participate in the MS 150 Bike Tour and began riding my bike long distances each day to get in shape for the MS 150. Not too long before the MS 150 was due to take place, I had a bike accident, fracturing my clavicle and busting my head wide open (no, I wasn't wearing a helmut...that was back in the OLD days when we didn't even think of wearing a helmut for a BICYCLE ride).
At the time, since I worked PRN, I had no health insurance and certainly no paid time off (as in paid vacation time or paid sick time). Not good! With a broken clavicle I could not do any lifting for SIX weeks. Which meant I couldn't work (nursing is HEAVY when it comes to the amount of lifting necessary). So, my Canadian vacation fund got spent on my mortgage payments instead. I figured I was just putting my vacation off by one year. Little did I know, that I would soon be meeting Grant and my world was about to change dramatically (and for the better, of course!).


So, it was that I got married instead of going to Canada. The fella I married was absolutely perfect...but, the poor guy didn't realize what fun camping or traveling to other countries was. He didn't want to EVER step foot out of the United States...ABSOLUTELY NEVER! Well, Darcy changed that! He had to travel to China to bring his daughter home. Oh how he DREADED leaving the U.S. for the unfamiliar of a foreign country that first time! But, he came home a CHANGED man! From the moment he got back home from China, he began wistfully thinking about "the next time we can go to China". Well, the "next" time ended up being another adoption journey almost seven years later. And there will be a third journey to China and Taiwan once our three youngsters are all old enough to really REMEMBER and ABSORB fully the experience (3-5 yrs further down the road).

Once I married Grant, I thought I would never get to Canada to camp/horseback ride through the Rockies. Then, a few years ago, the thought began to take root in my mind that maybe DARCY AND I could go alone for a mother-daughter trip. She would LOVE it. When I suggested to Grant that to reward myself for reaching my diet goal, I wanted to take Darcy and go to Canada, he insisted the whole family should come. I graciously offered to let him stay behind in a nice hotel during the actual three days that Darcy and I would be on horse-back...he could channel surf part of the day and take the two younger ones for some leisurely sight-seeing part of each day (he loves poking around in new places!). I thought he would jump at that suggestion...we would all be in Canada together, but he wouldn't have to camp or horseback ride. I was wrong! His response was, "Well if YOU AND DARCY are going to be EATEN by a BEAR I want to be there, too!" Figure that logic! But, at least it means that we ALL get to go. (Yeah!!!!) Grant is going so that he can die alongside his wife and not have to face life alone...but, at least he is GOING!!!!
 
 

Anyway, all five of us and the childrens' Texas grandparents will be heading for the high country at the end of July. We will spend three days driving up there...a few days sightseeing along with our three days spent camping/horseback riding with our Timberline Tours guide...and then three days traveling back home again. Darcy and I are SO LOOKING FORWARD to this trip!!!! And now that the tent is set up in our living room, the two little kids are starting to comprehend that something exciting is coming up. I think Pop John and Yea Yea are getting pretty excited, too.

Poor Grant. He is NOT looking forward to this. Being eaten by a bear, and all, I mean! His work has been so stressful lately...but thinking about mountains and horses has been more stressful, I think. A few days ago, I jokingly told him, "Don't let thoughts of our vacation stress you out while you are work today." I was being humorous. He thought I was serious.




Doug is ALWAYS my earliest riser (even when he doesn't have to be), followed by Rayna. Darcy is my sleep-in child (actually, she DOESN'T sleep in, she just plays possum hiding up in her bedroom with a book until I come dig her out!). Anyway, Doug was the first one to discover the tent in our living room this morning! The first picture is of a sleepy Doug, still in his Superman PJs. The second picture is of "Dale Earhardt Doug" before breakfast. (It isn't at all unusual for him to go through three costume changes before resigning himself to his boring school clothes and catching the bus in the morning. He has a couple more weeks of summer school left.) Notice our stack of atlases and my beat-up horse riding shoes...ready and waiting!!!

Just a few more weeks and I will be taking the journey I had planned to take twenty years ago!!! I am so glad there were curves in the road that I didn't seem coming...that my journey was delayed by 20 years...because how much more wonderful to be going with my best friend and my three children, and my aunt and uncle (and maybe my little brother and my niece, too) instead of all alone!!!!

I can't wait to have actual photos from our TRIP to post on this blog!!! When you see THOSE photos, you will want to head up to Canada, too!!!  ¶ 6/14/2006 05:13:00 AM