Today we got up at the crack of dawn to get some pictures of the sunrise over the mountains around Banff. While it was very early (and really cold for us islanders – funny thing, that -1° C is now cold) we managed to get some great photos so that was awesome.

After that, we hung out around town for a bit, then after we checked out we stuck around for a bit longer and checked out the hoodoos that were east of town. The hoodoos weren’t much to look at, but the view was beautiful so we took a bunch more photos, then headed out on the highway again!

The rest of our day involved a bit of driving and lots of visiting. We met friends in Calgary for lunch and a bit of a visit, then were off to Airdrie to meet Keltie’s uncle for supper. After that we were on the road again to get to Phil’s aunt for a bit of a late night snack and to stay the night.

So today’s day 1.5, because yesterday’s trip started at 5pm so it only half counts. Today definitely counts as a full day, though, maybe even more. We started bright and early at 5:15am so we could catch the 6:20am ferry out of Nanaimo (which we did). We met up with an acquaintance of mine in Vancouver for coffee (the reason for the early ferry) and got into Abbotsford early morning, which was great.

We spent the afternoon and dinner with Jeff and Lyndene, then met up with Jen for coffee. We bought her a massive box of Hershey’s chocolate and had some laughs at Starbucks, then came back to Jeff and Lyndene’s where we’re crashing for the tonight. Tomorrow morning we’re up not-quite-so early and off to Vernon/Salmon Arm!

Posted some new pictures on my Flickr page, available right here!

The following two entries are combined due to us getting home a day early and trying to surprise some of our friends, thus making me a day late.

Day 19:

Boise, Idaho: I’m sure your construction workers are very nice, but they sure can’t direct traffic, and the fat kid just doesn’t want to get in the pool! Today was a traveling day for the majority of it, so not too much was happening; as you will see below I slept for a bit. We went through Baker City and had hoped to hook up with a friend, but he’d been called out for a forest fire so that unfortunately didn’t happen. However, we did stop at a quaint-looking (from the outside, at least) Dairy Queen for some food. Then we carried on our way to Seattle, with not too much else happening (we did see a cool sign or two, though!).

Once we arrived in Seattle, though it’d been a long day we decided to go to Mars Hill; I’d talked about it a couple months ago so the plan that morning had been to attempt to catch the 7:15 service at the Ballard campus, which is the largest of MH’s campuses. We got there and it was such a blessing. The message was also great and we’d recommend you listen/watch it. It’s entitled “It’s All About Jesus: Humility” and you can find it on the Mars Hill Seattle website.

After that it was pretty late, so we headed back to the hotel and crashed for the night.

Day 20:
Got up early and drove. Saw a creepy truck. More driving. Stopped at outlet stores. Drove some more. Took a ferry. Drove even more. Petro Can! More driving. Ricky’s! Drive drive drive. Fireworks!

That was, in a nutshell, our day today, and though we are back in the valley we have not yet arrived home. Our friends who have been house sitting for us informed us that the house isn’t tidy enough yet for us to go home, so that combined with the fact that we weren’t supposed to be home until tomorrow means we’re crashing at Keltie’s parents’ place tonight.

All in all it’s been a great trip, but we’re glad to be (almost) home, so now look at some pictures

I chased the setting sun tonight,
Yet tho I tried with all my might;
‘Twas a battle I could not fight,
Alas! The golden globe dropped out of sight.

Or something like that. However, since we were going west this evening we did end up having a very long and drawn out sunset. Especially due to the lay of the land it was probably close to 30 minutes between when the sun began setting and when it finally dropped fully out of site.

I’m starting in the middle, though, so let’s start at the beginning!

We got up early this morning with hopes to be on the road by 8 – that didn’t happen but we did manage to get out by 9, so it wasn’t too bad. As we weren’t visiting anyone on the way back, the quickest route for us was to head north through Denver into Wyoming, then go pretty much due west, so that’s what we did. In terms of driving and scenery today was nothing too special, although I did learn that Wyoming is much more mountainous than I realized.

One odd thing we did notice was that as we drove towards Evanston we counted 18 signs for a single Best Western! Apart from that, though, the only notable experience today was being in 4 separate states. On, and coming into Twin Falls was rather odd as well – there were so many bugs flying about that it looked like it was raining bugs on our windshield. That was cool and all, but bugs don’t wipe off quite as easily as rain =)

Anyway, on to some pictures!

Howdy all!

So, a few people commented on yesterday’s post. I guess that means you do want me to keep blogging. Since that’s the case, here we go =).

Today was nothing too terribly special for the last day – in the morning we had a tasty breakfast, then went down to a local sports store to see if we could find me some cleats at a superb price. Unfortunately … that didn’t happen, so I guess I’ll be checking on ebay. Anyway, after that we headed out for a brief tour of where my dad works. Since it’s fairly high security we weren’t able to go inside the building or anything, so we didn’t get to see much (and I didn’t take any photos).

Once we got home, the afternoon was basically a hang-out time. Keltie and I figured out our plans for our return, but apart from that not too much happened. I worked on my entry for the 2009 Github contest and took a few photos – the first three (the daytime lightning was definitely a lucky shot).

After supper, dad and I headed back to Garden of the gods to see if we could get some sweet shots. Unfortunately, the lighting wasn’t co-operating (it was cloudy) so we didn’t get anything too spectacular. Once we got back, though, the sun peaked out of the clouds so I managed to snap a few photos that turned out not too bad =).

Tomorrow we’re off to Twin Falls, Idaho!

I’mma make a stink here. We’re hard at work updating this blog every day for you and there’s no comments! To that end, until someone posts a comment we are no longer going to update about our excellent adventures. So there. Neener neener neener.

Anyway, enough complaining. Today was a pretty straight forward day with not too much happening. I did get to try out my dad’s macro lens, though, which was lots of fun (see the pictures). And, with me being the music fiend I am, we went to Mardel and I bought lots of CDs (the bottom two on the stack were from yesterday at Target). And two t-shirts, which you may only see in person. For those of you who aren’t from the valley, yes, that means you have to come and visit to see them.

We didn’t do too much for the rest of the day, although Keltie punched me lots with the intention of giving me a dead arm. She failed, I’m glad to say =D. I retaliated and she (apparently) has 4 dead arms and a charlie horse in both legs. Besides that, she’d like to report that she had a lovely day as well. She went shopping with mom and bought green chilis along with some stuff from Mardel as well. And that’s about all. Terribly exciting, isn’t it? Oh, apparently she finished a book too, which is nice, isn’t it?

Enough rambling, here’s some pretty pictures to look at! Ah yes, and one of them is a daytime shot of the city to compare with the shots from yesterday at night.

No pictures from day 15, probably because I didn’t take any. Of course, that’s no excuse, right? I still should have taken some pictures? =D Anyway, today was pretty chill. Dan and Judy took off this morning on their return journey, so we wished them well at around 8:30. I ran down to Mac Superstore (which is almost as cool as an official Apple store) to get my MBP’s silly fan finally fixed, which it now is! On the trip to pick my laptop back up we also stopped by Target (where I picked up Emery’s and OLP’s latest albums) and Old Navy. That would be boring in and of itself (unless you’re a huge Emery or OLP fan) except for the fact that when we were in Old Navy the sky unloaded on us! No thunder and lightning (none close, at least), but for a few minutes it felt like we were back in the valley. What had been dry pavement only minutes earlier now had water an inch deep running over it. I purposely walked back to the car slowly just to get the full effect since we have seen very little rain (and nothing that heavy) on the trip so far.

This evening we went next door with the parents for dinner – their neighbour is a second-generation Italian and he cooked up quite a feast so there was great food to be had.

Well, so I lied up above. I just went out and took some pictures of the city at night so that I’d have some visual stimulation for those who dislike reading =P.

P.S. Don’t forget Day 14 below since I missed it earlier!

This post arrived a little late. Oh well, I’m on vacation and you can’t do anything about it until I get home =). Today Dan and Judy stayed with us and my parents and we explored the area a bit. Our first visit was to some really cool rock formations called the “Garden of the gods”. We wandered around there for a bit, then went to Manitou Springs (a small town that’s basically grown into Colorado Springs) for lunch. In MS we visited a dulcimer shop (where they also hand crafted acoustic guitars) as well, which was pretty cool to see. After lunch we headed over to the air force academy, partly to check out the academy and also to see the extremely impressive church (pictures of which are below). The rest of the evening was pretty calm – we went to dinner then came home and watched Gran Torino.

All in all a fairly vacation-ey day. =)

So today we crossed the continental divide. Well, not so much crossed as “stopped at, walked around for a while, took some pictures, then carried on”. We also happened to be at 12,075 feet at that point (3,680 meters for you Canadian folk) so walking around was a little more strenuous than at the 150 or so feet (50 meters for you Canadian folk) we’re used to being above sea level.

In any case, I’m getting ahead of myself. Today was our last day in New Castle, CO. We began the day with pictures. However, you heard about that from Keltie’s previous post, so on to the rest of the events from today!

We decided that we’d drive to Colorado Springs via highway 82 which is through Aspen, so that we could say that we’ve actually been through Aspen. Keltie drove the first leg to Aspen, and we took a bit of a break there and poked around. After that, we were on our way to the top! Now, unlike our Canadian highways (and most American highways) the route from Aspen to Twin Lakes is a little crazier. In some places the road narrows and it’s more like a lane and a half rather than two lanes wide, and in other places there aren’t any guard rails because there just wasn’t room to put them anywhere! However, the drive was worth it as the few from the top is breathtaking – probably one of the coolest in America. Like I mentioned previously, we were at an altitude of 12,075 feet, although if you were willing to hike a bit you could probably go up another 1,000 – 1,500 ft to the very top of some of the peaks. We weren’t up to that, though, as the air was thin enough where we were. The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful, although we did stop in Buena Vista, Colorado for some fantastic subs from a local place. Ah yes, and we actually managed to crash our GPS! It’s a Windows CE based machine, so we’ve had to reset it probably once a day. However, today we actually managed to get the mapping program to throw an exception. When I get a chance I’ll see what kind of errors a GPS program throws.

Seeing my parents was great as we haven’t seen them since last fall at my sister’s wedding – we had a great dinner and enjoyed conversation around the table. I was stoked, though, as during dinner a storm had moved in so after dinner a got a chance to do something that’s really rare back home – take pictures of lightning! It takes both a bit of work and a bit of luck, but I think I got some alright ones for a first try – that’s up to you guys, though (=.