Summer Vacation 2007, pt. 3

ROGER & MARLA'S MOST AWESOME PLACE

By the 3rd day at the Sleep Inn, we were pretty sick of the waffles. For now, my kids deny ever having done the happy dance when the waffle iron was spotted. This morning was for toast, muffins and fruit. I grabbed some of the hard boiled eggs thinking that maybe the family would enjoy having some protein, but I was wrong on that count.

We went to visit some friends of my husband who live in Idaho. They purchased several acres overlooking a lake and are working on building their dream home on the property. Roger and Marla have a gorgeous view -- truly breath taking. Marla has some pretty high end taste and it really shows. They have 3 buildings on the property so far. The first one they built was a 2 car garage which they lived in for a while as they built and completed construction on Roger's wood shop. When it was completed, they moved themselves and their furnishings into the wood shop, where they will live until the house is completed. The house exterior is built but the interiors are still unfinished. The house is up the mountain a bit and has amazing vistas of the surrounding range and the lake. They do live a little removed from the city but it is worth it. This visit has given my hubby nothing but grandiose ideas for what we can do with a little piece of property we own about 45 minutes drive from our home which has water and mountain views plus beach access. True, I would love to do what they're doing. But that is for a time when we are feeling a little less pinched than we are now. As we were leaving though, Roger said something to me that made me feel less pinched. He said, "This place is our legacy. You have yours riding in the back seat."

Marla made an amazing lunch of grilled burgers and corn on the cob for us. We were stuffed. Knowing we had at least a 6 hour drive ahead of us, we told the kids to go potty and took that advice ourselves. I began to get worried about my husband after he had been in there for 10 minutes or so. He joined the rest of the party outside while I was trying to get the kids back into the car. Hubby asked, "Do you guys have a plunger?" As awful as it is, the toilet had gotten clogged. Here's what's even worse. Marla and Roger only have the one toilet. Both of them went scrambling around their property looking for the plunger that both swore they had bought on a recent trip to Home Depot. But alas, no plunger was to be found. And then my husband said something that reminded me why I married him. "Well, it isn't the conventional house warming present, but I'm not a conventional kind of guy." Funny keeps marriages strong.

BANFF

We headed north. We took a border crossing out of Idaho that was really quick. Seriously, there was only one car ahead of us in line. It is, incidentally, the place where the border crossing agent didn't know where the heck McClennan is. After driving for what felt like forever, we arrived at our campsite at Banff. The ranger who checked us in told us that sadly, there wasn't any firewood left for us to take so we would be getting a refund for that expense. We found our site and using braille and our 2 flashlights, hubby managed to put up our tent while I heated up 2 cans of chili over our camp stove. We didn't have firewood and I looked over at our neighbors and realized where all the firewood had gone -- they had enough for a small bonfire. Well, just because you're out camping doesn't mean that you're not jerks. Jerks in the cities just become jerks in the wilderness when they go camping. It had been a horribly hot day so we didn't even bother to put the fly up over the tent. We came to regret that later.

I had bought foam pads for us to sleep on. When you set up your tent on gravel, like the rangers ask you to do, a little 1/2 inch - 3/4 inch pad of foam doesn't do much to keep you comfortable. We were exhausted, so we did fall asleep eventually, but at around maybe 3 or 4 in the morning, the wind was ripping through the tent and we were just miserable and cold. I had considered going and "camping" in the car. At least the car seats are padded and the wind can't get through. I kind of just kept rolling over like when you're on the beach sunbathing. One side of my body would get sharp pains from laying on gravel so I'd make a 1/4 turn. Then I'd catch a couple of minutes of sleep. Then that part of my body would wake me in pain so I'd make another 1/4 turn. And so on, and so on, through the night. Anyway, the next morning I cooked up an amazing breakfast -- mostly amazing because I did it on our camp stove using a very tiny frying pan. We had sausage and eggs and some bread. And after we breakfasted, we were off to explore.

LAKE MINNETONKA & BEAR PROOF TRASHCANS

The first place we went was a mountain lake. It's called Lake Minnetonka. And I may be making that up because my memory is not too good. It was a gorgeous place. The water was an amazing turquoise blue. There weren't too many tourists, but the ones we ran into were from all over the planet. Even the Canadians there spoke French, just to make us feel more and more like we were in a foreign country. Hubby calls Canada, "Europe Lite."

A remarkable thing about the parks there is that every outdoor trashcan is a bear proof one. You need to use your clever human fingers to deftly unlatch the lid and insert your garbage. What I didn't realize was that not only are the trashcans bear proof, they are also idiot proof. I don't mean that in the sense that it is so simple to use, that an idiot can use it. I mean the phrase in the same context as the bears. If you are an idiot, you cannot figure out how to open the trashcan. I cannot tell you how many coffee cups and food wrappers I found just placed out in front of the trashcan like it was a shrine to trash instead of a receptacle, because whoever brought them up to the can just couldn't figure out how to open it. Sad really. But maybe that means that the education system EVERYWHERE in the world is just kind of shoddy and maybe we Americans should stop beating ourselves up about our education system. But who is to say that the idiots who couldn't open the bear cans weren't US graduates of our public schools? Oh well.

That afternoon, we went up Sulfur Mountain in the gondola. That was an amazing ride. There is a sense of vertigo as you get higher and higher. Older daughter was a little freaked out so being the supportive and loving family we are, hubby, son and I swayed back and forth in unison, rocking the gondola but not coming anywhere near close to capsizing it. Oh now, don't think she was freaking out completely. She ultimately thought it was funny and joined in the swaying, but at first she did get a little scared. When we reached the top, we got to see some mountain goats pretty close up. We walked the entire pathway up to the higher observatory peak and former camp of a weather guy for the range. I learned recently that you only retain about 10% of what you read and I cannot for the life of me remember the name of that old weather guy who used to hike up Sulfur Mountain back at the turn of the century, so he could monitor snow & rain fall levels and temperature readings. I read that information and it is amongst the 90% of information that fell out of my brain a.k.a. the sieve. The little one did great and walked the entire way. The way down was just as fun as the way up. We didn't buy the way overpriced picture of us on the gondola but we did take pictures up there that were pretty spectacular.

That evening, we put the fly on the tent. Lesson learned. More to come.