banff trip

Dad and Joan at Peyto Lake

Joan, overlooking Banff

Lunch in Chez Vanagon on the trip home

John, being John, while guarding food from the squirrels

Dad setting up camp and building the fire, and John, taking a picture of me, taking a picture of him.

Just can't get enough? Here's a link to the complete album. Warning - some are duds - it's all the pictures we took:

http://picasaweb.google.com/johnjoandave/BanffKeepers?authkey=Gv1sRgCPavvaX0uIDIFA&feat=directlink

So, there's our trip on pictures. We saw Peyto Lake, Mistaya Canyon, and then we went on a gondola ride. These are just the views from Mike and I. I haven't downloaded John's camera yet. I'm sure he's got some gems in there. And then there's the return trip - I was a little shakey after the gondola trip, and you have to hop out kind of fast, before it zooms up the mountain again, and I was carrying two kids out, all resulting in me forgetting my purse on the ride. So, we had to head back a couple days later to pick it up. We took Vicki and Billy that time, and went up again. We have pictures from that, too.

The kids seemed to really enjoy the trip. John had been asking to go camping for a while. He was pretending to do campouts in the living room, and was dressing up in what he thought a Scout might wear - complete with Thomas baseball cap and backpack filled with a water bottle, blankie pink, and spare batteries. (I don't think he'll ever leave home without batteries ever again. We took Vicki and Billy for a drive to the mountains a while back, and the batteries in their camera died while trying to take picture of deer. "I have batteries!" pipes in John. No-one paid him any mind, until he reached into his coat pocket, and out came a handfull of frech batteries. He was so proud to have saved the day! Turns out, he's always got little stashes of stuff with him all the time, including batteries - just in case, assorted pet rocks in case he's lonely, and little boxes of raisins, in case he gets hungry. We told him he'll be an excellent Scout, and he's adopted that into his persona. He kept saluting us during our camping trip, like he was some sort of soldier.)

It was a pretty fun trip. Very crowded with tourists - mostly from overseas. Lots of then stopped to talk and meet the kids. They loved the red hair. We had a couple from Holland in the campsite next to us. I know John has pictures of them. The man was named Jan, and didn't know too much english, but that didn't stop John, who led this poor guy all around, showing him every detail of our campsite and van.

Joan liked the hiking, but tired out quickly. She kept taking breaks, which meant laying spread eagle on the path, to the amusement of all the international tourists.

I think the only thing we'd change was the bedtime routine. We had brought glow sticks for the kids, to be like a nightlight so they wouldn't get scared, but they had never seen them before. So it was like "here's this awesome new toy, kids. Now go to sleep." Yeah. That worked out just great. The next hour were spent trying to shush sqeals of delight. John used his to make all the blankets glow. Joan used hers as a microphone, and sang into it with all her heart. In the end, they had to be confiscated.

We're thinking dinosoar provincial park next. Maybe it will be warmer at night than the mountains. I'd better get going. I've spent too much time on the computer, but I wanted to get those photos out. I'll post more soon.