Today is my last day not being a student so I better get this posted before I have no time. As many of you know, Chris and I went on a road trip down through Oregon, across Oregon and then up through Montana to Saskatchewan. And if you did not know this, well now you do. We spent a week driving through Oregon and Montana before we got to Herbert where we spent another week with Chris' family on the farm. Our first two days we spent on the Oregon Coast at a place called Cape Lookout. We had been there before with a whole bunch of camp people on a staff break a few years ago and we knew we liked it so we went back. Our first day we got to the campsite at around 4 so we went to the beach to check it out and cooked up some supper. There was a good lightning storm happening over the ocean so we went to watch that in the evening. That night it rained pretty hard and almost all the next day it was drizzling or misty. Since our campsite was in the open the first night we decided to get a different one that was farther from the beach but more sheltered. That second day we spent driving around seeing some sites. We went to a lighthouse which also had the Octopus Tree nearby and the Big Spruce tree too. We also went to Seaside which is a town down the road from the park. Chris did some skim-boarding at that beach but I wasn't up for freezing my butt off so I took pictures of him instead. We were able to have a campfire that night which was nice because that's what camping is all about.
The next morning we headed for Wallowa State Park on the far east side of Oregon. If anyone has read "The Shack", this is the park where the girl gets abducted, which isn't the reason we went but instead because he had described it as a beautiful place. This park was very different than the coast. It seemed a lot more commercialized, sort of like Cultus Lake or Cypress Hills for you Saskatchewanians. The campsites were very open and it didn't feel very private compared to what we were used to but we made the best of it. We had a good time checking out the beach and having a campfire. The second day there we drove out to Hells Canyon Recreational Area which was about an hour away. Supposedly this canyon is the deepest gorge in the world, it filled my need of wanting to see the Grand Canyon for now but I still want to see it someday. We had lunch up there and then made our way back to the campsite. This was one of the nicest days for us on our trip so we took advantage of it by exploring the beach and trying to go on a hike to a waterfall but instead we ended up on a hillside with no distinct trails so we gave up on that. We were able to get supper in before it started pouring and there was no hope for a campfire. Instead of a campfire went to a little store down the road and ate an ice cream sandwich by candle light because their power was out. We also had our showers by lamplight because the park had lost their power too.
The next two days we spent in Glacier National Park, Montana at a campsite called Avalanche Creek. This was our favorite spot of the trip because the campsite was more rugged and a lot more private. We didn't get there until around 7pm that night because we had supper in Kalispell and had looked for a hotel there because it looked like it was going to rain. But we couldn't find a decent hotel so we sucked it up and drove to the campsite and found a great spot and went to bed early so we could make the most of our full day in the park. We spent the next day exploring the park, first we went on a nature trail right next to our campsite and then we took a free shuttle up to the top of the mountains at a place called Logan Pass. This was the highlight of the trip for me. First you spend a good 40 minutes driving up a very narrow mountainous road with awesome views of huge waterfalls and then when you get there you are in the middle of the Rockies, it was pretty amazing. Once we got there we took a hike to a place called Hidden Lake, which is what it is, a hidden lake. I had very many good photo-op's on that hike which you will see in the slideshow. Once we got back down to the valley where our campsite was we had a scrumptious steak supper and played some rook and had a nice long campfire.
The last day, on our way to Herbert, we had planned on stopping in Lethbridge to have lunch with some of my old Capernwray friends but a deer put a kink in those plans. Just as we got outside of Glacier Park after stopping for some showers at another campsite, we were going up a road beside a hill that went down to a lake. Running up that hill at full speed was a deer that pounced over the guardrail and we hit straight on with no time to do anything else. I was pretty shocked initially because I was the one driving and we were still in the States and I had no idea how things were going to work out. After a good two hours of many people stopping to see if we were okay and the cops coming to take an accident report, we were towed across the border. We got our car dropped off at the duty-free shop which was basically the only thing at the crossing and the people who owned it were kind enough to let us relax in their RV and watch tv and they also gave us lunch. It would have made the day much more boring and longer if they hadn't been so nice. We waited for a good 5 hours there while Chris' dad and Ryan came from Herbert with a u-haul dolly to tow our car back to Herbert. We got back to Herbert around midnight and that was the end of our road trip.
We spent the following week in Herbert with Chris trying to help harvest but getting little done because of the rain and break-down's. I was able to help out a bit using the ride-on lawn mower to cut some weeds near the grain bins and washing the car since it is now our car until further notice. We also visited with the grandparents on both sides, celebrated dad's 51st birthday and tried to shoot gophers but they didn't exist. It was a nice relaxing way to end our summer. At the end of the week we drove the 'rents car home, stopping in Calgary for the night to see Dustin and Rebekah. They gave us a tour of their neighbrhood and we had some starbucks, played some rook and watched a dumb movie called Drillbit Taylor. Then we drove straight home the next day but that was after driving through snow for an hour just outside of Calgary. We were scared it would be like that through the mountains but it actually stopped snowing once we got in the mountains. It was definitely something I had never seen before, snow in August. So, all in all it was a great trip, we had a good time and we have some stories to tell about it.
Tomorrow I head back to school. I have to drive all the way to Burnaby for the first day which will be brutal but then I just drive to Maple Ridge after that. I'm hoping to get into a carpool though so I can save on gas somehow and then Chris can have the car. I'm not sure what to expect but I'm hoping to find out more of what I'm getting into after this week and next. Chris is busy teaching, he got 4 more classes added to the four that he had in his contract, which means he has no block for prep time which teachers usually get. He might be able to get it worked out for another teacher to take one of his classes so he can have a prep but that won't be until those additional classes are officially his because right now they're another teacher's who can take them back if she wants. So we both will see what our situations turn into in the next couple weeks but it seems to be working out so far. I think this post is long enough so enjoy the long slideshow of our trip...
