Canada Trip, Part One

A nice place to stop for lunch between Banff and Jasper. It's really too bad the camera can't catch the beauty and the color of the water...

Athabasca Falls in the rain

The best part of the trip for the girls, a highly trained chipmunk or two at the top of the mountain. Guess some people can't read the "Don't feed the wildlife" signs.

Going up Sulphur Mountain in a gondola. Banff, Alberta. None of the girls were scared at all!

The Watsons at the top....

Abby and Grandpa Gulka

Playing in the amazing indoor plyground at out hotel. We went there every day while Whitney napped, the girls loved it!

The Watsons by Bow falls, outside banff

So we are already back from our trip!! After months of planning and researching online and coordinating schedules, my whole family was able to get together for the first time in years. The first part of the trip was up to Orem, then to Tooele to see our neice get baptized. It was really nice, even though we had to leave early. So proud of Natalie. We then drove 12 hours to Lethbridge, Alberta, getting there after midnight. The drive went quite well, thank goodness for the DVD player! I had bought some new movies and saved them for the trip. We also had lots of other stuff to do, and snacks. It was mostly smooth sailing, except Whitney refused to fall asleep in her carseat and cried until 10:30 pm when exhaustion took over. Even then,she woke up and screamed for every bump.
In Lethbridge we woke up, ate breakfast at the hotel and went to a church nearby. We then drove to banff. We got to tak ethe scenic route through downtown Calgary and all it's construction, so that was nice. We got to banff, met up with my dad, went for a walk and then cooked dinner together. The weatehr was a little uncooperative, being cloudy and drizzly off and on. We poked around the shops, went for drives and just hung out with grandpa, who we don't get to see often enough.

I tried to get Sara a T-shirt. she did not like any in the store because "that's not a girl shirt" even if it was pink, if it had a cartoon bear or moose or Mountie on it, it was a no-go. Eventually I found a pink shirt with purple rhinestone moose and that was ok. So they all have their souveneir :)
The next day we took a gondola up to the top of a mountain. At the top you can hike another kilometer up stairs to get to the VERY top. We did this and the girls all did quite well. We saw mountain goats and birds and a marmot and of course, the chipmunks. They are currently obsessed with Alvin and the chipmunks, so this was a big deal.

Here are Abby's favorite parts:

My most favorite part is when I got all my new stuffed animals. One of them's name is Peanut. it's one of my favorites now. It's a cute little chipmunk. Also, my most favorite part was when we climbed up a big dinosaur. And we went on a fun gondola. we went so high, there was even snow up there. and we saw a very funny chipmunk because it was standing on it's hind legs dancing! I also saw a mysterious animal in the trees. It was black and small, but it was bigger than a chipmink. And we saw lots and lots of mountain goats. I also met part of my family who I didn't get to meet so soon. I met auntie Jean and saw my cousin Natalie (Gulka). It was really fun cuz me and Natalie made sortof a club. That's all I want to say for now.

We left and drove on the Banff-Jasper highway, and it was all cloudy and rainy, so the views were not that great but we saw a ton of animals. We saw a grizzly bear and a mother with two cubs and then another bear right by the road. Of course, with the requisite tourists snapping photos just feet away from it... We stopped at a big waterfall called Athabasca falls and it was pouring, but I had planned to pend the whole day on this drive, enjoying the outdoors, so we got on our stuff and went through the rain. It was beautiful. Isabel was looking down with her hood on and managed to walk right into in information plaque....right on the nose, poor kid. But she was ok. We passed through some very beautiful country, this is my favorite place on earth and it made me miss home a little. The mountains in Utah are quite different, but it was good to visit and share it with the girls and Scott.

more to come...