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Banff 2009

§ August 13th, 2009 § Filed under family § Tagged , , , , , § No Comments

The following things have happened in the week or so since I left home.

Our friend N. visited Walla Walla, so Matt and I and C. took him on a tour of the valley and ended up at Blue Mountain Cider Company/Watermill Winery for some tasting.

We’re all very astute when it comes to wine knowledge, as you may undoubtedly infer by the photos.

Beaver came along as designated driver; later he became very smitten with a certain Minette,

but their cross-species romance just wasn’t to be as the three of us (Matt, Beaver, and me) left the next morning for Banff.

Turns out it’s 10 hours of driving plus one hour of immigration line, where some dingbat nearly rear-ended us (mainly me, as she was perpendicular to us as she backed out of her parking space and failed to notice the TWENTY CARS LINED UP behind her) and I kid you not, she stopped about an inch from my door, and only because I was yelling, “Whoa, whoa, WHOA!!”; plus one hour of road construction, which would have been improved with either OnStar or a shotgun, whichever would have gotten us away from the asshat behind us blasting the bass out of his speakers.

In Banff, we and ten thousand of our best tourist friends hiked the Johnston Creek Trail to the Lower and Upper Falls. I wanted to carry on to the Ink Pots, but having three kidlings and a reservation for High Tea at the Fairmont on Lake Louise scratched that plan.

We saw deer, bald eagles, huge trout (cutbow, rainbow, and brown), two grizzlies (or, more likely, the same one twice), elk, and a moose if you count roadkill (sadface).

We outfished my dad and brother on Thursday, catching a dozen or more fish apiece, the largest being a 23.5-inch brown trout for me and a 24-incher for Matt, which was probably the largest fish caught on the trip, and the smallest fish being a mere eighteen inches. God I love the Bow River.

We got tan.

The family got along, for the most part;  I didn’t have to kill anyone, including myself.

And then we got Lucy.

Family vacation, and other things that are better in theory

§ July 28th, 2009 § Filed under family § Tagged , , § No Comments

A week from yesterday, my immediate family will be congregating in Banff to celebrate my parents’ managing to survive on this planet for 60 years. I’m not sure why they want to celebrate such a milestone with company; my hunch is that they just want to hang out with their grandchildren, and feel obligated to invite the kids’ parents. Why Matt and I are invited is anyone’s best guess, seeing as how we’re not procreationally inclined.

Thankfully — for the sake of my sanity — Matt has to work until Tuesday, at best, so we’ll all have two more days of enjoying the idea of all being together before reality sets in and we actually are all together. In one house. ALL OF US: three children ages 1 to 5 — actually four, counting the fetus — and seven adults. And my brother.

This trip also involves two ten-hour drives with just Matt and me. As much as I love a good road trip, Matt does not. In fact, he gets downright cranky when I want to pull over and read the historical site signs (Cliffs Notes got NOTHIN’ on the U.S. government’s ability to condense history into one single paragraph and then engrave it onto a old-growth wooden sign). So we’ll be bringing our respective iPods and I shall attempt to wrest the driver’s seat from him so we can stop and get photos that don’t involve the mileage or odometer or other signage that includes the figure “1137“.

If everyone survives, we’ll return bruised, battered, and — most importantly — WITH A PUPPY, whom we’re picking up on our way back. Personally, I think some bulldog wrinkles will be all that’s needed to assuage my battered soul.