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.