Lake Superior Provincial Park

The Great Western Road Trip

And they're off!

It's finally here; after 15 months of planning, the great "Out West" Road Trip has begun!

Blaze has gone to Port Stanley to spend the next 2 months at a fully accessible arctic air conditioned "spa" for elderly pets (run by my parents - thank you!).

Rob and the twins and Bob and Gail have headed off across Canada with the truck and travel trailer for the first leg of the adventure. (Thank you to Mike and Tara for letting us all use Barrie this weekend as a wonderful launching point for this epic undertaking!)

Brendan and I are hanging back for an extra week of income and education here at home and then will take the train up to Ottawa and fly out to Calgary to meet the rest of the family (Thank you John and Betty for shuttling us around Ottawa and hosting us!)

Then our wonderful friend Danielle will move in to care for the house and lawn and we'll be foot loose and fancy free. I hope!

We have 60 days of exploring, camping, hiking and biking planned and an itinerary that will take us up to the West Edmonton Mall, Jasper, Lake Louise, Yoho, Revelstoke, The Kootenays, Banff for Canada Day, Canmore, Drumheller for the dinosaurs, Calgary for the Stampede, Waterton National Park, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, Bighorn Mountains, Mount Rushmore, the Badlands and Chicago. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. But I'm glad it's started, and I'm going to try to update when I can. I'm notoriously awkward with technology and when I tried to maintain this blog on our Grand Canyon trip the photos and the wifi conspired to make me want to throw the computer out the window, so no promises I'll be able to make it all work. But fingers crossed, I'll give it a try!

Here's to life on the road!

Make plans, but don't plan on your plans

Just to mess with my carefully, some would say obsessively planned Moment by moment itinerary for the next 60 days, poor Heidi fell and trashed her knee so thoroughly that it required 4 stitches on Thursday night.

I was a calm, cool, exclusively concerned mother in the ER, until the ER doc casually mentioned the stitches would have to be removed in 7 to 10 days. I don't have room in the itinerary for stitch removal in Saskatchewan (where she will be in 7 to 10 days!!!). Ugh. I hate having to adapt.

In happier news, she is healing like a champ and making us very proud of what a tough cookie she is!

Home away from home

The trailer is packed (except for last minute laundry and the kettle) and I have officially spiralled into a previously unknown level of packing and planning hyperanxiety.

Last night I opened the bathroom cabinet that I had spent two hours obsessively organizing the night before and felt like I had been cast in Sleeping With The Enemy (you know, the movie where Julia Roberts knows the creepy over-controlling husband has found her because all her pantry items are lined up straight). The problem is I'm both Julia Roberts AND the creepy over controlling husband!

Rob and the twins and the trailer leave tomorrow. After that I will have no choice but to relax. I hope. Brendon and I will remain at home for another week of school and work and then fly out to Calgary to meet the Cross Canada drivers.

The countdown clock on my phone says 21 hours till departure, ahhhh!

Home Sweet Home - the picture

So, in classic tech dinosaur form I couldn't attach pictures to the last post, so here is a picture of our home away from home for the next 60 days. Cozy! 27 feet of family bliss and perfect working components, knock on wood, ha!

Testing, Testing

Just in case I'm tech Savvy enough to figure out how to post pictures from the trip out west, I'm testing emergency blog system with this post.

How To Price The Market... or Recognize Mispriced Markets...

After a long hiatus, I needed to create a new post to share a fantastic website. In light of the recent downturn in the market, I wanted to pass it along - good luck making your millions! And if the advice works for you, you're welcome!

MispricedMarkets.com

Enjoy! It's becoming my nightly brilliant dose of bedtime reading. On the nights I don't fall asleep on the couch...

The bruise

Photo evidence of "The Great Bruise"

Mud, Pain, The Whole Darn Thing

Pictures from the Grapes of Wrath Mud Run on Sept. 13th - a memorable day!

mud

Testing, testing...

Photo failure

I am at wits end with the blogsite these days. I've tried every day for a week to load up the next Utah day's worth of pics to no avail. I harbour some suspicion that there may be some sort of maximum capacity for photos that I have reached without realizing it. I don't know how long it will take to figure my way around this problem. Just imagine another hundred photos of scenic rocks. In chronological order of the trip you would next imagine really bumpy rocks (Goblin Valley), then really smooth rocks (Moab), then a really deep chasm in the otherwise very flat rocks (Island in the Sky), then really red rocks (Moab again), then a really famous rocks (Arches and Monument Valley) and finally a village made of rocks hidden under the side of a high rock ridge (Mesa Verde)!


I'll keep working on those photos - but you've got a rough sense now!

Onwards through Escalante, Capitol Reef and Goblin Valley...

Photos of Bryce Canyon National Park

Our one and only great family shot of the entire trip. Hey, you only need one!

My gem collector at a rock shop surrounded by geodes, obsidian and quartz to buy by the pound. What more could a boy ask for?

Bryce Canyon National Park

A prairie dog. Meditating.

A spectacular hike that I did on my own at sunset. Coming up was significantly slower than going down...

Utah was so beautiful it was surreal. We kept expecting to get used to views like this one. We never did.

Home At Last

We finally rolled in at 8 oclock last night after 26 (19 for Brendan and I) glorious day of road tripping. The final photo count is an absolutely shocking 3,500. Oi. If I edit and put them into a photobook at the rate of 10 a day, I should have all my photos archived and presentable in... a year. Sweet heaven above.

So my plan for tonight was to cull out the one best photo from each day to post up here. I couldn't do it. So I at least made it through the first four days - the first phase of our trip together - Zion National Park in Springdale Utah, in the south west of the state. An awe inspiring place with red and orange sheer, jagged mountains rising all around you, and an oasis of a river running through the bottom of the canyon. We did a few hikes here, and also spent one day doing a day trip to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. If i keep talking I'll never get these photos up, so here goes...

Flying over the Rockies

Cruising The Strip in Las Vegas

Valley of Fire State Park - a hike and picnic lunch on our drive from Nevada to the campground in Utah

The drive through Valley of Fire

The paved bike trail through Zion National Park

 

 

The view from the top of a the Canyon Overlook hike Rob did on his own - he is standing on top of a stone arch you'll see in another picture shortly - the road in the distance is an amazing set of switchbacks coming out of the Zion Mt. Carmel tunnel - one of Rob's favourite drives of the trip

Our home away from home, and the campsite with the best view on the whole trip

Another spectacular hike in Zion National Park, alongside the river in the ever narrowing carnyon. The trail eventually became JUST the river, and advised people continuing on the "wet hike" that there was a flash flood warning of MODERATE on for that day. Thank you, no. We thought that was a good place to turn around.

One of the breath taking view points along the Grand Canyon (the small peninsula in the distance is where we hiked out to)

The Grand Canyon. Wow.

The drive back from the Grand Canyon through Zion to our campground - this is the arch Rob hiked to the top of!

Our second day in Zion we hiked up to a waterfall and spotted lots of lizards

Roasting weenies!

The next installment - hitting the road for Bryce Canyon National Park, Escalante National Monument, Capitol Reef National Park, Goblin Valley State Park and Little Wild Horse Canyon - and that's just two days. You can see why I took 3,500 photos!