The Western World

After the long weekend we drove straight to Vancouver, where we stayed with our friend Fish (Tom is his real name! He used to work with us at the Peaks) at his amazing penthouse apartment in Kitsilano - a neighbourhood in Vancouver that is right on the ocean. Our friend Mia, who also worked at the Peaks, is now a flight attendant and she flew out to hang out with us all for the day. It was an amazing Peaks reunion that involved the beach, the ocean, beers, burgers, water balloons, and a whole lot of fun on Fish's rooftop patio. The next morning Mia flew out and we had a nice relaxing day checking out Vancouver.
Then - completely opposite to anything we've been doing lately - Katie actually flew to Boston the next day for a few days to celebrate her brother in law's 40th birthday, and catch up with that side of the family. During that time Chris got to stay with Fish, who showed him around the adventure side of Vancouver - he longboarded, climbed Grouse mountain, frisbeed, and had lots of adventure.
After our solo adventures we were so excited to be back on the road, and we explored Kamloops and the area. We were defeated a couple of times by the Forestry Service Campgrounds that we had fallen so in love with, because many of them are really backcountry and we can't tell on the map whether they will be easy roads or intense switchback rock roads. The Mazda is so weighed down from all of the stuff we have in it, so a couple of times we had to give up on finding the campsites in order to save the bottom of the car from being ripped apart. In fact, for our night in Kamloops, we spent so much time going to Forestry campgrounds and turning around halfway there, that finally at 10:30 we had to call it quits and we set up at Paul Lake Provincial Park in the dark. Gone are the days when we are watching the sun set at 11 pm ... now by 9:30 we're in the dark!
The next day, we headed northwest to Cottonwood Creek Campground, after checking out Lillooet and (of course) getting rejected by some very severe logging roads that did not get along with the Mazda. It was a beautiful campsite on the river, and we indulged in a delicious steak dinner with green beans, bbq-ed zucchini, and peppers.
We headed into Pemberton the next afternoon, which was a great small town that we explored for a while. We stayed at another awesome Forestry site that night, which felt like it was in the middle of the jungle it was so lush, and the trees around us were huge! Quite the difference from the dry landscape of Kamloops area we had been in only a few days before.
The next day we packed up and headed to Squamish, where we got some groceries and had coffees at an awesome little local cafe (The Cup), and then we headed to our first night of camping in a privately owned campground with Katie's "Labour Day Family" friend Stephanie Furlong and her boyfriend Ryan. It was awesome! You just set your tent up on the beach along the river and call it your site. We had a great dinner and met the people in the site next to us, who turned out to be around our age and from Owen Sound! We had a blast with all of them ... we even had a big bocci ball tournament. It was an amazing night.
We left Squamish very groggily the next morning and headed into Whistler, where Katie's friend Darcey lives. It was the last day of a week long international mountain biking competition (Crankworx)on Whistler Mountain, so it was crazy busy but so fun to watch the finals of the freestyle part of the competition - who knew that there was downhill mountain biking freestyle! These guys were doing double back flips off of 80 foot dirt jumps ... it was wild. We ate dinner at the restaurant Darcey works at after touring around the village and having a blast people watching and taking it all in. After she finished work, we spent the night meeting a ton of really nice people who called Whistler home, who all were very intent on convincing us that Whistler was definitely better than any other place to live. Hmmmmm!
Today we had such a great relaxing day - we took air mattresses to the nearby lake and floated around, surviving the 34 degree cloudless heat by hopping off into the water whenever it got too unbearable. We're about to have a big farmer's market dinner of bison sausage with corn, peppers, salad and fresh bread. Delicious!
On to Vancouver Island tomorrow to keep on exploring ... we hear it's beautiful and are really excited to look around.

Super Side Track

We checked out the town of Rossland the next morning, which in itself wasn’t that exciting but Red Mountain nearby was definitely really nice. Once we were on the road past Rossland, it was officially labeled as the "BC Super Side Track" on all the government signs, which we though was pretty awesome since that pretty muchs sums up the whole trip. We set up camp in Kootenay Creek Provincial Park that afternoon, learning that it was probably best to set up early and then explore since the area was so busy. And wouldn’t you know it, we had to camp in the “overflow”, which is really just a nice way of saying “extra-parking-lot-where-you-can-set-up-your-tent-in-the-grass-beside-the-pavement”. It was literally one parking spot per tent, but at least we were right beside the beach and had a place to lay our heads!
After a swim we went and checked out Nelson, which was an absolutely awesome town. It was as hippy-ish as we had heard, and the whole area was so laid back. It was built around the lake on a slope, so even its look was cool. We toured around for a bit before heading back to camp, where after a pasta dinner Chris pulled out his telescope and hung out on the beach looking at the very bright moon and stars. After showers the next morning we went to Revelstoke, where we set up at Martha Creek Provincial Park, which felt appropriate, and then went to the town to look around. It was another really amazing town, which had a great main street that felt small town-ish while still having all the shops necessary. It was gorgeous. That night back at the campsite we watched a really wild storm head our way overt the mountains and lake, and then the wind got so intense that at the exact same time as our neighbour’s (unattended!!) fire started spraying huge sparks all over our tent, our tarp got ripped up and half of it went straight into the air like a huge wind sail. Luckily nothing caught fire and after a bit of a struggle we got the tarp down and into the car. The light on the rain even made it look like a funnel cloud was headed our way for a bit, but in fact we only got about 45 minutes in total of the storm; across the lake had it was worse and we even heard trees falling from all the lightning.
The next morning we headed north to Yoho National Park, where we checked out a ‘bridge’ made from water pounding against rock until it caved at the bottom, leaving a bridge of rock across the powerful waterfall. We also did a 5.5 km walk around Emerald Lake, where we got to see the cabins Katie stayed in years ago and also the rock where she and the family jumped into the near freezing glacial lake! It was a beautiful walk, and the lake is true to its name – its colour made us keep stopping and staring it was so memorizing, We also practically walked right into a deer who obviously didn’t care at all that we were around – she just kept on munching away beside her perfect lake.
We had the strangest wake-up call yet this trip the next morning. Katie woke up to a lady in the neighbouring campsite saying there was a bear nearby, and then suddenly they were banging pots and pans and shouting that it wasn’t in their site anymore, “it’s in the one beside us, right between their tent and their car!!” whaaaaat? Chris woke to “Chris Chris there is a BEAR in our CAMPSITE!”, but by the time we got to the tent window to see it was already gone. Apparently it had spent some time sniffing around our car and grunting about, and then decided there was nothing good around and moved on. Closest call with a bear yet, and we didn’t even get to see it! Since we were up, we packed up and headed out to Golden. We found out that BC has their own version of “Provincial Recreation Areas”, which are owned by the Ministry of Forests. Basically, since logging is such a huge thing around here, and they have to make roads to log, they make use of the otherwise abandoned roads to create small camping areas – 5-15 sites with an outhouse – that are far away from civilization and (our favourite part) free! So we set up at Waitabit Creek about half an hour from Golden, right on the water. We spent the first part of the evening at a wolf sanctuary, where we even got to howl with the wolves and learn a lot about them. That night we met up with a friend from home, Doug, who showed us a local bar where we had a beer and enjoyed some live music before heading back to our site. Golden: another amazing relaxed BC town – this isn’t going to be easy!
We've also had a lot of fun checking out the "runaway lanes" all over the BC roads ... with all of the steep grades and so many trucks coming through the province, they have developed "brake check" areas at the top of huge hills, followed by the runaway lanes along the hill itself which are literally just lanes that veer off the road and smack into the forest beside it for cars with failed brakes. The weirdest one we saw was a lane that veered off the road, only to join back up with it 100 metres later! So basically you get a moment away from traffic until your car has to zoom back into it uncontrollably. How bizarre.
On Friday morning we got up nice and early and headed west again. After getting an oil change (we have now put 15,000 km on the Maz this trip!), gas, and groceries, we went a couple hundred kilometres north of Revelstoke to one of the Forestry Service campgrounds, with the intention of getting as far away from long weekend craziness as we could. Mission accomplished – we went to Sprague Bay, at the very end of the road and 15 km on a dirt one, where there were about 8 sites and we were set up on a hill above the lake, surrounded by rolling hills and mountains. We spent the next two days doing nothing but relaxing in the sun (at our own private “beach” of smooth sloping rock), swimming, playing scrabble, watching the hummingbirds that were everywhere, sitting by the fire, reading, and enjoying the peace and quiet of our long weekend away from the long weekenders. Aside from our cooler spoiling our milk and our neighbour who watched loud movies in his RV, we were in heaven. If there is nothing else to love BC for (and oh, there is), we have fallen in love with the Forestry Service camping!

We made it ... BC!

It’s been a long while since out last update, (sorry!), so we are going to do two again.

The day after our last update was a long one and such a great one. We had bought a “summer pass” that was being offered, which got us each a ticket for the gondola up Sulphur Mountain, a one hour horseback ride through the valley around the Bow River, and tickets to the Banff Upper Hot Springs. We did the gondola first, which was another great memory for Katie, since she had been up there both with her Dad when she was 11, and her Mom and Mo when she was 18 (and where she encountered the infamous “Eduardo!” crying child!) The view from up there was so stunning. We got the gondola all to ourselves both ways, since there were no other couples around, just hoards of camera happy tourists who wanted to stick together, so that was awesome. We cruised around a side path while the crowds thinned out, and even got to watch a tiny little baby Golden Mantled Ground Squirrel putter around and nibble on whatever he could see. When we were done we went to the horse stables, where we were partnered with our horses and taken out to ride the trail. It was wicked! It was such an awesome way to see the area and it was just so fun to be on horses. Every so often we even got to gallop on them, which was such a blast. Chris’s horse was quite the restless one, so he had a hilarious adventure trying to keep it away from the fields where it really just wanted to hang out and eat grass all day. The cool thing was that the hour felt much longer, and to be honest our bums may not have been able to handle much more!

When we were done we ate some lunch at a rest stop up on Tunnel Mountain, where other than some runaway green peppers (man those things can roll!) we had a really nice lunch with a great view. We did a mini road trip to Canmore that afternoon, where Katie had fallen in love with the Rockies years before, and it was definitely a gorgeous town. We toured around in our car and admired houses that will never be in our price range, and did a walk along the river, then headed back to Banff to soak up the sunset in the Hot Springs. It was so glorious (not to mention free showers!). We went back to camp and devoured quesadillas, and relaxed by the fire before calling it a night. What a great day!

The next day we said goodbye to Banff and explored Kootenay National Park (we were officially in BC!). We did an awesome little hike through a canyon, checked out some crazy coloured lakes and looped through Radium, the town at the south end. It was a nice relaxed day, ending with a fire and some Scrabble. We left in the morning to start checking out BC’s south-east area. We drove up to Fernie Mountain to see the slopes, and checked out the town itself (which looked like a ghost town since they revolve around winter tourism it seems!). We ended up camping farther west than we expected, because the first three campgrounds we went to were full – apparently people were starting their long weekend early! (That, in fact, was when we even realized there was a long weekend ahead). We spent the evening chowing on mac and cheese fortified with cheese sausages and tomatoes, and planning our next few days. Research time is upon us … we had to start figuring out where we wanted to spend the winter!

We're in the Rockies!

(By the way .... Click on the pictures to make them huge! The panorama looks awesome.)
So we finally got our night in Elk Island, which was really great because after a nice hike we did an evening drive and saw a bunch of wild bison grazing the grass near the road. The next night we went about 3 hours north of Edmonton, to Sir Winston Churchill Provincial Park, where we finally got to swim and hang out at a beach. (Until the storm rolled in that is). Then we headed a few hours west and spent a night at Hilliard's Bay Provincial Park, where it looked like it would rain, so Chris put up some tarps. However, it seems that his tarps are the magic touch, for whenever he puts them up, the skies clear and the sun shines!
We had to go back to Bev and Bill's for mail, and since that was a four hour drive south, and we had another four hour drive west to the Rockies, we were convinced by the both of them to stay the night and hang out with them. Done deal! Pizza and TV ... it was beginning to feel like home! But we headed out the next day, after a glorious brunch with Bev at Smitty's. And that was the day that Chris saw his very first mountains of the Rockies, as we did the amazing drive into Jasper National Park from Edmonton. It was so beautiful. We spent the night at Pocahontas Campground, and before going to bed that night we soaked up the views and the hot mineral waters at the Miette Hot Springs (where the water is so hot coming from the ground that they have to cool it by 16 degrees Celsius before it's even bearable!). The drive deep in to the mountains to get to the hot springs is marked as Chris' favorite road yet this trip!
Well rested (but very very cold) the next morning, we explored as much of Jasper as we could. We did an awesome drive to Maligne Lake, where there was a caribou hanging out at the side of the road ... it was massive! At the lake we did a really nice hike, and once we were done we drove to the town of Jasper (where the caribou were roaming everywhere and eating the shrubs out of people's lawns) and had a picnic lunch in the park. That night we stayed at Wapiti Campground, and yet again it was a night that required toques, double layers, and an extra blanket.
The next morning, after hot hot showers, we started our drive down the Icefields Parkway, which was surrounded by stunning views everywhere we looked. We did a drive down a nice quiet road called Edith Cavell, where we saw our first grizzly bears!! ... From the safety of our car. It was a really amazing moment, because they are such powerful creatures it's hard not to be in awe of them. We continued south to the Lake Louise area of Banff National Park, where we did a (crowded) hike around the Athabasca Falls, and stopped at a picnic area to have some lunch. Farther south, we did a short but steep hike up to the Athabasca Glacier, which was so awesome. They had signposts to show where the glacier had been over the last hundred years, and even as late as the fifties it was where our car was parked. That night we stayed at Waterfowl Campground, which had its own awesome little walk over a bridge and around the forest. The views were so incredible ... it was impossible to get used to seeing such immense and overwhelming nature.
In the morning we continued south, and decided to check out the Bow Glacier. It turned out that it was the same place Katie and her family had spent hours checking out many years ago on their trip through the Rockies, and yet again it was stunning. We were really lucky with our timing on getting there, because when we arrived there was absolutely no wind, which turned the glacial lake into a perfect mirror of the mountains around it. Then, within minutes, the breeze picked up and the lake rippled, showing off its unbelievable turquoise colour. Finally we moved on, and we spent the afternoon hiking around both Lake Louise and Morraine Lake, both of which were ridiculously beautiful and perfect. Over and over again, we marveled at the amazing ways that nature worked. We stayed at Lake Louise Campground that night, where we had a relaxing evening of pasta, a campfire, scrabble and tea.
Today we were on the move again, and we decided to take the much more relaxed route on the Bow Valley Parkway (1A), where the speed limit was way lower and the people had time to cruise. (We got a little tired of aggressive vacationers who forgot they were there to relax ... people kept passing us on the Icefields Parkway when we were going the limit and enjoying the views. Didn't they notice what was around them? ... Yes, yes, we sound old). We did a 5.5 km hike to the Johnston Canyon and back (another nostalgic moment for Katie!), which had several beautiful waterfalls and was surrounded by an old, quiet, peaceful forest. We set up camp at Two Jack Campground about 20 minutes east of the town of Banff, and right now we are in the town making good (and much needed) use of their laundromat and internet cafe.
So far, amazing. We are loving the Rockies and the views all around us, and even though we wish we were billionaires and could do all the amazing and very expensive tours (rafts and horses and helicopters and so on), the best part about nature is that walking through it and marveling at its beauty is still free.

More Amazing Alberta

Wow, it's been a while since we updated this! A lot has gone on, but we will try to keep it as condensed as possible.
We went to Livingstone Falls as planned last Monday, where we were met by rain and near freezing temperatures, not to mention hail the next morning. That was the coldest it has been for us so far ... we were in many layers of clothes at night, including toques and snowboard socks and still it was numbingly cold! We stayed there for two nights, and then drove north to McLean Creek Camper Centre, in Kananaskis Country, along the way seeing herds upon herds of rams. We were happy to get back on pavement as we neared McLean, but the trade-off for such civilized things was that we were in RV country, where the sites were gravel and the privacy was nonexistent. We were staying there for three days, which made all of those things feel unbearable, but it was the only campground in the region with showers (even though they were $2.00 for five minutes!), and we wanted to be close to Calgary for the Stampede. On Thursday we went to Calgary to see their Science Centre's Body Worlds exhibition, (the picture on that link is one of the things we saw, and it's a real body) which was absolutely amazing. We were blown away by what we saw, and stayed there for hours looking at many variations of real bodies of people who had donated themselves to science. Unreal!
The next day was the one we had been waiting for ... the Calgary Stampede! (<-- such a cool picture! We were sitting under where it said "Calgary Stampede"). We got gold seating tickets for both the afternoon Rodeo and the evening Grandstand Show, and in between toured the city a little bit and ate at Milestone's on their famous Stephen Ave. pedestrian walkway. It wasn't entirely pedestrian at one point: a very confused young tourist and her sister, both slurping their Booster Juices, tried to turn from the "sidewalk" part of the street to the "road" part, crushing the passenger door into a fixed metal garbage container. As she tried to back up, she ended up denting and scratching the entire length of her car, getting so stuck a passerby had to take over and drive the car for her all the way out of the street (yeesh, tourists eh?).
Anyway, the Stampede actually lived up to its claim of being "the greatest outdoor show on Earth" ... we were amazed by the Snowbirds, the Rodeo itself, the four motorbikes criss-crossing each other in a huge metal ball while more did tricks in the air above them, girls doing triple back flips onto balance beams that were no wider than their feet being carried by men beneath them, the hundreds of dancers, the fireworks .... it was incredible. The whole day was so great, we thought it would be a once in a lifetime experience but now we want to go back for sure!
The morning after the Stampede, we left MacLean Creek suffering from a major excitement hangover after so many quiet weeks of camping. We spent a long time at a Mazda Dealership getting a few things fixed up, and by the time we left at 5:30 pm it was pouring. We drove several hours to Elk Island National Park, just east of Edmonton, where upon arrival at 10 pm we found out that they had no sites left, nor did any park within a 2 hour range. Uh oh! We ended up having to make a nervous late night call to Chris's cousin Bev, who lives north of Edmonton in Fort Saskatchewan, to ask if we could start our visit a night early. She and her husband Bill were the best! They took us in and made us feel right at home, and we even got to sleep in a real bed! They also have two amazing dogs, Mabel and Chubby, who made us feel nice and loved and welcome, for a fair trade of hugs and petting. The next day, we checked out Edmonton a little bit, and even got to see Jake Raynard, a friend of Chris's from high school. He and his wife Mia own a tea shop downtown called Cha Island Tea Co., which was so cool, and we made plans to get together there the next day (his only day off in a month!!!). That night we made Bev a steak dinner, which Bill couldn't join because he is in the Military and was working a 13 hour (!!) shift that night.
The next morning we checked out the infamous West Edmonton Mall which was wilder than we could have imagined: it looked like they squeezed all of the Canada's Wonderland roller coasters into the "play area" of the mall! Feeling overwhelmed by it all we left in a daze, forgetting to even see the zoo part which we were so excited about. We saw Jake after that and had a blast at his closed shop, playing Settlers of Catan (which helped us greatly ... we were having major withdrawal since playing it addictively in Thornbury!) and eating Belgian Waffles that are a part of his menu and so delicious. It was such a great day .... topped off with a great Mexican Dinner back at Bev and Bill's with their friends and their two dogs as well.
We were going to leave yesterday to head back into the camping world, but after about 3o straight hours of rain we realized it might be best to extend our stay under a roof. So instead of setting up a tent on saturated ground, we lay on the couch and had a completely relaxing day of doing absolutely nothing except watch TV (a first in so long!). It was great to have a chance to relax like that with Bev and Bill too, since the days before had been so busy. We finally got to sit around in our pj's and enjoy each others' company.
Today it's back to the camping adventures, and we are headed out to try Elk Island National Park for a second time. Hopefully they will have a site for us this round!
(PS we put up new pictures again ... still in the same Facebook album as last time so scroll through to the new ones!)
(PPS you don't need Facebook to check these out!! ... we thought we should clarify that since we had a few questions about it)
Here's the link! (CLICK THIS).

Pictures Again

Click Here .... for more pictures. The ones on pages 1-3 were there already, we just added some more after them. Enjoy!

Canada Day Week

The park we headed to after the last post (Kinbrook) was crazy busy. It was a sign of what was to come in the two weeks on either side of the Canada Day long weekend, especially since school is all finished now. In any case, we ate an awesome stir-fry and enjoyed a good sunset, surrounded by the soothing sounds of generators and many many people.
We went to Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park the next day, which only had 4 sites left by the time we got there, but somehow we got the best one in the grounds according to the lady at the desk. Sweet! We went on a great hike through the Hoodoos, and a landscape similar to the Badlands, where we saw so many deer grazing across the river, including wee little babies, and then we got to watch the male deer fend off some hungry coyotes as they tried to get down into the valley. Eventually, the coyotes gave up, but they gave us quite the show which was pretty awesome. Another deer on our side of the river also walked up to Chris (about 10 feet away) and didn't care at all that we were there. He just kept on munching the grass and cruising by.
The next morning was Canada Day. We had done some research and found out that Waterton National Park, in the far southwest end of Alberta, had a large campground of first-come-first-serve. So we packed up and headed out to get there by 11:30 am - two and half hours before check-in was even allowed. When we showed up, we were stopped and turned around because the entire park was already full for the whole weekend - and it was only Thursday morning! We were pretty disappointed because we had heard good things about that park, but in any case we started northward and stopped in Pincher Creek for gas. And while we were there, we actually got McDonald's - our first fast food of the trip (not including good old Canadian Timmy's). This town would get winds of 120 kms an hour and would last up to 20 days, so Chris was told by a new friend he met in line at McDonald's. Katie also bought a few things at Walmart to cheer us up, like Doritos and magazines. She was really excited about one magazine, because Chris loves trucks and cars, but when she pulled it out of the bag we realized it was an Extreme Radio Control Car magazine!! That definitely gave us both a laugh. It was a magazine on how to personalize and pimp out remote control cars!
We drove past two more campgrounds, both of which had signs in the front saying they were full. We were starting to think that we would be spending the weekend in our car. Finally, after a series of happenstance turns (Chris turned right instead of planned left because the van in front of us was driving like an idiot, for example), we ended up at Castle Falls Provincial Recreation Area. (Check out the pictures and also where we were on the map!) We didn't even know that Recreation Areas had camping, but this one said it did and so we checked it out. We saw one site open, and we almost called it a day right there and set up we were so excited, but we decided to keep looking. We even went over to the next grouping of sites, and there we found the best site we could possible imagine. It was 20-30 metres from the rushing rapids of beautiful Castle River (the picture on the top right is our backyard), surrounded by forest and hills, and there was really only one campsite within our sight. It was perfect! We set up right away, then drove back to town to make out first beer purchase of the trip. It was Canada Day, after all. We relaxed in the sun, and explored the rapids, and eventually met our neighbours. They were Craig and Anne-Marie, from Newfoundland, and they had moved to that area three years ago. We ended up hanging out around their fire later that night, chatting and laughing and having an amazing ending to an amazing Canada Day. It was awesome!
We spent the next three nights at that sight (although our fun neighbours left the next morning), since we knew that we weren't likely to find anything anywhere else, especially that nice. It got very very cold at night (about 4 degrees), and the days didn't warm up much past 15, but that was because we were in an area that got sprinkled with a tiny bit of rain every morning and was under the weather influence of some very big mountains nearby. We checked out the waterfall down the road, and played lots of Scrabble, and read, and just relaxed all weekend long. It was perfect. There was definitely action going on around us (one guy chainsawed himself in the leg on Friday, and we drove by police and a helicopter landing in a field on Sunday), but it was all out of earshot from us so we just got to enjoy the roaring of the water in our backyard.
Yesterday we moved on, and although we went to Park Lake Provincial Park first, the wind was so bad we wouldn't have been able to set up our tent. So we drove all the way back from near where we came from and went to Oldman River Provincial Recreation Area. Turns out all Recreation Areas are not made equal - our campsite had a stunning view of the garbage, the outhouse, and the highway bridge, while the roar of the water from the weekend got replaced with the rumble of trucks going by all night. We had thought it would be fun to check out the central region of Alberta, but we realized the parks just don't have much to offer so back we go into the foothills of the Rockies.
Today we went to Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump, which is a World Heritage Site that preserves the area where the Plains Indians would corral hundreds of Buffalo at a time and then scare them into stampeding over a cliff to their deaths. It has over 9,000 years of history that has been found in the form of bones and tools, and it was an amazing place. We ended up staying there for two and a half hours, as we explored the histories of the people and the land. We are staying in Livingstone Provincial Recreation Area tonight, and the next two nights are yet unknown. By the 8th, however, we will be up near Calgary (don't worry, we reserved a site Jen!), because we have got ourselves tickets to the Calgary Stampede on the 9th - both the rodeo and Grandstand evening show. It should be a blast, and we just found out Katie's cousin Martin will be there around the same time so hopefully we will be able to meet up. In the meantime, it's time to explore the foothills of the mountains.