North west and Canada

Hi everyone. Betty, Deborah, lifelong friend Karen Huang, 

and I went on a road trip to

the northwest and Canada, June 2018. Started off visiting Wendy and Josh at their Renton home

for a few days. While there Wendy's Mom and Dad had us over to their Bellevue abode for

the best meal ever. They had quite the banquet spread for us plus Tammi brought bakery

from the famous pastry shop recently rated #1.

First, stop after that was a stay for two nights in downtown Vancouver. Along the way stopped at the outlets where picked up a pair of neon green $39 trail shoes. They were great at first but 10 days later when feet hurt so bad could barely walk noticed that the inside part of both heels was one or more inches less than the right side.  I was wrong thinking they were cheap due to their color. Vancouver was great. Ran along the seawall's mermaid, survived a hail storm on the suspension bridge, and dodged cars going the right direction on a one way.

Next, we headed east towards the Canadian Rockies and Alberta's fab Parks. Not long after leaving the city Betty shouted, "Phone flew out, stop the car!" Deb, who did 95% of the driving, eased the rental AWD Rouge off to the side of the mountainous four-lane highway. She and Betty walked back up the road 200 meters when the phone was spotted laying perpendicular to the median concrete barrier. Deb darted across the road to retrieve the phone back to Betty. Miraculously it apparently landed on its side in a spot where other vehicles could not easily run over it. Plus as a bonus, it worked as good as before, despite flying out the window at 60 mph. Betty is smiling in the photo below due to the good fortune of not losing the phone or her hands which were a foot or more outside the driver side back seat window when the incident occurred.

That was pretty much it as far as excitement for the trip goes. The rest of the journey went very smoothly and we had a grand time visiting the four connected parks of Jasper, Yoho, Kootenay, and Bannf. Plus the sister parks of Waterton and Montana's Glacier. Canadians were all so nice to us. We were not gouged with extra tariffs and no one asked us if we thought Hell was holding Premier Trudeau's reservation. Everyone that learned we were from the islands expressed concern as regards the volcano and relief that we were not nuked as yet by North Korea.

The rest of the blog consists of photos from the parks mentioned. There are also 10 short videos at the end which do a decent job of conveying sights and sounds. The final video is from our last day in the Seattle area before returning home. We saw some wildlife, including black and grizzly bears, elk, golden eagles, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, pikas, Herefords, and bankers.

Betty from day one of the trip kept asking how come it took me 40 years to get us on a vacation in Canada and the more we saw the more I had no good answer for her. Will have to try to make it up to her via a return trip hopefully before the glaciers are all gone.