On August 3rd, we woke to see the Daisy May Campground in daylight. It was a dense collection of RVs and an attenuated collection of services. Worse, all the services were clustered around the house of the live-in proprietors.

It is easiest to describe what the clientele of Daisy May are not: thin, young, vegetarian, or brown. Even the children were chubby old white people in kid suits. The washrooms were shrines to their self-destructive dietary habits. Seriously, they could have used a fan up in that joint.

On the plus side, they only charged us $25 for the night, because we didn’t get to use the pool.

Despite the shocking rankness of the washrooms, the opportunity for a shower was too good to ignore. We cleaned ourselves up, trying not to get any, you know, air on ourselves.

Our first stop of the day was the World Heritage Site Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. This was a place where, for thousands of years, the Plains people had hunted bison by stampeding them over a low cliff. They left behind an archaeological treasure trove, revealing the lifestyle and culture of First Nations people pre-contact. Until a few hundred years ago, they didn’t even have horses, so the hunt was conducted entirely on foot. You have to witness the vastness of the prairie to appreciate how incredible that was.

The site has an excellent museum now, explaining what the People believed, how they lived, and the significance of the bison to their existence. The bison was their primary source of food, tools, clothing, fuel, and shelter. It’s difficult for us, with the stunning heterogeneity of our economic system, to comprehend how utterly they depended on this one animal. And how utterly bereft they must have been when bison were eradicated in Canada by the obscene slaughter visited upon them by colonials.

I think Those Johnston Kids found it interesting, but it’s hard to tell. If an attraction isn’t immediately tactile or active, they’re not that effusive about it. But a month later they’ll throw out some odd bit of information about the place that was significant to them. The one thing I am certain captured their interest this time were the bison options in the cafe. We are vegetarians but they wanted to try bison. I would not for a moment allow a fast-food burger or other pedestrian meat, but this was okay with me because it had an important cultural connection.

I was hoping for bison ribs or steak, or even jerky. Unfortunately, the cafe only offered ground up bison in the form of burgers, stew, or chili. We shared a bowl of the chili. Not exactly the profound cultural experience I was hoping for, but they liked it. Baby Girl said that she could live on bison all the time.

I wanted to bring the kids to Head-Smashed-In because it’s a special place. One important thing about is that it’s an Indigenous place being run by Indigenous people. We need more of those in Canada.

It was a hot day, pushing about 32 degrees. I’ve heard Toronto has been seeing higher temperatures, but people in Toronto probably aren’t spending the afternoon in a dark car with no air conditioning. We drove across the dry southern Alberta terrain to Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park, with our tongues hanging out the whole way. We were all wet with sweat when we finally pulled into the campground.

The campground there is a mix of gravel and sand, slightly softened by some thirsty looking cottonwood trees. It’s actually quite nice in an austere sort of way and is situated in the valley of the Milk River, a shallow sandy waterway with a surprisingly strong current. The Milk River is unique in Alberta as being the only river that drains to the south, to the Missouri/Mississippi basin. At the time we cared not a whit for the hydrography of the thing, we just wanted to immerse ourselves in it. Our fervour was dampened by the warning we received at check-in that the water in the river was under an advisory and swimming was at our own risk. We took our risk for a swim. I considered it a teachable moment anyway. How many of you have had to explain faecal coliform bacteria to your kids? We kept our heads and faces out of the water and seem to have survived. Our swim was followed by a good rinse though.

Our relief was temporary as the heat continued through dinner and topless game of SkipBo. Baby Girl won again. She’s turning into a real shark.

We slept on top of our sleeping bags for the first time. Oh, how I longed for the cool nights in the mountains.

August 2nd, I broke one of my vacation rules and woke up the kids early. It was actually 8 AM, which I know is pretty late for you working stiffs, but it seems early when there is no bedtime. They haven’t yet made the connection between a late night and a tired morning.

I had good intentions though. We were going to the Royal Tyrell Museum. As we had passed by the museum the evening before, I had noted the extraordinary number of people still coming and going. I had resolved that we would not join that press, and that meant getting up early to be there for the opening at 9 AM.

We didn’t quite make it, but 9:30 wasn’t bad. There was a short, fast moving line-up and we were inside in 5 minutes. Early in the day the crowds inside weren’t that bad either.

I won’t describe every gallery – although I could – but it is a great museum, and huge. After 4 hours we had seen about a third of the exhibits and hadn’t even gotten to the big creatures yet. When we went out to get our lunch from the car, we were shocked to see a line up to buy tickets that extended 200 metres back to the parking lot. Long weekends suck.

After lunch, I signed the kids over to museum staff who escorted them away on a Jr. Dinosaur Dig experience. That gave me 90 minutes to catch up on the blog and not be responsible for anyone. I might have closed my eyes for 10 minutes. Those Johnston Kids had a great time on the dig apparently. They returned from their hike into the badlands quite excited and sporting complementary museum ball caps. The caps are cool because they can’t be bought, only acquired by taking a tour. Afterwards we went back into the museum for couple of hours more. Then our feet gave out.

The Royal Tyrell Museum is awesome, but I do have a bone to pick about the bison exhibit. The display was quite small, just a diorama of a single bison, with a brief signboard. The sign said that the bison had been essential to Plains First Nations, but had been hunted to the edge of extinction and all but wiped out. That was it. When I asked Short Pants what was wrong with the sign, he replied that it didn’t say that the Americans had killed all the bison. I corrected him on the details, but he had the gist of it. For some reason the internationally respected Tyrell Museum declined to specify that it was the colonial economy and white men’s penchant for grotesquely wasting resources that they naively thought inexhaustible that had caused the bison to be slaughtered indiscriminately. I wonder if the politics of the province had anything to do with the museum’s self-serving lack of clarity.

The scenery in the badlands is so interesting that we considered staying for another night, but the pull of home is stronger. We decided to move on, even if it only brought home a few hours closer.

On our way south out of Drumheller, we stopped for a hike around the hoodoos. The hoodoos are sandstone formations that occur when softer stone is overlaid with a harder stone cap. The hard stone cap erodes slower than the softer underlying stone, leaving a formation that looks like a stone mushroom. You often see something similar in gardens after rain, when pebbles can be found on top of little pillars of dirt.

We looked for fossils that we could not keep, according to Alberta law. We did not find any, a consequence that could be equally attributed to geology or the fact that we have no idea what a fossil in the wild looks like.

We went south because I wanted to stay near Lethbridge, in preparation for the next day’s activity. It was a long drive down through the open prairie again. The prairies are beautiful and fascinating to see, like mountains in negative, but I wouldn’t want to live here. I love trees and rock.

Bonus Trekkie attraction! We stopped in the tiny town of Vulcan to snap photos. I am willing to bet that this town’s name has nothing to do with Star Trek, but that hasn’t stopped them from joining in the fun. They’ve built a 9 metre steel and concrete model of the Enterprise, with welcome messages in Federation Standard English, Vulcan, and Klingon. Best to hedge your bets. The Klingons might eventually get over their fear of Kirk, or stop finding Picard amusing.

We finally pulled into the Daisy May Campground, in Fort McLeod, in the dark, natch. We ate a late dinner of pasta and meatballs, then slept like carb stuffed bears.

I like home design blogs. Mostly for the pictures because, let’s face it, not everyone can write (unless we’re talking about my niece Phoebe’s blog) and home decorating isn’t the most compelling topic. At the same time, it’s a little like punishment because our house will never look like the ones in the picture. First, we don’t have an unlimited budget (despite what Those Johnston Kids think!). Second, we’d rather spend our limited budget on doing stuff rather than buying stuff (http://thosejohnstonkids.ca/wp/index.php/2015/07/24/call-me-ishmael/). Third, I don’t think people actually live in the rooms they show on the blogs. Really. Or if they do, they don’t have children or a dog or three cats. Or me. One consequence of living on my own this summer is that I’ve come to realize that it’s not just the kids who never put anything back where they found it.

However, another consequence of living on my own is that I have time on my hands. Which brings us back to home decorating. I still don’t have a budget, but I have time and little else to focus on other than my adoring dog.

Naturally, the long weekend seemed like the perfect time to start. Before he left, Michael removed part of the wall between the kitchen and dining room and dry walled and primed it. I painted the dining room before I headed west, but I still need to finish the kitchen.

Day 1 – Saturday

My to do list was actually pretty simple:

1. Grocery shopping (the cats were yelling at me for food)
2. Home depot (new knobs for the cabinets)
3. Clean the cabinets & replace the knobs and prep the room for painting

Number 1 & 2 were pretty easy, both are within biking distance. Number 3 proved to be the most challenging. Our house was built in 1963 and we bought it from the original owner. The cupboards are a mix of wood and veneer and were probably part of renovation project sometime in the 70’s. The cupboard doors are wood – covered in about 30 years of grease and dirt. I managed to clean four of them before I needed a break. So I made brownies and watched a movie.

I call that a productive day.

Day 2 – Sunday

My to do list was deceptively short – clean the cabinets, replace the knobs and prep/paint. How hard could it be?

I don’t remember what I did all day, to be honest.  Alison came over in the afternoon and we went to Home Depot (I saw a range hood on sale the day before that wouldn’t fit in my pack). Naturally, that had to be installed even though it wasn’t on the list. It’s a relatively simple process to replace an existing range hood, although it involved a number of trips up and down the stairs from the fuse box to the kitchen to see if I’d flipped the right switch. As it turned out, switch #14 met with success – I wouldn’t electrocute myself. Yay!

Installation complete, I finished cleaning the cabinets and changing the knobs. All of them but ONE. The previous owner of our house, Jim, did a lot of his own home renovations. Generally, this hasn’t turned out well. We’ve discovered joists that have been cut and left unsupported, walls repaired with wood and cardboard and a LOT of plaster, and dishwasher wires running through the ceiling to the basement to plug into a socket. However, he also left us a 70’s orange velour furniture set so I guess you take the bad with the good.

He also had a thing about installing stuff so that it can NEVER be removed. As it turns out, he added a towel rack on the cupboard door. To ensure the screws attaching the rack didn’t poke through the door, he added a piece of wood. He attached this wood over the screws that hold the knob on so you can’t remove the knob without removing the wood. Only I can’t remove the wood because it’s attached with some sort of industrial cement.

I don’t have OCD – but this really bothers me.

Day 3 – Monday

My to do list was now down to painting. Alison offered to come over and help. After a quick change into some of Michael’s nicest clothes, she took over painting the small front foyer, while I did two walls of the kitchen. Two coats were up in no time – as Michael will tell you, Alison and I are speedy, if somewhat lackadaisical, painters. Naturally, we had to go for ice cream.

After Alison left, I stayed up late to finish the painting because we Johnstons are eschewing bedtimes this summer!

And this is what my redecorated kitchen looks like now…

I may need to tidy up a bit before I submit this to Houzz. I can’t find the brownies.

I keep forgetting that it’s a long weekend. The line of vehicles waiting to get into Banff on Saturday was kilometres long, with more piling up behind. It was a constant stream of vehicles from Calgary. We could have told them that there was no room.

There are giant RVs everywhere, jockeying for position like land whales. I feel like a nimble porpoise pulling the trailer.

We had hoped to rise early and drive out to Johnston Canyon for a hike before the crowds, but it wasn’t to be. Those Johnston Kids had stayed up late watching the old (bad) version of The Fantastic Four and consequently slept in. I did not sleep in, or at all, as Alison had taken the bedroom, and the kids the Murphy bed, leaving me with the scratchy 5 foot sofa and a blanket.

After a hearty breakfast of blueberry pancakes, Alison took Baby Girl and Short Pants to the hotel’s Playzone, an indoor climbing playground. In the resulting quiet time, I packed the car and made ready to leave.

We hadn’t actually seen anything of Banff except the hotel so far, so we walked downtown to browse the shops and mail a postcard home. I don’t think we came away with anything except candy. Banff has great candy stores. The main street was dense with tourists and the day was heating up quickly, so we didn’t stay long, but Banff is worthy of a week’s stay. Maybe later in the year when it’s cooler.

Well then it was just a run for the Calgary airport to drop off Alison for her flight home. She was also taking Short Pants’ bicycle, which had been rendered extraneous by the loss of our other bikes in Vancouver, the City of Thieves. Unfortunately, she was just a bit too late for her flight, so they bumped her to the next. That gave us time for lunch anyway. We went to Kelsey’s, where our Asian waiter pronounced ‘Thai’ like ‘thigh’ and could not distinguish fusilli from penne. The food was otherwise okay.

Those Johnston Kids and I, on our own again, had an enjoyable drive to the town of Drumheller, in the badlands of Alberta. We were early for a change! I took the rare opportunity to just do nothing for a bit, while the kids made friends with children from a neighbouring campsite. We had a late dinner of spicy KD and hit the hay.

A while back, when we were still at home, I had offered to give Short Pants my pocket knife – if he could depress the locking mechanism to safely close the blade. It was a fairly sturdy knife, so unfortunately his hands weren’t strong enough. I have other non-locking blades, but I wouldn’t use those myself, much less give them to a neophyte. I told him that we would find him a smaller knife that he was strong enough to use.

I have been reminded of that promise pretty much every day on this trip. Every town we rolled into, Short Pants has remarked laconically, “Well, this looks like a good place to get a knife.” Geez, I get it already.

Finally, in Jasper, we passed by an outdoor store and they had knives on display and we had time to shop. When we came out of that store, Short Pants was the very proud owner of a brand new, blaze orange, Buck folding knife.

Since then, every stick has been carefully assessed for its potential as a whittling stick and I am amassing a collection of carefully crafted pointed twigs, presented to me with great solemnity. I, obviously unaware of the nuances of woodcraft, am instructed as to the most appropriate use of the pointed sticks. Sound are arrows, while others are more suited to more pedestrian use as pencils. I have yet to broach the issue of graphite.

Baby Girl was previously incognisant of knives, but since her brother had one, and wa having fun with it, she wanted one too. So, when we were climbing Castle Mountain, to motivate her efforts, I showed her my knife and told her that it was my favourite and that she could have it when we reached the top. I think the bribe was probably unnecessary because she climbed quite well, but I made good anyway. She clipped it to her waistband in a studied casual sort of way that said, ‘No big deal. OMG, look at this!’

Unfortunately, my favourite knife, now Baby Girl’s never made it to the bottom of the mountain. Somewhere between the top and bottom of the trail it must have fallen from her waistband. She obviously felt terrible when we discovered it missing, about halfway down, because she offered to go back up to look for it. Instead, I let Those Johnston Kids and Alison continue down while I ran back up to look for the knife. I ran back to our last rest stop with no sign of the knife, but I did find Short Pants’ buff where he had dropped it. 

I wasn’t upset that she lost the knife. It reminded me of my grandfather’s pocket watch. My mother have it to me when I was 10, with strict instructions to take good care of it because it was an heirloom. It was a beautiful silver pocketwatch, with a soft patina where it was worn. I loved it and carried it everywhere. Then I left it on the subway and it was gone forever. I still feel guilty about that watch.

I told Baby Girl that we would get new knives together when the opportunity arises.

It was the last day of the month, a Friday, and the first day of a long weekend. I had forgotten all of that. Long vacations play hell with my sense of time. The kids and Alison had breakfast while I started packing up. We had planned a hike up Castle Mountain on the 31st and I wanted to get started before we lost too much daylight.

We dropped the trailer off at the Douglas Fir Resort, where we had reservations for that night, then drove out along the old parkway to the Castle Mountain trail head. The sign says Rockbound Lake, but that’s just the name of the lake on the trail up Castle Mountain.

We started up. Baby Girl faded quickly, once she realised that our day was going to be a long walk uphill. She wanted to see snow, but maybe not that bad. We had a great argument, agreed not to talk to each other, then made up. I offered to give her my favourite knife. After that things were mostly okay, although she was adamant that she was not climbing to the summit.

We stopped a couple of times on the way up to Rockbound, for rest and drinks. Once we reached the lake, under the looming wall of the Castle Mountain bowl, we stopped for a picnic lunch. Baby Girl said it looked like a fairy tale lake and I had to agree. The sun shining on the remarkable turquoise water was amazing.

We continued our climb up and over the wall to the second, smaller lake. Alison had gone off to explore a rock fall on the other side of the lake so I took the opportunity to go skinny dipping in the really frigid waters of the lake. I’ll be honest, I didn’t last long. It seemed like a better idea in my head.

I found some marmots in the rock field near the trail on the way out and beckoned the team over to see. There were at least a couple of adults, and one small juvenile. I like marmots. They’re cool because they’re grumpy.

As a wise parent, I had saved a litre of Coca-Cola for the hike back down. When Those Johnston Kids started to groan about the distance still to go, I fed them snacks and generous swigs of soda. This was noteworthy because they don’t get soda – ever. They did not stop talking for about 30 minutes straight while Alison and I nodded politely and led them down the mountain. When the caffeine buzz waned, I gave them the other half of the bottle and that was enough to get them back to the parking lot. This is why you shouldn’t give your kids soda on a regular basis. They’ll develop resistance and it won’t work when you need it to.

Those Johnston Kids were pretty well exhausted by the time we got back to the car. The hike had taken about 6.5 hours, and we’d climbed 750 metres over about 5 kilometres. That’s a lot for wee ones.

When we checked in at the Douglas Fir 30 minutes later, however, the exhausted children found the energy to go to the waterslide and climb half a dozen flights of stairs repeatedly – with me in tow. I had to drag them back to the room for dinner.

They were mollified by staying up late to watch the The Fantastic Four movie (the old bad one) on Teletoon. Hypnotised, rather, because they get television as often as they get soda. This is why you shouldn’t let your kids watch television. It works whether you want it to or not.

July 30 was a shower day. We try to space them out so as not to waste our protective layer of dirt. Post-shower we drove south from Whistlers Campground in Jasper. Our goal was the Athabaska Glacier, but we made multiple stops along the way to feed Alison’s photo-taking monkey.

One neat stop was just on the side of the highway. The Athabaska River must normally run higher because there was only a narrow channel of water left there, in a shallow bed of stones that was a couple of hundred metres across. Craggy mountains rose on every side of the broad flat valley. We looked for geodes, but didn’t find any, a consequence equally blamed on the geology of the area and our complete ignorance of what a geode actually looks like.

We also pulled up at the Tangle Creek waterfall, where tourists like us were clustered like water fleas. At least Those Johnston Kids, Alison, and I climbed up to the highest fall for our photo ops. We’re not lazy.

We finally reach the Athabaska Glacier around 3 PM. There’s a guided bus tour there that drives out onto the ice and drops you off for 15 minutes on a groomed patch to take pictures. We didn’t want to pay $55 each for the tour, half-price for kids, so we hiked down. When I was here some 20 years ago, tourists could hike out onto the toe of the glacier, following a marked safe path. I figured we could just do that.

The hike down was great fun, especially for Short Pants who eschewed the trail to go ‘cross-country’. The air was so wonderfully clear that distances were deceiving. The hike was a lot longer than it had looked initially and we got to ford a couple of meltwater streams. When we finally got to the bottom, we were fisappointed to find that we couldn’t actually walk on the glacier on our own. The only way to get on the ice was to take the pricey bus, or hire a guide. I don’t even know where we would have found a guide. We took some pics and just headed back to the car.

Short Pants and I went ‘cross-country’again, taking the most direct route across the moraine. We alternately pretended that we were crossing a trackless desert, or Mars.

Hiking can take a lot out of you, especially when you’re small, so we stopped at The Crossing for ice cream and drinks. The Crossing is a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere, halfway between where you’ve come from and where you’re going. I think the only reason it’s there is to act as a life support system for the gas pump. It probably grew up out of the people that ran out of gas right about there.

Still further south, we started looking for someplace to stay for the night. We asked at Nun Ti Jah Lodge only to be turned away; they were fully booked. That would have been an interesting stay because Mama often talks about the time she worked there. She’s never said exactly what she did there. I just assumed it was some sort of high-end cat house.

Neither was there any space at the campgrounds in Lake Louise. I didn’t get that, because there really isn’t much there besides the lake itself. We did stay to have dinner in the old railway station. The meal was more expensive than the food was worth, but the environment was interesting.

We continued south all the way to Banff on search of a campsite. For a hugely popular national park area, the Banff-Lake Louise area has a pitiful number of campgrounds. We checked out the Castle Mountain campground, but it was full too, so on we went. We finally found room at the Tunnel Mountain Village II campground in Banff. Campground is a misnomer. Village II is the RV life unadulterated. It’s just a grid of paved roads with picnic tables and electrical sockets alongside the parallel parking spots they call campsites.

While i prepared dinner, Those Johnston Kids play in the dark, on the strip of grass between ‘streets’ in the Village. It was some kind of ninja game that required dark clothing. I could hear them rustling around like night beasts, unafraid and free, my own little porcupines.

We packed up wet again.

Stopped at the Mount Robson info centre, and discovered that there was a trail head nearby. I needed exercise, so spur of the moment, we decided to hike to Kinney Lake, 5km each way. Those Johnston Kids started out slow, with many comments on how long it was going to take, how long we had been hiking, what was their longest hike ever, how long you could survive in the wilderness without food or WiFi, et cetera. The river we were hiking along was a fantastic kilometres-long whitewater run, coloured a brilliant chalky blue the entire length. There was a killer log jam at the top, and one impassable waterfall that I saw along the way, but the rest from Kinney down to the parking lot looked doable. It would be horrendously fun, albeit horrifically dangerous. If you were to blow it, the river would scour your face off on the shallow rocky bottom while carrying your remains out to the Fraser River.

We turned around at Kinney Lake, but stopped there to enjoy a picnic that also happily lightened my pack. The kids’ spirits picked up after the picnic at Kinney Lake, especially Baby Girl’s. Food and half a papa bear gummie worked wonders. And maybe also going downhill.

We were back in the car by late afternoon and drove southeast to Jasper National Park. We were able to squeeze into Whistlers Campground, with electricity and everything. The otherwise full campground was only able to accommodate us because we were staying for just one night.

The campground was large and packed, with tents and trailers nestled between the lodge poles pines. It was still nice though, and quieter than some smaller campgrounds we’ve been to.

I made a vegetable and tofu curry with rice for dinner, while Alison played Uno with Those Johnston Kids. And – drum roll – we had our first campfire in a week and a half. Marshmallows were sacrificed to commemorate the occasion.

Somehow, and the details are unclear, all of us managed to stay up until 1 AM. I blame it on the time change. We lost an hour crossing break into Alberta.

The Pinegrove RV Resort and Campground was sparsely populated but well-kept. The bathrooms were wonderfully clean, the lots well-treed, and there was even a small playground. It was also cheap. It cost us $32 for a powered site, which is a site with a plug. That’s less than what we’ve been paying for unserviced provincial park sites.

On the other hand, it’s nestled cozily between a highway and a freight railway line, and neither of those shut down at night. I slept like a baby. I generally wake a couple of hours before Those Johnston Kids and wait for them to stir. That morning though, I slept until almost 9. I think it was the combination of white noise from the highway and the familiar rumble of freight trains reminding me of the GO line that runs through our backyard at home.

Breakfast was pancakes again, with apricot-blueberry compote made from the apricots the kids had picked the day before. Pancakes are becoming a staple food.

We had no particular plan for the day except to get to Mount Robson Provincial Park, about 3 hours north. We threw ourselves at the mercy of fate. There was little choice as Alison, our titular navigator, was still working out the nuances of the role. We became leaves upon the wind.

There was no sense throwing ourselves at Fate unprovisioned, so we stopped for really good ice cream cones at a roadside stand in Barriere. The very nice man at the counter served a generous single scoop in a waffle cone for only $3.50. I recommend the Sea Salt Caramel flavour highly.

Highway 5, north of Kamloops did not seem to offer much in the way of distractions. We found nothing to draw us off the road until we reached Clearwater. There, a large colourful billboard promised white water rafting adventure so we followed the arrow on the sign into town. 20 minutes and more than $300 later, we were bumping our way upriver in the back of a passenger van towing a large yellow raft. With us on the trip was a pleasant Dutch family on vacation from Europe. Their three children ranged from 9 to 13 years old. Even with the language barrier, the kids found ways to amuse each other. I liked that.

The first couple of rapids were deemed too big for kids under 10, so the adults and older kids were dropped in the river first. We pulled over to pick up the youngsters after the rough stuff. I thought that Those Johnston Kids would have been fine, but I can understand that the rafting outfit has safety protocols of its own. Everyone had a great time regardless.

About halfway through the trip, we pulled over to hike up the steep side of the river canyon. A 10 minute walk up through the woods led us to a tall waterfall dramatically spilling over a cliff into a pool below. Our guide demonstrated how to carefully make our way out onto the rocks beneath the pounding water and leap into the pool. Naturally, we followed.

Naturally, the water was heart-stoppingly cold. I don’t know if that’s a word, but seriously, I just stopped feeling anything for a few beats while my body had a ‘WTF?’ moment. I’m pretty sure my body hates me now. We’re not talking anyway.

The adults were all content with one jump into the water that was one cold night away from being a rink, but the kids of both families ran around for seconds, then thirds. Despite their purple lips and uncontrollable shivering, they would have jumped until hypothermia set in if the time hadn’t come to head back down to the river.

We were served a snack of powdered lemon drink, potato chips, chocolate chip cookies and candy. That’s what happens when you let 20 year old guides pack the picnic. The children stood shoulder to shoulder around the bounty laid out for us and steadily shovelled the junk into their increasingly manic faces. “I see you don’t feed your kids either,” I remarked to the Dutch mother. “Oh no, never,” she replied wryly.

The second half of the trip had a few small rapids, but the feature activity was swimming. We were allowed to jump off the raft to float down the river in the powerful current. Those Johnston Kids barely waited for the signal to go before they were in the chilly water. I joined them as quickly as I could. It wasn’t quite as cold as the pool under the waterfall, but still bracing. I felt like I was 10 years old again.

The guides, who didn’t introduce themselves as far as I recall, were great with the kids, who were a majority in our party. The raft guide was quite patient with the gaggle of children turning his boat into a floating bouncy castle, and with the limited propulsion provided by only 4 adults. The kayak safety guide engaged the kids a lot and even gave them rides on the bow and stern of his kayak.

So we had a good time and one more thing is crossed off the bucket list.

The drive north to Mount Robson was punctuated by rain, on and off. In contrast to the lower greener mountains on the coast side, in the interior the mountains were big enough to shrug off the mantle of pines and thrust bare rocky shoulders into the sky. The setting sun shone off the snow and ice that capped the sharp peaks.

We saw a small black bear amble across the road some distance in front of us, but Alison had literally all of our cameras in her bag and couldn’t get one out and focussed in time.

We drove up a hillside into the woods near Mount Robson, following signs for a ranch with RV camping. I thought it might make for an interesting stay. The switchback led to a hand-painted No Vacancy sign on a driveway that looked like it led to a hillbilly encampment, but the road continued up, so we followed it further. We came to some sort of rail maintenance yard, with a great pile of scrap metal pieces. I may have kept a couple of souvenirs that weigh almost as much as me. Maybe.

We reviewed the GoPro video I had managed to capture of our rafting trip before the battery died. As we tucked in, a light rain began to fall that continued steadily through the night.