Instead of Cleaning My Fridge, I Thought I'd Clean Up My "C" Drive

And that's when I noticed all these photos, ready to be uploaded.
I haven't told you about my long weekend yet have I? (The Canada Day long weekend, not to be confused with every other long weekend I get throughout the summer.)
OK, yeah, sure. You've seen what Drew did on June 30 - July 2 ... but there's more:
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This was my view on Friday June 27 morning. I sat on the deck with my Bible, prayer journal and a cream soda and wondered what the rest of the weekend would be like. We (Drew, John, Nico and I) stayed at Cultus til suppertime. Then with Drew hanging out with Mandi at Bups and Nan's place, and Clint skimboarding at White Rock, and Max purposefully not coming home ...
I started packing up the Durango so that I could spend some time with my friends:

I packed non-stop for 6 hours then went to bed at 2 am, just as the Clint and Drew arrived home. I was up at 8 am, packing up the coolers and encouraging Drew to get out bed. After a quick stop at Shopper's to pick up supplies for my face, we headed towards the border.

Where we sat in a 6 mile line up for 2 hours.

TWO hours of Drew complaining.

TWO hours of blistering heat and no air conditioning.

TWO hours of Drew being angry and difficult.

TWO hours of me saying to God, "Should I turn back and call this whole thing off? What am I doing? Please redeem this mess somehow."

After we crossed into the States, it was smooth sailing til we turned east onto the No. 2 Hwy. What happened then, you ask?

Well, its just the slowest road in the whole entire world, that's what.

We traveled 9 miles in 70 minutes.

Again with the bagfarting from Drew.

Still with the heat.

And me not stopping my running dialogue with God. "Hello? Another delay? Was I supposed to stay home this weekend? Is this a colossal mistake?"

And then?

Drew fell asleep. Hallelujah.

And we travelled through Steven's Pass, where it was cooler and very lovely. I started taking pictures out of my truck's window whilst traveling 11o kms:

Drew woke up just as we passed through Leavenworth. I told him we had crossed the ocean and were in Germany.
He was still grumpy.

I loved the scenery.

If we hadn't spent so many hours sitting in the border lineup and so on, I would've stopped WAY more often and taken a couple hundred photos along the way.

At this point in the trip, Drew and John took control of my camera in the back seat, and as we zipped through this town, I exclaimed, "Oh, look. How quaint. It's like Small Town, America. Quick guys, take some pics.

John had the camera and looked confused. "What does she want?" he asked Drew.

"Just take pictures of those brick buildings," he replied. "She likes that sort of thing."

Thanks, John. You did good.
And then the landscape changed again, and we were well into our 7th hour of driving. (This was supposed to be a 5 hour drive.)

We got to a plateau and know what we saw?

This:

Acres and acres of groomed dirt.

I was not expecting that let me tell you.

It was like being in the prairies.

I love this shot:

On my bucket list I should add that I want to drive the 2 again, next time stopping to savor the scenery.

Below is the biggest (widest) tractor thingy I'd ever seen. Lonely job.

And these rocks?
Were left behind from the great flood of a zillion years ago.

When we finally arrived, 9 hours after we left home, it was after 7 pm. Drew and John went straight into the lake.
I took a few pics of our surroundings:

Breathtaking.

Our campsite.



Have I mentioned the heat?
Because it was hot. Like, it was always around 100 degrees fahrenheit, with it peaking at 109 degrees on Monday. Do you know how hot that is?
It was so hot, that I actually floated on the lake on this thing:
It's called Party Island and it holds 8 people.
So, yes, I floated on the water and it was heavenly. Heavenly but hot. Hot like hell.
And in the process, did # 99 on my list.

Clint and Nick drove down on Sunday night to join us, and on Monday all the guys did some cliff diving/jumping. This is Clint doing a gainer.



... still falling ...

... still not quite in the water yet ...
Sandra, our Party Island hostess, rowed us around the lake in her little inflatable boat:
And Clint again on the left.
Group hug. I mean jump. Group jump. That's Drew on the left.
You know? I was not nervous watching them. I was too preoccupied getting the picture.

Besides, they're strong swimmers.

And have been doing back flips on land for years. It's gotta be safer to flip into water?

Kaitlynn and her dog. She (the dog) is wearing a life jacket. And can't get her head wet because she'll go into shock.
Dry Falls.
A smaller version of the Grand Canyon I would think.
Later that evening, we enjoyed an utterly fantastic thunder and lightening storm. Truly, it was the highlight of my weekend. Dane and his friends chased it all the way to Coulee. Nick took Drew and John up to the Dry Falls lookout centre for an unobstructed view of the fork and flash lightening. Jared and Clint took their cameras to the golf course and captured as much as they could.

And us? Depsite Sandra's out-of-proportion fear that we were all going to die, Brenda, her and I pulled a big air mattress out to an open grassy spot, lay down on our backs, side by side, and watched as God lit things up for us.

It was a bonding moment. And you know how I love me some good bonding moments.

We were all in our tents by 1 am. (Actually, I stayed up til 2. I had a shower at 1.) And then? The worst part of the trip. Yes, even worse than the 9 hour drive with no airconditioning. Even worse than Drew's never ending complaining. Even worse than Max not being there with us.

At 4 am, menacing gangs of evil-loving seagulls swooped into our campsite, and 2 inches from my head, just on the other side of my flimsy tent walls, they argued. The mom seagull yelled at her toddlers to share. The teenaged big brother fought over every piece of garbage with his younger PMSing sister. The mafia boss-lord called out his orders and every squawked back at him.

Every seagull had a personality and a place in the gang. Every single one of them had to communicate loudly with another member of their family. It may have been fascinating to study and photograph BUT NOT AT 4 AM. So I rolled off my not-so-inflated air mattress and straggled out to the parking lot and grabbed anything lying around, so that I could kill them. I ended up throwing things at them. Stuff like golf balls and rocks. But they were not going to leave til they had eaten every scrap of garbage.

And then, when they moved out to terrorize some other innocent sleeping family? The crows came.
And after that, just as the sun was warming things up again?
Those tiny, chatty, chirpy, fowl that sleep high up in the trees woke up and added their song to the noise that didn't end.

Oh my goodness. The great outdoors? Is for the birds.
Not 47 year old women.

Three things I'm thankful for:
1. New experiences
2. Friends who want to help get things checked off of big lists.
3. More good memories than bad ones.

Shalom,