Vancouver - Part 2

The next day we drove to Granville Island. Granville Island is home to many art and craft galleries and a great indoor public market. I could have spent all day wandering through the stalls of fresh fruits, vegetables, bread, flowers and yummy food! Here we did some honey sampling.
Quite the selection of fresh pasta
The desserts...yum.

We then drove to the Lynn Canyon suspension bridge and went on a short hike. It was gorgeous!

It was a long way down!
That night we went to the U2 concert. Awesome. It was the last night of their 360 tour. This was the stage:
Black Eyed Peas opened. We barely made it to hear their last song, "Tonight's gonna be a Good Night." That's the only one I wanted to hear anyway. And literally we only heard it - didn't get to see it. Bummer. Here we are with 55,000 other fans.
We saw a fan run up onto the stage where he was immediately tackled by security. That was kind of exciting. Not that we needed any more excitement - it was such a great concert!
We flew home the next day. It was great to see the kids! They were well-taken care of by Jane and Chris. A big thank you!!

Sadly, we attended a funeral that night for "Streak" the frog. We were sad to see him go.
The rest of the evening was spent readying Halloween costumes for everybody. Welcome home!

Vancouver, eh? - Part 1

We just returned from four days in lovely Vancouver, Canada. Some friends invited us to go and see the U2 concert. I was absolutely delighted with this wonderful city! Wonderful views, great shopping, delicious food and did I mention we were sans kids? (Although I would love to return with the family someday.) The city will host the winter Olympics this coming February and the Olympic spirit was definitely in the air! It was a great time. Here are some highlights of our trip:
The very first night after we arrived the hotel notified us that our rental car was broken into. Someone smashed in the back window hoping to find our friend's GPS machine only to steal the window mount and cord. Welcome to the city!

The next morning we woke up bright and early to catch the ferry over to Vancouver Island. We parked our (new) rental car on the ferry and settled in for a one and half hour ride over to the island.

We killed the time playing Quiddler - until we saw the views outside!
We passed through several smaller islands until we reached Vancouver Island.

Downtown Victoria
We visited the Buchart Gardens. Amazingly beautiful! I can only imagine what they look like in full bloom!





That night we ate at a Hibachi grill. Rumor has it Bono and the band were eating in the restaurant next door! And we almost went there!! Our new Canadian friends, the Thompsons took this picture. He runs a whale watching boat and gave us his card. Now that would be a fun thing to do with the kids, eh?
More to come!

Fall Break - Part 2

Goblin Valley is a site to see for sure! The kids could not get enough of the crazy "mushroom" rock formations where they could climb, jump and hide.




A beautiful desert evening...
One last outing in the hills near our campsite
Can you spot the tiny hikers in the lower right side of the picture?
We discovered a large untouched sand dune - except for several sets of animals tracks
After some research we determined that these were porcupine tracks!









Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads - Henry David Thoreau

Fall Break - Part 1

With word that the kids were out of school for two days last week, Wes took the bull by the horns and planned a camping trip. He was determined not to the let the year slip by with the pop-up only leaving our driveway once! So we headed South and camped for two nights just outside of Goblin Valley. The weather could not have been more perfect and the landscape was stunning. I love Southern Utah.

We were lucky enough to find a campsite with this view:


Wes immediately spotted the small canyon in the white sandstone hills next to our campsite so as soon we settled in - we were off to explore!

Look at the beautiful rock formations! And that little girl is pretty cute too, huh?


Again...the cool rock formations...
We found quite a large piece of petrified wood.
And a lizard!

Back at camp - doing some Jedi maneuvers
Unfortunately the heater in the pop-up wasn't working but we had lots of blankets and tried to stay cozy. Good morning! (That's the kids' side of the trailer)
Friday we hiked Little Horse Canyon. This is a must-do hike that has only become easily accessible in the last decade or so. It has become a very popular hike for families and youth groups. However, it is still an amazing slot canyon that is worth seeing if you are in the area.





Cate spotted a black widow the size of a quarter!

We called this the "Wall of Faces"






The diverse rock formations were incredible!
The canyon can be part of a 6-7 mile loop but we just did a less than 2 mile hike up and back the actual slot canyon.
On to Goblin Valley!