As I was writing my last blog post, Jeff and the girls were on their shoulder day between arriving at Roy’s and leaving for the cabin. This day is solely for the purpose of provisioning and means that you spend the first day traveling and the second day grocery shopping / re-packing gear. When you travel for just a week, it makes for a lot of non-vacation time so you can visit the cabin for a few days, and then clean up, re-pack and head for home again. None-the-less, this trip would not be missed, and despite the front and back end work, the middle is always a good time and fills buckets and memory banks that have been depleted by too many months away.
It was a whirlwind for sure with the usual trips for Margaret to see Sydney and Lizzie to hang out with Truly. Mary had reconnected with some old friends before making the trip, but didn’t get to see anyone this time. Not a lot of pictures to share – Jeff’s camera held just two photos from their week away – but lots of stories came home…dinner with their cousins, a sleepover with Shelby (which I’m sure was not nearly long enough!) and three days of play at the cabin where water and water sports occupied their days. I miss taking them up there right at the end of the school year for a detox vacation and maybe we’ll get a second week in this year to wind up the summer if we’re lucky!
While the crew was away, the thunderstorm theme continued with one forecasted to have nickel-sized hail. Hmmm. We have a garage at this house, but it is not used as a garage, of course, and currently holds the drying racks for our 16 ft long soffit boards. There was nowhere to hide the cars, and having seen what large hailstones do to cars, I put my thinking cap on and hatched a plan to provide us some protection. Also, knowing how the universe works, if I did nothing, the hail would surely come and destroy the vehicles. If I put some effort into protecting them, the storm (or at least the hail) would pass us by, making me look like an eejit. I went with full eejit. The cars were moved to the bottom of the driveway where there was at least a little tree cover, and every moving blanket and decent sized carpet we had in storage got pulled out and put into service. In the end, other than wind, I don’t think we saw very much rain, and definitely no giant hailstones. I won the round, patting myself on the back for out-thinking the universe, but we left the cars at the bottom of the drive covered for a day or two since the storms were a daily occurence…one of the storms in the coming days left MOUNDS of hail behind and blew the rug off mom’s car.
The storms also left rainbows…
I have been looking to pick up some extra work while the contract I have been on for the last few years slows down, so while the storms made it difficult to get any painting done, it did afford me some much needed time to explore new opportunities, take care of some house chores, and wage war on the weeds in the driveway.
When the storms did finally exhaust themselves, we were left with a heat dome (thank you) that saw our temperatures spike to 40 degrees on July 10th. Thankfully, it appears we are on the down-swing from that now, peaking at about 34 degrees this afternoon as we were coming down from our first hike of Mt. Fernie this year. Yes, you heard it…we did something that had nothing to do with the house or painting. Whoa.
Jeff declared Thursday evening that it was time we went for a hike. Skeptical that we could pull it off – and by pull it off, I mean, muster enough strength and endurance to actually complete the hike – I volunteered to make it to the Bat Bench on this first adventure of the season. I haven’t hiked since we left the Alpine Trail house last year and even then, both were half-efforts having to turn around for kids with blisters and belly aches. Lizzie and Margaret jumped on my wagon and decided that the Bat Bench was doable. Jeff and Mary were in it for the full pull though and committed to the tippy top.
Given the heat of late, we aimed for an early start and let our alarms wake us up at 6 so a cup of life giving coffee could be consumed before we woke the kids and faced the groans that would soon follow. To my delight, not much groaning was heard and we marshalled rather quickly to get on the road to Fernie and our chosen mountain. We discovered that hiking shoes, that were doubling as work shoes, were in the trailer at the new house, so a quick pit stop to swap gear was needed, but 5 mins later, we were at the trail head and ready to go. Lots of water on hand, and hiking poles just in case our older bodies complained on the downhill.
After much sweating and a slow start, we found a bit of a rhythm and enough energy and stamina to make it to our chosen destinations. We let Jeff and Mary trek on ahead of us as they were moving a bit faster and had farther to go. Lizzie, Margaret and I chatted about nonsense and took rest and water breaks enough to get us to the bench. Happy day for all and picture proof on hand 🙂
The girls and I contemplated making a push for the top, but having made it to the bench we decided to take our win and head back down. We decided to go to the dam instead (adding a couple of extra kilometers on our hike, but on the flat!) for a quick foot soak and cool off. Lizzie stripped down and got just shy of going for a full swim. I only made it my ankles before the frigid water hit my bones and I was out! Margaret was more on my side with a quick wade in to cool off and then a bit of a rest before we headed back to the truck to wait for Jeff and Mary. They were about an hour behind us in the end but not too bad. We walked slow and enjoyed the abundance of orange and blue butterflies who were in turn enjoying the abundance of mountain wild flowers to play in. Everyone is tired and we are taking the rest of the day off to relax in whatever form that takes…for me that’s writing and for Jeff that’s napping.
