Home again, home again, jiggety-jig

Whew! It was weird to sleep in my own bed last night...both coz it was inside, and much, much bigger than anything we slept in over the last week. The cats were very cuddly, and walked all over my head more than once. I could tell that they'd been well-looked after, though - thanks oodles, Jel!

So...the trip! Was delicious. And largely outdoors. I think we figured that we spent at least 60-70% of our time outside, including sleeping time. I had forgotten how marvelous that can be.

The drive out featured several sightings of marshmallow farms:


As well as a very large bird near the top of the Anarchist Summit outside of Osoyoos (which I prefer to call the Anti-Christ Summit, given the steep, steep hill involved.)


Because we got into town a day before anyone was expecting us, we had some time to ourselves on Saturday morning, which set the tone for the rest of the week: no schedule or agenda other than what we wanted to do at the moment. It was tough sometimes to enforce that, but fortunately our friends and family were quite understanding. Which helped us stick to that plan! My Mom made us a delicious steak dinner with strawberry shortcake....mmmmmmm!

Sunday we planned to spend the afternoon at our friends' campsite, swimming and hanging out, before driving to Canmore that night. There was a potato gun there, which resulted in otherwise intelligent, articulate men turning into gibbering idjits. Some of the potatoes were too small to fit the barrel properly, so they used wadded up toilet paper to make 'em fit. Which led to predictable jokes about "blowing their wads." If you look carefully, you can see the spray of paper and potato bits shooting out as Mr.Q launches a spud at the lake:


Fortunately, they soon ran out of potatoes, and pulled out the guitars instead. There was a campfire ban, so we had music around the camp lantern:


We ended up having so much fun that we decided to spend the night. 'Cept we didn't have our tent, or any camping gear besides our bedding and the tarp we picked up for the folk festival. Which, with a little help from a handy pal, was sufficient. We were serenaded to sleep by an obliging owl. Our campsite, in the morning light:



After camp coffee, we headed to Canmore, where we met up with my brother at the folk festival. And a better setting for a festival, I have not seen:


Baby bro had taught himself to juggle that day (show-off!) and he spent a lot of his time practicing:



He was getting pretty good by the end of it. Mr.Q & I had a great time, people watching, and enjoying the music. (Though surprisingly, not Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul and Mary: he was the folk music version of William Shatner, slow and.....lugubrious, with many.....pauses, and more..... talking than....music....and without even a Star Trek uniform for entertainment value!) The last time we went to a music festival was four years ago - too long!

Our traditional self-portrait (I don't know why my eyes are so wide. I was "on" nothing stronger than carrot sticks.)


After a really good visit with my brother and his very cool Significant Other (it's amazing how much easier it is to hang out and have real conversations when you're not all jammed into a small space and a busy schedule for a wedding or Christmas or something) we headed back to Cranbrook on Tuesday and loaded up to head out camping all by our lonesomes for a couple of days.

We went back to our friends' site by the Kootenay River and spent the better part of three days in blissful sloth. We read, snoozed, watched the water, watched osprey hunt, watched the stars come out, listened to squirrels chattering and coyotes singing, and had no idea what time it was for three days. It was light, it was dark, it was time to eat or make another pot of coffee or put down the book for awhile. Divine!









We had planned to stay three nights, but ended up leaving on the third day, chased out by a wicked windstorm. I don't think I've ever packed up a camp so fast! I'm glad we got out as quickly as we did...as it was, we had to pull two trees off the road to get out. If they'd been any bigger, we'd have had a bit of a hike to get help & a chainsaw!



It was a bit of a nerve-wracking drive out to the highway, (keep in mind we were driving a teensy rental Toyota Yaris!) but it makes for a good adventure story now.

Oy! I have to run & meet our fab cat-sitter for coffee, and then try to find a replacement for the bodum coffee-maker than got crunched camping (o the tragedy!) This is long enough for now anyway. Will return later with knitting and miscellaneous content.