Shirley K

Day 18 July 21 Colorado Springs to Ruidoso We drove to Ruidoso. Very uneventful except for a stop at a roadside park where I found a cell phone. I called the listing for Mom and mailed it to her so she could send it back to her son who was on his way to take his wife to a doctor in Mexico. It felt so good to get back to Ruidoso. They had a lot of rain so everything was very wet. For several days we just laid around except for a trip to Alamogordo to see Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D. It was a lot of fun. We also went to The Annual Ruidoso Art Show and saw a lot of interesting works. Saturday, July 26, we drove to Dallas to ... read more

Day 16 July 19 Bozeman to Casper Bozeman with 38,000 people is the largest city in Montana. Imagine that. Since we entered the US there have been lots of motorcycles everywhere. Wonder if it has something to do with Sturgis and the big motorcycle event they have. I loved driving through Big Sky Country. Everything was so wide open and you could see for miles. Everything looked very green so I imagine they had been receiving a lot of rain. Our first and only stop of the day was in Cody, Wyoming at the Cody Museum. It is divided into five sections, Plains Indians, Weapons, Cody himself, Natural History, and western art. It was all very interesting. They had lots of example of clothing and utensils made by various tribes. I skipped the arsenal but did ... read more

Day 14 July 17 Jasper to Windermere Jasper National Park, just north of Banff National Park contains northern part of the Rocky Mountains. There are numerous glaciers. Our day started out with a trip to the grocery store to buy picnic items. We always like to visit grocery stores to see what different regions carry and it’s always interesting. This store didn’t disappoint. Many local brands and Canadian brands of food that we had never seen before plus some old favorites that seem universal. Heading down the Icefields Parkway we immediately spied a large black bear walking down the side of the road. We a saw other bears later and bighorn sheep, one with a collar. There seems to be a haze hanging over the mountains and many of the trees have died from bark beetle ... read more

July 16 Victoria to Harrison Hot Springs From Victoria we drove to Butchart Gardens at Brentwood Bay. But first we had breakfast at a quaint little café called the Seadrifter with the locals. Butchart is divided into several gardens, including the Rose Gardens, the Formal Gardens, the Japanese Gardens, the Sunken Gardens, and the Totem Gardens. Jennie Butchart developed the gardens on a played out gravel pit her husband had quarried for his successful concrete business. They traveled the world collecting plants. Entering the Rose Gardens was overwhelming in its magnificence with more than 2,500 rose bushes of 250 different varieties in full bloom. It was almost sensory overload. The other gardens were equally impressive. We hurried down the road just in time to catch the noon ferry from Sydney to Vancouver - actually Tsawwassen, just ... read more