Sorry it has taken me 2 days to get this in but after all we did on Wednesday, I was way too tired to blog that night! We got up and had a fantastic breakfast at the B&B - stuffed French toast...incredible! After breakfast at 9:30 we headed east through the national park to go to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. My dog, Dez, and I love to watch Dogtown (it is filmed at Best Friends) on the National Geographic channel and when I realised I was going to be in the area I just had to go and see the place. It is a sanctuary for all kinds of animals - horses, donkeys, mules, goats,sheep, dogs, cats, rabbits, birds...all of which they care for with an aim to having them adopted. If they cannot be adopted ... read more

After a kind of "passed out" sleep last night it was great to have a relaxing day in this beautiful canyon of the Snake River. My aunt Peggy and uncle Phil's place is on the south side of the canyon half way up the slope and has an amazing view of the river and east and west along the canyon. For those of you who are not familiar with the Snake River Canyon, this is the canyon Evel Knievel unsuccessfully attempted to jump back in the 70's (?). I woke up about 7 am and spent a couple of hours chatting with my aunt and after Ken woke up we had breakfast and then went out with Phil and did a bit of sight-seeing around the canyon. On the north side of the canyon are hundreds ... read more

Today's drive was long and uneventful. We left Lethbridge at about 9 am and got into Idaho Fall, ID at about 7 pm. The drive was uneventful though we passed through some bad weather in southern Montana....from Butte to the Idaho boundary line. The temperature got up to 30C (86F) and when we went into the storm, the temperature dropped to 12C (about 54F) in the space of about 10 miles! The scenery went from the flat prairies of southern Alberta and northern Montana to the mountains and hills of southern Montana and Idaho. It was really beautiful! We saw many, many dead pine trees around Helena, MT and figure that the mountain pine beetle was the cause. It has destroyed so many beautiful trees. We stopped twice for gas and once to eat lunch so ... read more

I am getting excited about our trip coming up next Friday. I am a travel nut and I haven't been anywhere in over a year so it's about time! We decided we'd leave Frisay night, July 24 and spend the first night in Lethbridge with Paul, our second son, and his GF, Brenda, which will take a good 2 hours off our first day's drive down to Idaho Falls. Hope the border crossing is okay....they tend to like to be a bit arrogant at the US crossings these days. At any rate, the excitement is building. I am sure I'll get some awesome photos to share....see you later!... read more

Well, today is my last day in France. We made it a good one :) We got up fairly early and went out to the Musée d'Orsay which is our favourite museum in Paris. We walked around the museum for a couple of hours and then headed out for a bit to eat before jumping on the Metro to go up to the Montmartre area and Sacré Coeur Basilica. The museum is a fine collection of most of the grand master impressionist artists as well as many others. You could spend days in there. I took so many pictures! LOL Our lunch was pretty basic. Ken had an omelette and I had roast chicken and fries (my first fries of the entire trip!) We hopped back on the Metro and road it to the Abesses stop ... read more