Canada Day 2018

The day before the parade, we spent time with Spencer and Hannah and Jayna and Travis's families. At one point, Hannah helped all the cousins go out and harvest strawberries so she could make us some delicious homemade strawberry ice cream, yum!

Hannah's cat had kittens recently and Jess let Maira borrow his camera to take these adorable photos of the cat and her kittens.

Monday morning, it was time for the parade. Shae had a matching outfit all ready for her and Willow. While Willow looked adorable, she was not a fan of the parade. The marching bands had her very antsy and then when a big semi blew its horn right in front of us, she tore off back to the house. I held her on the front porch and we watched the rest of the parade from there.

Waterton June 2018

As soon as school was out, we headed to Southern Alberta for Canada Day as we do every year. Before celebrating Canada Day, we decided to head to Waterton for a day. There was a massive forest fire there last summer so this was our first time back since so much of the park burnt down. Most of the park is still closed to visitors, including Bears Hump, my favourite hike. 

So after some time at Emerald Bay and a meal, we decided to hike to Bertha Falls.

It was a brisk windy day with a bit of rain - just enough rain that we weren't soaked but we did see a rainbow!

Ironically, we passed a sign that talked about the longevity of the trees - "unless destroyed by fire".

Did I mention it was windy??? Haha, those are some awesome expressions!

This was the point where most of us were done and turned back before making it to the falls. Jess and Connor decided to continue on while the rest of us went back to the parking lot to wait for them. They took a lot longer than we anticipated and that's because they had a bit of an adventure on their way back.

They made it to the falls and after enjoying the scenery, headed back, with Connor in front. He rounded the bend and up ahead on the trail, saw a very large black bear! Jess always makes sure he has at least one can of bear spray EVERY time he goes in the wilderness and this was the one time he didn't have any! (Partly my fault - he wanted to stop and buy some in Cardston but I didn't want to wait). Also, it was so windy that they may not have been able to use it anyway.

So they stopped and doubled back toward the falls for a bit where they met up with some other hikers and told them about the bear. One of them had bear spray so they grouped together and headed back down the trail. The bear was still there, completely unbothered by the humans on his trail and just kept walking along. So eventually, they went up above the trail and waited for the bear to pass and then resumed their hike.

Even if Jess didn't have bear spray, at least he had his camera!

Once they were safely back to the van, we headed back to Raymond. The wildflowers near the park gates were gorgeous so Jess and Shae stopped for one last photo shoot as the sun was setting.