I have fond memories of the summer vacations of my childhood. My parents were great at organizing fun, adventurous, challenging and creative family trips all on a modest budget. They raised five kids, and for any of you that have children you know that planning even a trip to the store can be a challenge at the best of times! We are quickly discovering that for ourselves. I was blessed with truly magnificent parents who sacrificed entirely for the well being of their children. Dad would come home after a hard days work and would spend the remainder of the evening with us - teaching us to throw a baseball, skate, play football or just hang out. Sit in front of the TV? Not my dad. This devoted characteristic of my father carried over to our vacations. He wanted us to have real experiences with the beauty of our planet and to connect and appreciate nature in all its beauty. Especially everything we have in our own backyard. So many people fantasize about travelling at great expense across the world while at times forgetting what we have right where we are. Growing up we camped and hiked and climbed all over alberta and british columbia - from the dinosaur badlands, to the majestic rocky mountains, to the fertile okanagan valley to the pristine coast of vancouver island. The island was a family favourite. Dad would read extensively about all the great hikes and places to see along our route, and took us to many of them.
Naturally, as a family man myself now, I hope to carry on this tradition instilled in me by my parents. Family vacation represents so much more than just the travel and seeing pretty places. It's about bonding and connection. It's about growth and personal discovery. It's about relationships - both amongst ourselves as human beings in a family, and amongst us and nature. It's about learning to be grateful for our surroundings. After all, just like a muscle, we only grow when we are strained. Put 7 people in a tent together for two weeks on an island in the wilderness and some strain is bound to result! I grew pretty big :) Wouldn't trade it for anything.
Vanessa on the other hand does not share the camping loving David Suzuki nature bug that I have. She loves to experience the wonders of the world, but at the end of the day go home to a warm bed within solid walls far from anything that may be associated in any way with the word "wild." Fair enough, caribbean island girl that she is. Although I must interject. I have been to Haiti, and let me tell you, some of the creepy crawly "wild" things that I witnessed meandering about my path like they pay taxes is enough to make me run for the tent in "cold" alberta with a bear in my campsite any day. Not to mention the stories she tells me from her childhood of possessed chickens, talking dogs and herds of half human man goats.We won't go there.
Speaking of bears, for some reason Vanessa has harboured major issues with these generally harmless and peaceful creatures whom she had never met nor been the brunt of any harm or unpleasant encounter at any point in her life. Anytime the idea of camping was brought up she would go off on this bear beef of hers. The concerned and consoling husband that I am, "Babe," I would say "stop worrying about bears, you will never meet one, they should be the least of your concerns." In the end I managed to persuade her to indulge in a family camping trip to Banff national park for summer vacation this year. I even generated excitement from her when I told her there was a nice eight man tent by Roots for sale at canadian tire. Along with nice comfy sleeping bags! So we bought our first family tent, along with brand new sleeping bags. On sale! Maybe that is why she was excited. Maimai got her own sleeping bag too. I even bought Vanessa a nice queen size electric pump inflated air mattress! Nothing like the tree roots and rocks we had to sleep on growing up. I do recall at some point being excited when we got to have an air mattress as a child. Slightly misleading because they were the type that weighed a ton, you foot pumped up for an hour and then woke in the morning with a kink in your back on a completely flattened mattress - on top of the same roots and rocks I had known before! You all know what I am talking about.
Our first family vacation was in the summer of 2010. It was a busy summer with Vanessa's brother getting married and many other activities so we did mainly weekend trips to lakes nearby. Maimai was 3 months old and one weekend we spent at wizard lake Maimai took her first speedboat ride while Dad wake boarded behind. Vanessa's cousin Ewinka was visiting from Philadelphia, it was her first time in Alberta. Wanting to have her experience some of Alberta's best we planned a weekend outing beginning with a trip down south to Drumheller to find dinosaurs - visiting the impressive Royal Tyrell Museum.
We then drove out to Canmore (one of my favourite towns) where we "camped" for a night. We were joined by our friends the Boehmes whom I discuss further below. (consisting of Tate, his wife Felisha and their son Khyrum.) Ewinka had never camped in her life before, and vanessa and Felisha were both rookies as well. It was a campsite located right on the edge of town so I wouldn't really classify it as camping by my definition. That night us men thought we would impress the women by giving these new campers a real camping meal - wieners and beans cooked over the fire. Needless to say they were not impressed.
First thing the next morning we found ourselves at McDonalds...they wouldn't trust what we might contrive for breakfast. Didn't help that the McDonalds was literally right next door to the campground. See what I mean about not classifying this as camping? Blasphemy! Although, giving them the comfort of being near town was an alright way to ease them into I suppose. No bears here I could easily assure Vanessa.
We had fun hiking up the beautiful grassy lakes hike in the nordic centre provincial park and swimming in the picture perfect quarry lake - one of our favourite places to spend time. Up in the grassy lakes at the top of the hike Tate and I decided to impress the ladies once again by attempting to swim in the small crystal clear pristine body of water. It was hot after all so it couldn't hurt to get cooled off. In we go! Lots of people were watching us as though we were crazy - I couldn't understand why. We didn't get ten feet out before the obnoxiously cold water caused us to completely seize up - we barely made it out alive!
From this trip I learned Maimai would become a true camper. You could tell she enjoyed being outside in the fresh mountain air even at three months old. Totally content strapped to daddy's chest while hiking and the way she slept so deeply that night in the tent made me happy to see! We all had fun, but by all accounts we didn't succeed in leaving the greatest impression upon our camping doubtful women - from the dinner, to forgetting most of our camping essentials such as flashlights and axes for cutting wood. I ended up heisting the neighbouring campers hatchet while he slept to cut our firewood, and we just went to the convenience store next door to buy flashlights. I guess camping in town has its benefits after all.
On our journey back to Niagara Falls we took a detour and went to visit the site of the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood and where Joseph Smith was baptized in Harmony Pennsylvania. The utter peace and serenity we felt in that place along the banks of the susquehanna river was overwhelming. Go there someday if you can, you will see what I mean.
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| Susquehanna River |
It was a magnificent vacation. The long and lovely drives were pleasant and filled with long conversations. Yes we tried to bite each others heads off at times, but maimai is always quick to interrupt any of that. It is quite amusing actually, the way she cuts us off. Have to grow those muscles right? Good times!
Back to the main story of this post - summer vacation 2012. In addition to all of what I was doing to get vanessa excited about the trip, my good friend Tate and I decided to collude on this camping trip and so we began our work trying to convince his equally caribbean comfort loving wife to come along also. After all this was going to be a REAL camping trip. No more in town next to McDonalds nonsense. Tate Boehme and I have been great friends for years. I introduced him to his wife Felisha whom I met while living out in the toronto area. She hails from Jamaica. So we both married caribbean honeys, a week apart. The craziest part of all this is that our first babies were born on the same day! Common, you couldn't plan that if you tried! Felisha was a week early and Vanessa a day late - their son Khyrum and our daughter Maïshaah were both born on April 17, 2010. Together they have been trouble ever since. Maimai made him cry a lot when they were babies, but on this trip the tides turned and like clockwork after they had been playing for a while you could count on Maimai breaking out in heartbroken, mortified tears as Khyrum whacked her, pinched her cheeks or threw something at her. Little lovers those two. They always have a lot of fun together. This trip they had a blast exploring in the forests, bug hunting, playing with shovels in the dirt, kicking balls around, riding their bikes, throwing rocks into the creek behind our site, trying to swim in every body of water they spotted, poking the fire and running wild where they could. One reason we planned the trip together was to give the kids a chance to play together since our families don't see each other to often because they live 5 hours south of us. Their newest son Keiston and our son Jovyn are only a couple months apart. While on the subject here are some photos of Maïshaah and Khyrum playing together during this recent camping trip. Details of the vacation will follow in part two.
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| Johnston Canyon Creek |
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| Lake Louise |
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| Moraine Lake |
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| Lake Minnewanka |
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