Weekend in the Bay Area

Hey everyone!

This past weekend we were lucky enough to be invited to Chase's cousin Adeline's wedding at the Oakland temple. We stayed with his Oma and Opa (grandparents) on Friday night. We took his Opa to Adeline and Matt's sealing at the temple on Saturday. We took a lot of pictures, but we didn't get a lot of pictures taken of us, so here is a beautiful picture of the Oakland temple that Chase took. After the sealing, we went to good old In-N-Out for some yummy cheeseburgers with Chase's mom, dad, Sam, and Opa. That night there was a huge party at Chase's aunt Karen's house. We tried to help out with the madness and it turned out beautiful!

The next day we went to Santa Cruz to look at the tide pools along the beach. We went to the Natural Bridge State Park and peeked into the tide pools that we found in the rocks. We found crabs, clams, mussels, small fish, and two starfish. It was very pretty that day, but we went to the tide pools just before the tide came in, so we could not spend a lot of time by them because of the tide coming in.
This was one of my favorite pictures from the beach, it is of Judy, Chase's mom. Chase and I both wore flip-flops the entire time at the beach and forgot to put on sunscreen. Poor Chase had bright red feet and blisters, but I only ended up with a burn.
On the way back to Fresno, we went through Mount Madonna pass, which is just above Watsonville (where they grow raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries). We were supposed to meet Chase's mom and Natalie with her family at the top of Mount Madonna in the little state park at the top, but they took the wrong road, so it was Chase, Sam, Chuck, and I at the top. We stopped at the little state park where we were surprised by the dense redwood and eucalyptus forest. The men played frisbee golf while I took pictures. These are clover leaves that are almost as big as my hand.
There were tons of four foot high foxglove all around the road.
The men were trying to not throw their frisbees too far into the forest because of this plant. Poison Oak. Chase swears that when he walks by this plant his skin starts to tingle because he got it all over his body a couple of years ago. Notice the shiny leaves of three!

Chase's Graduation

I forgot to put in my favorite picture from Chase's graduation!

Our Beautiful Calgary

I have to warn you, this is a long post. It is all about our recent trip to Calgary for Chase's graduation from University of Calgary. It is basically our trip through photos (and captions).

Our very first day (we landed at 3 in Calgary), we went to the school to see all of Chase's friends, and then we went to the Market mall to buy me a brand new Lulu Lemon jacket. Many of you in the US don't know what a Lulu Lemon is, but it is an incredibly soft jacket that I love (it is really expensive though so I used birthday money to get it). We then went for a walk next to the Bow river and watched some trains. The sun didn't set until 10:00 and this picture was taken around 9 at night.

On Thursday, or our second day in Canada, we headed up to the mountains! We wanted to see new things, but we ended up hiking in an area in the Spray Lakes Wilderness that we had gone to before. We tried to hike to the Haig glacier, but the snow was still waist deep and it started to rain, so we turned back. This is a picture of Mt. Sir Douglas, one of the Rockies eleven thousanders. We managed to see three bald eagles on this day around a small lake and in a marsh. We also saw an osprey.

That night we stayed in Canmore in a hotel that felt like the rooms were individual cabins. It was kind of small and had a giant spider behind the toilet, but Chase liked the cabin theme.

On Friday, we decided to see Moraine Lake and Lake Louise again. They are large lakes that are usually tourist traps, but since it was the beginning of June, cold, and the Lakes were still half frozen, there were not a lot of people at them. As we walked around Moraine Lake, Chase noticed an avalanche coming off of Faye Glacier on the other side of the lake. Mount Faye is one of ten peaks that surround Moraine Lake.

This is a picture of Moraine Lake from the top of the Rockpile that stands at the foot of the lake.Next we went to Lake Louise, where we walked around the lake around because none of the trails that are near the lake were dry enough for us to hike. This is a picture of the ice on the lake pushing onto the rocks on the shore. The ice looked like glass straws fanned out on the rocks. Some of the tourists picked up a straw and ate it. It made me sick because there was clearly algae in the lake and even some on the ice next to the ice straws. I think they all ended up with Montezuma's revenge.

Our last day in the mountains was Saturday. We met our friend Aden Hirtle in Banff (where we had stayed for the night) and went to Kootenay National Park, which is actually in British Colombia. It is about an hour away from Banff. We took Aden to Marble Canyon, which is a thin limestone canyon that is 150 meters deep and cut by water. At the end of the hike around the canyon, there is a roaring waterfall, which Aden loved. After the Canyon, we hiked to Stanley glacier, which is seen at the top of the mountains in the picture above. The trail was dry until about a kilometer and a half to this point where it turned muddy and eventually snowy. We had to find the trail through an avalanche path, and stopped next to a big boulder, which was not anywhere close to the end of the trail. Seen in the picture above was our friend Aden coming back to where we are sitting on a boulder after he climbed the gigantic boulder in the background. It was at least four times as tall as he is and he shimmied right up it. We saw two avalanches on the cliffs, and followed the hard snow pack out of the glacial cirque. This was one of my favorite hikes of the trip.

Sunday we went to church with our friends and relaxed. Chase's graduation was on Monday. We picked up our previous landlady and went to lunch with her. The graduation was next and 650 people graduated in the engineering department. Trudy (our landlady) and I sat on the wrong side of the gym and poor Chase could not find us until the end of the ceremony. After our farewell barbeque at a friends house on Monday night, and two stops at 7-11 for penny candy we cannot find in the states on Tuesday morning, we flew home to good old Fresno.

Sneak Peak

Since we do not have the camera with the Calgary pictures on it with us, here is a look at one of the places that we re-visited on our trip this past week.

Starting Up

I have been thinking about starting one of these for awhile. We used to do a weekly-ish letter to friends and family while living in Canada, but we have not been successful at it since we moved back. This will be mostly a record of our travels and my thoughts, mostly a journal for us to have to show future generations. Hopefully, everyone will be patient with me during this experience.