The Great Stamp Capade and the Beauty of Banff!

Oh what a beautiful morning! We all got a great nights rest and are ready to head to the beauty of Banff. There's snow at the tops of the mountains, but the roads seem to be nice and clear. Just as we get out of Calgary and start heading towards the mountains, we pass a gas station on the right with just a few vehicles, but a rather large bus that is just joining the highway. As we breeze past it, I look out the window and am dumbstruck as I realize that it's Gene Simmons (KISS) Family Jewels tour bus for his A&E show. So silly that I was so excited to see it, but I was.

For 2 days now, the "Hutch and Beau Show" have been on a hunt for Canadian stamps. Now you wouldn't expect this to be a very difficult thing to come across, but let me tell you, they were. Stamps could not be found at our hotel in Calgary, the gas station in Calgary, the gas station in Banff, some little store that we randomly stopped at in Banff, a store called Mac's in Banff that Beau was sent to by the people in the before mentioned random store, but hallelujah, success at the local Safeway. Now we can get back on the main road and continue covering miles for the day.

Jensen keeps repeating over and over again that he wants to stop and play in the snow. We keep telling him that as soon as we stop for lunch, he can play in the snow. Not more than 20 min. on the road and Jensen is complaining that he has to go potty and can't hold it. Luckily, there is a rest stop right up the road and we pull over. As soon as Jensen is done peeing, we tell him to go play in th snow while we wait for anyone else who is taking advantage of this stop. After, literally a few seconds of standing in the snow, Jensen starts whining that there is now snow on his shoes. If only he knew what his mom and dad had in store for his new life in Alaska!

We decide to have lunch at the Chateau at Lake Louise. Fancy would be an understatement and after trapping kids in the car for 5 straight days, when we stop, that tends to be their rowdy time. They managed to control themselves pretty well though and we had a very nice lunch with a great view. We spent a bit longer goofing around than we normally do, but thought nothing of it, as we had had such easy traveling so far. Also, at the visitors pull off before you get to the Chateau, what do we see, but the Gene Simmon's bus. Yes, I took a picture of it this time, but I have no idea if he was really on it or not. Doesn't really matter, I still thought it was awesome!

I must fill you in with a bit of history now. Before this trip even started, there was much debate about the way that we should go. Pretty much, all of the men wanted to go through the mountains of Banff (because they know of people with this destination on their bucket lists). I on the other hand, said that we would have to wait until we got to Canada to see what the weather and road conditions were at the time. Going through Banff means that you're in the mountains the entire leg of the trip, or we could go on the highway to Edmonton. Not as scenic, true, but a nice, clear highway where you can do 75 mph. Last night at dinner, I vetoed the Banff idea, as I just didn't think that it seemed the obvious choice. For some reason, I let the men convince me that they had spoken with several people and checked websites that said that the roads through Banff were clear and good. Supposedly, there was snow and ice on the shoulder's, but the roads were clear. Back to the present, the roads were all clear through Banff and Lake Louise. After lunch, we all load up ready to make some tracks. After about 5 min. of driving, we need to exit to start heading north to get out of the park and to our final destination in Hinton for the night. It's about 100 miles just to get out of the park. Just after the exit, we turn a bend that has a sign with flashing lights. The sign warns of road conditions: good, fair, poor and closed with a gate to put down for when the road is completely closed. Well don't ya know that the lights are flashing on poor and the road ahead of us in now COVERED in snow and ice. So much for trusting the websites that said all roads were clear! The worst part is, we are now so far into the park, that realistically because of time, we have no choice but to continue on this road. So instead of being on a nice, clear highway going 75, we are on snow and ice packed mountain roads going no more than 45. Let it be known now that his will be the last decision made by John and the "Hutch and Beau Show!" The good news, the snow tires are finally coming in handy and because of the roads being bumpy, Molly and Jensen both fell asleep for 3 hours of this part of the journey!

In all honesty, the roads turned out to be not that terribly bad, but we did suffer our first casualty when a truck through up what could only be considered a small boulder, and took a huge chunk out of the front windshield. Then not long after we turned onto the main road after making it through the mountains, we were behind another truck and something fell off of the bed of his truck right in front of us. I don't know if it was a battery or some sort of work box or what, but it bounced and shattered right in front of us. Luckily, we didn't really suffer any collateral damage from that, but I have yet to figure out how we missed all of the flying pieces! John is now "relaxing" with Molly in the pool (they even have a waterslide) and Jensen and I are chilling in the room about to get ready for bed. It's been a day full of the most beautiful scenery and the most amazingly huge mountains that I have ever seen and I can only look forward to what tomorrow holds. Goodnight from Canada!