Oh Canada

At the beginning of August, we made the extremely long journey to Calgary, Alberta, Canada to celebrate Clarke's grandmother's 80th birthday. Grandma James is an amazing woman. There are not many people I would make this journey for, but she is one of them. When we pulled up in front of her house, our odometer read 1,600 miles (and that was just one way!).

The first full day we were there we went to the Calgary Zoo.

The next day we drove to Banff National Park. While there we stopped off at Lake Louise. This place is absolutely amazing. The views are almost unreal. The pictures do NOT do this place justice. No picture could. I kept telling Clarke it looked too good to be true. We walked the along one whole side of the lake and back (it isn't very large, just breath-taking!)

After Lake Louise, we drove to the town of Banff and hiked over to some waterfalls. Again, stunning!
Now here is where an explanation of the pictures is in order. Clarke and I are the BYU fans in the family. The rest of them are University of Utah fans (awful, I know). We think that every time we are together, they purposefully wear Utah junk, as demonstrated in the picture below. Well, Banff and Lake Louise are just too beautiful to be tarnished by these ugly red shirts.

SO......

We did a little doctoring.

(we are definitely amateurs with much room for improvement, but anything beats a beautiful picture with this awful "U" staring at you in the face)

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Much better! Now that is something I would put in my scrapbook
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Now look at that view! Absolutely perfect!

We were there for another two fun-filled days spent celebrating Grandma's birthday and touring Calgary (maybe for another post). We had an amazing time. Getting there and getting home, not so amazing. But, we survived and we are so happy we went.

As we pulled into our driveway at home, the odometer read 3,478 miles. Now that's a road trip!

(we have started a little war with the in-laws, but I won't post the photo-shopped pictures they came up with) We love you, even though you are U of U fans!