Home from my fun road trip!

I’m back from a great week-long road trip with my gal pal. She turned 40 this last week and this is how we chose to mark the milestone.

We set out with a loose plan of making our way to Calgary to visit another friend of hers, stopping along the way to check out some wineries and hot springs. We were traveling in her parents camper thinking we would be ready for anything but we only slept in it twice the whole trip. Once just randomly on a side street and at her friends place in Calgary who already had company in the spare room and living room.

We took a couple little ferry’s during our trip too…fun & so beautiful!

Check out our cool ride! The scenery was breath taking.

We spent a couple nights at Halcyon Hot Springs in a posh cabin:

Hmmm, camper or cabin? I’ve made my choice…

We ended up doing quite a few hot springs: Halcyon, Radium, Upper Banff, Fairmont and Ainsworth. I loved how fancy Halcyon was but my favorite was Ainsworth with it’s very cool cave! It was hard to get pics inside the steamy cave but I managed a couple:

Hot n’ steamy inside the cave at Ainsworth Hot Springs.

Here’s a better shot of the actual cave with therapeutic hot springs water pouring in. It was VERY atmospheric.

Spending hours on the road talking to my friend about everything under the sun was wonderful. We stopped when we were hungry and ate at quaint diners. We got junk food when we stopped for gas. We ate tons of cherries, strawberries and peas from road side farmers markets. We stayed in some nice places and not-so-nice-places. We saw a lot of wild life along the way: bears, deer, elk, etc.

The time at her friends place in Calgary was interesting. A small horse ranch in the middle of no where. The kind of home with needlepoint pictures of horses on the wall and lots of nic nacs like toll-painted cats. I knew the other visiting friends were going to be interesting when I noticed the tattoos on his arms: a marijuana leaf, an eagle and a winged unicorn…and she started talking about the end of the world on Dec 21. All very down to earth friendly people who reminded me of my family in Nova Scotia. Rural people tend to be very different from city people and although I prefer the city, it was a good reminder of my roots to spend time with them.

The trip was fairly tame. We didn’t end up hitting too many wineries or partying very much so we decided we should go out with a bang on the last night. We got a room next to the most happening bar in the small town of Osoyoos. We sat at the bar drinking and waiting for it to get busy but even at its peak there was probably no more than 40 people, most under 30. I was approached by a boy who said his friend had a crush on me but was too shy to come up to me. I asked how old he was, they were both only 21! I explained that I’m 36 but he didn’t care. We spent the last hour of the night sitting with a table of 21 year olds, dancing and chatting. It was flattering, but it felt a bit silly.

They were very sweet but I didn’t go home with any of them. The one who liked me seemed more interested in dating me than having a one-nighter (he actually lives closer to Vancouver, they were tourists in Osoyoos too.) I wasn’t really interested in either….again, it was flattering but it felt a bit silly.

Speaking of silly…here’s a hand full of funny pics I took along the way: