On Vacation...

Well, I've been on vacation for the past week and it's been somewhat relaxing. I decided to take my car on a roadtrip with my girlfriend... a long road trip. I started in Burnaby, BC and drove to Banff, AB the first night and stayed at a hotel there that a friend of mine works at. She got us the staff rate on the room which was great as Banff can be really expensive. We drove around town a bit and then drove back out towards Lake Louise and Moraine Lake which was absolutely beautiful. I hiked around a good part of the lake and even went as far as swimming.. some of the Japanese tourists there thought I was a bit nuts and proceeded to take photos of me as the lake temperature was only about 5C. I wish I could have spent more time there. I must admit, I like the mountains around Banff than the ones around Vancouver. They seem more jagged and have more character to them. The ones we have are kind of rounded and don't seem as spectacular for some reason.

Then we met up with a friend of my girlfriend and her husband in Calgary for coffee. That was pretty fun and it was the first time that I met them. They seemed really nice and hopefully we can get together with them soon. We then started to drive across the prairies... a little bit outside of Calgary, we hit a massive hailstorm... it was kind of frightening actually since it came out of nowhere. Hailstones the size of ping pong balls were pelting my car and I was afraid they were going to smash my windshield. Fortunately, nothing bad happened and the hailstorm dissapated as quickly as it appeared. We drove several more hours and stayed the night in Swift Current, SK at a hotel. There wasn't much to see there so we continued on our way the next morning.

We stopped briefly in Regina to have a quick look around and take a few photos of local landmarks like the legislative buildings and the saskatchewan river which was fairly nice. It was very windy there that day but otherwise not unpleasant. We continued east and managed to make it to Winnipeg late that night. I was able to hook up with some old friends of mine who moved to Winnipeg recently. We stayed at their place and hung out with them for a bit which was great since I hadn't seen them for a long time. I really enjoyed that and I think they did too. I stayed in Winnipeg for 2 days to recharge my batteries and then continued east and made it to Thunder Bay 2 days ago (Wednesday). I've been here since. I was originally planning on driving all the way to Ottawa but my girlfriend managed to talk me out of it and instead, she wants me to stay in Thunder Bay and relax while she flies from here to Ottawa to spend time with her family. I'm not sure why I agreed to this. She says that I'm too overtired from driving but I still think I could handle it. In any case, the plan as it stands now is that she's going to be in Ottawa for the rest of the week and then I'm going to stay here. She's going to fly back to Thunder Bay next Friday and then we'll drive south into the US and visit with an old friend in Chicago for a few days (one that I haven't seen since 1998). At that point, we'll drive back to BC through the states which is something I haven't done before. I have to admit that I am a bit disapppointed as to how things have gone so far. I wish I could have driven to Ottawa but I know that my girlfriend wouldn't have been satisfied with that. Anyways, I guess I'll just relax here for the next week and see how things go....
I'll keep up to date on new developments as they happen.