Hello Everyone,

When we started our trip on July 28, our intention was to send nearly daily emails to our kids.  Soon others asked to be included, but they had missed earlier emails.  With this website we intend to reconstruct the earlier emails and then continue our communication via this website.
July 29, 2010
Hi,
We arrived in Iron Mountain, MI about 6pm.  Had a nice trip listening to Bill O'Reilly narrating his book Bold Fresh on audio CD.  Makes traveling pretty fast.

Love,
Jan

July 30, 2010

Hi,
We had a smooth and relaxing ride along highway US2 and finally arrived in Grand Forks, ND.  The weather was sunny and in the low 80's and no humidity.
Love,
Jan

July 31, 2010

Hi,
We made it to Glasgow, Montana again traveling on US 2.  US2 was a divided highway all the way through North Dakota.  We really didn't intend to go this far but the when we got information at the information center when we entered Montana, the lady told us to have plenty of gas in the car and not stop for the next 100 miles.  We were traveling through the Fort Peck Indian Reservation and the Indians were not friendly.  Can you imagine anyone saying that?  There wasn't much to see or do along Hwy 2 there and the speed limit was 70MPH on a two lane highway which was straight as an arrow and very little traffic.
Since we only have about 300 miles to go, we thought we had better have reservations for Saturday night.  There is not much around Glacier National Park.  We tried two Super 8s and a Comfort Inn and they were both filled which was fine because they were charging $179 a night.  We tried a few more and finally found a room at Mountain Front Lodge in Valier, Montana about 50 miles from the entrance of the park for about $70.
The interesting event along the whole trip was that we stood by a monument that was in the center of North America.
The temperature got up to 95 degrees.
Love,
Jan

August 3, 2010

Hello Everyone,

We are at Glacier National Park and have been unable to make internet connections!  (I am using my phone right now)  Anyway, we are leaving this morning for Canada and hopefully will be able to connect from there.

Everything is going well.

Don

August 4, 2010

Hi,
We arrived in Banf around 5pm today.  We haven't been able to get internet the last two days.
Sunday we planned to go to a "church" service at the campground in the Two Medicine entrance to Glacier Park at the southeast side of the park.  We were about 42 miles away and the service started at 8:30am.  We gave ourselves an hour and half to get there.  After two hours we finally arrived at the entrance of the park so we gave up on that idea.  Traveling in the mountains doesn't go as fast as we thought.  We hiked to a falls and then went to the northern entrance of the park at Many Glacier.  The scenery was beautiful.  We saw a grizzly bear roaming around across a ravine.  When we got to our motel, it was too early to get in our room so we decided to ride on the shuttle bus a while.  After about ten miles it started raining very hard so we stayed on the bus and went back with it.  By the time we got back to our motel, the bus was full of wet people. 
Monday morning the sun was shining and we decided to drive the road across the park instead of taking the shuttle bus.  Good decision.  The traffic moved slowly so it wasn't that scary.  They were repairing the road so we stopped several times long enough for us to get out of the car and take pictures.
Today we drove to Banf via Kootenay National Park.  Very relaxing and the scenery was fantastic.  We drove along a river and the Rocky Mountains were all around us.
Enjoy the pictures.
Jan

August 5, 2010

Hi,
We had a wonderful day again.  The weather couldn't be better.  Temperature low 70's.
We left Banff early and arrived at Lake Louise by 8:20am.  The parking lot had lots of cars in already.  The sun wasn't quite high enough to reach the lake.  The lake was almost smooth.  By 9am the scenery was almost perfect.  Wow!  We had a delicious breakfast buffet at the Chateau and by 10am there were ripples on the lake so we were there at a perfect time.  We left there and headed north towards Jasper.  We arrived in Jasper about 5pm.  The drive was only about 235 KMs.  We stopped lots of times to take pictures along the way.  We also saw a black bear today along side of the road.
Enjoy the pictures.  Please click on a picture to see a larger version.
Jan

August 7, 2010

Hi,
We arrived in Golden Thursday evening.  We were at a stand still for an hour.  They were resurfacing the road.  The weather was sunny but very hazy.
We arrived Penticton yesterday afternoon.  What a beautiful town.  We went to a concert in the park next to the beach.  Very nice.  50's music and even opera!  The unique thing in this town is their canal connecting two lakes.  You can go tubing in it.  What fun.  The temp. was 96 degrees.  It was very smokey because of the forest fires in British Columbia.  We could get another room for tonight so we decided to stay tonight also.
Looks like the smoke has gone away.
We are off to a parade now.  Click on the picture to see a larger version.
Jan and Don

August 8, 2010

Hi,
After the parade in Penticton, it started raining so we decided to drive to Chilliwack where we had reservations for Saturday and Sunday nights instead of staying another night in Penticton.  It was pretty busy too. 
We went to Cornerstone Christian Reformed Church this morning and the rest of the day we rested. 
Tomorrow we head north again and go on the "gold rush route".
Enjoy some more pictures of the river float.
Jan

August 9, 2010

Hi,
We are in Cache Creek tonight.  It rained all day so the mountains were not very visible.
We toured a museum about the gold rush days in Yale and we could pan for gold there.  We did this in the rain.  Don has his dark rain coat on.  We did find some small pieces of gold.  Very small.  It was kind of fun and we are hoping we can find some places to pan for gold tomorrow.
Chilliwack has a large Dutch immigrant population.  At some time a large family of Vanden Bosch's came over with 10 sons.  They have a large greenhouse business.
Jan

August 10, 2010

Hi,

Today we did some exploring.  There are several old towns that were established because of the gold rush.  We went from Cache Creek to Clinton, Clinton to Pavilion, Lillooet to Pemberton..  Clinton had some very old equipment in their museum and we found a German bakery in Lillooet.  Along the way our GPS directed us to go on a road that turned into a dirt road.  We had to go on that dirt road for 22 KMs.  Along the way we met some cattle that were walking on the dirt road.  In Lillooet someone was walking llamas along the road.

We are staying in Pemberton tonight.  The road from Lillooet and Pemberton was really beautiful but very curvy and we up and down a lot. Some of the grades were 12%! 


Jan

August 11, 2010

Hi,
We drove to Whistler this morning and intended to stay awhile but we only lasted less than a half an hour.  The town was full of mountain bikers so we left. 
We then drove to Vancouver and had some time to take a harbor boat ride.  The road to Vancouver was very scenic but curvy.  Nice for the passenger and not nice for the driver.
Jan

August 12, 2010

For August 12 and future entries, please click on "New Blog".   Thanks.