I've received a few emails wondering where we have been. Have no fear, we are alive and well. We just lost our internet access during the past few days. After we were talked into staying in Jasper through the weekend, we celebrated Canada Day with the locals.

Blending in with the locals

We attended the flag-raising ceremony, complete with bagpipes and Mounties, then enjoyed the parade in the afternoon. Later, we went to our new favorite pub, the De'd Dog and had Long Islands. We met a young couple with whom we chatted for a while.
They worked as medics on the oil rigs in Alberta  and were sharing their stories about jumping off 60 foot cliffs into the Horseshoe Lake for recreation. After dark, which was around 11:20pm, we watched the fireworks.

Sunday morning we left Jasper and drove through British Columbia. The morning started out cold as we drove through past Mt. Robson where we tried to stop for breakfast, but the only cafe in the area was inundated with Korean tourists and the cafe wouldn't cook for anyone who wasn't on the tour bus. So, we motored on into a town called Valmount where we stumbled into the Canadian Inn, a somewhat rundown hotel with a restaurant. How badly can they screw up breakfast? The manager had to wait on us because he sent his only waitress home to take care of her child because her husband was too drunk from the Canada Day celebration. After breakfast, we continued on and it got warmer and warmer. By afternoon, it was 100 degrees. The wind on your face isn't cool at that point; it's just an annoying blast of hot air. We pulled into a town called Vernon and Monica pointed out a casino. "They usually have cheap rooms," she said. I was hot, miserable and beat after 375 miles and didn't care. Normally, the rooms were $99 a piece, but they had 2 unadvertised rooms for $60 because they overlooked the pool. I didn't care. Oh, and by the way, there was a baseball team staying at the hotel, but if they bothered us we were to just let the front desk know and the security would quiet them down. At midnight, the partying was pretty loud. There's always one guy who is the most drunk and the loudest who has to be right outside your door. Monica called the front desk. All I heard her say was, "No, I am not moving to a new room. It's 1am. You've got to be kidding!" More raucous. Earplugs are now in place. The phone rings. There is no security guard. Muffled conversation. Click. Phone rings again. The security guard is on his way. Meanwhile, I'm pretty much asleep with my earplugs in. The phone rings again. "Sir, please do not call here anymore,"

The next morning it was already hot when we left Vernon. We crossed the border back into the U.S. into Washington. The first thing we saw was a taco wagon. South of the border has a new meaning. It was sweltering hot. We stopped to cool off and have a drink. We saturated our t-shirts with cold water and put them back on and wore wet bandanas around our necks. They were bone dry within the hour. We had a nice, but heated, ride down SR 97 and visited the town of Chelan, where Monica once took a backpack trip and met her friend, John. We cooled off there with a mango chai and stared longingly at the lake. We continued on and settled in a town called Leavenworth that Monica discovered before we left home. It's a quaint town set up like a Bavarian village. We scored a nice hotel room at the Der Ritterhoff. We walked into town and the first thing we saw were what we thought were big horn sheep on the side of the road. We started taking pictures and were stunned to see them so close to town, after seeing them out in the mountains. "Wait a minute," Monica said, suspiciously. "These are pet goats! They're in a fenced area!" We felt like total morons photographing someone's goats. We moved on as if nothing happened and walked into the Baron Haus where we shared a pork schnitzel and a beer. The town was relatively quiet for being a holiday, but, we thought, that most of the activity must have happened over the weekend. During the night, we were awakened by a wicked thunderstorm and an absolute deluge of rain.

We decided to spend the 4th of July in Leavenworth and arranged a short kayak trip down the Icicle river. We rented inflatable kayaks and spent a nice afternoon paddling. The river was only a Class I and we both thought we could have had more of a challenge. Near the end of the trip, the sky grew dark and it started thundering. We made it back to the room before it started really raining.