Two weeks in one, because I was away for a wedding and photos with Jordon’s family during the time I would normally edit and upload photos.

We used to make the drive from B.C. to Alberta in one day. That sucks. Now no matter how crunched for time we are we split the drive in two. This time we stayed at this fantastic little B&B which I would have loved to get more photos of, but decent indoor photography is hard and it gets so much harder when you own black dogs. I just can’t imagine hauling a lighting kit around for this sort of thing though.

Splitting the trip into two days allows us to exercise the dogs. Which is basically a necessity with a 7.5-month old puppy who I’m not entirely convinced isn’t snorting cocaine when I’m not looking.

This trip meant Roe had a lot of training that bordered on flooding, which is far from my favourite way to train. His first experience directly around children was lots of screaming, running around, and loud toys. I basically just huddled on the side and stuffed food into his mouth. He handled it like a champ though, and when things seemed to be getting overwhelming we hid in the bedroom. Which… May have been more for me than the dogs. I’m not good with kids. When one of them fell down in front of me I instinctively reached for my bait bag filled with dried beef lung, then realized that doesn’t work for children.

I love having these super secure harnesses whenever we’re in an unfamilar area. During the trip out, for whatever reason, Roe spooked going into the B&B and tried to back out of his regular harness. Because we were in a fenced area, instead of rushing to grab him I decided to hold out and see if he could back out of his harness. Better to test it in a secure area than find out later in an unsecured area. He did, and took off for a run around the yard. He wore the Webmaster for every walk for the rest of the trip.

We didn’t do any big, exciting hikes. But honestly the little 1 kilometer excursions can be just as nice.

This Dipper was making a huge racket, following this other Dipper around shrieking at her and bobbing up and down. I thought it was a male courting a female, but after getting home and reading about them I think it’s actually a fledgling screaming to be fed. Based on how it was getting ignored by the other bird, I think it’s reaching an age where it’s going to need to feed itself.

Roe got to see his first big river. He has since become obsessed with rivers. Whenever we’re walking, the moment he hears rushing water he wants to go check it out. My bucket list actually includes canoeing or rafting one of these rivers. Not through rapids or anything, just a big mountain river.

On the way back we stayed at a place within walking distance to a large lake, so that’s where we took the dogs for their evening excursion. Jordon asked if he could take some photos of the dogs and I on one of the docks.

The lake was filled with dragonflies and Roe really, really wanted to catch one. You can kind of see one in the upper left of this photo. It kind of looks like a helicopter in the distance.

He’s been about to outgrow his old Webmaster harness for a while now. Thankfully he hadn’t because the website I was going to order from didn’t have the blue harness in stock in his size. When we left I could still buckle his old one, but at some point during the trip it just got too snug for him to wear it comfortably. Luckily we were able to pick up a new one on the way home.

The lake’s beach had patches of (what I think is) wild mint growing, which was really neat.

Road trips are fun, but exhausting. One of these days I’d like to spend more than one night up in the mountains so we can explore some longer trails.