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Ain’t No Mountain High Enough…

Connie, Dougie No Comments

Happy Father’s Day! What a fantastic day we had!! We both got up early and decided to go for a hike. Not just any hike though, we were going to climb a mountain. We had tried a day earlier but after a few wrong turns, we decided we would shelve the trip and try again today.

The hike started off pretty steep. We were both a bit concerned but, fortunately, it would level occasionally to give us a little break. We both were carrying kids at the beginning but after the first big climb, Dougie decided he wanted to walk. Scott was thrilled though having a toddler climb a mountain did slow us down a lot.

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Dougie took one of my walking sticks and he really enjoyed the hike.

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One of the unfortunate things about this hike was that there were only a few opportunities for a great view until we were well up the train. Here was the first fantastic view we saw.

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Dougie was in and out of the backpack carrier as we went up. He did surprisingly well in it.

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Dougie did most of this very long very steep section of switchbacks on his own. We couldn’t believe what a trooper he was!

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Dougie and Scott as they broke through the tree line

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Kim and Connie stop to find a geocache en route

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Dougie was taking a lot of breaks by this point. He’d go 10-15 feet and then just sit down.

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Almost there…

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Making a final assault on the summit

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More resting

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LOOK, snow!

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Scott and Dougie finishing the climb to the summit

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Success!

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Scott and the kids at the summit cairn

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Moments before this, Connie tried to eat a rock. Scott thought it was funny she was trying to eat the mountain and tried to get a picture.

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Kim goes off to find the summit cache.

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The hike down seemed almost worse than the hike up. Partially because we were already tired, partially because it was a very different muscle group being used and partially because there is no option to turn back at that point – you must go down.

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It was a very different Father’s Day and won’t likely be a tradition but we were thrilled to do it and are excited to climb our next mountain!

Prairie Mountain

Mother’s Day Out with Thomas

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I’ve often heard that when you’re a parent, your children’s happinesses are your happinesses. If that’s true, this would be the happiest day ever.

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Today, we went to see Thomas. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Thomas, he is a stream train and Dougie loves him.

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We had a ride on the first train out in the morning. We thought to grab a few pictures with Thomas while Scott and Connie held our place in line. Since I didn’t have anyone helping me with him, the engineer sat with Dougie.

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After we did the “formal” pictures, the engineer took Dougie over to see Thomas better.

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The train ride did three laps of the park. It only took about 20 minutes. From there, we got to enjoy the park and the various Thomas areas they had configured. Dougie found the train tables pretty quickly and started to play with those (you’d think we didn’t already have one at home).

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After a while, Sir Topham Hatt arrived to take pictures. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Thomas, Sir Topham Hatt is the controller of the railway.

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After listening to a story, watching a video and spending a bit of time walking around the park we headed out. Dougie had the time of his life!

It was Mummy’s time after our fun morning. We all piled into the car and drove to Canmore to do some geocaching along the river. It was a bit of a mixed day, sunny, snowing, warm, cold – we had a fabulous time and a nice walk with a great view.

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Happy Mother’s Day to all the mother’s in our lives. We hope you had a magical day as well.