Best Vacation Ever - Part Quattro

Late afternoon on Wednesday, we got back on the ferry and headed back to the mainland. Hayley had definitely had enough driving by this point and I had to get a picture of her "get-me-out-of-this-car-now" face (...don't worry, I'm not pulling a Britney, we were stopped waiting for the ferry).


After the ferry ride, we headed to Langley to spend the night there at a hotel, and drove to Merritt early the next morning.

In Merritt we camped at Nicola Lake for the Whidden Family Reunion. This was my first time meeting most of them, and it was so fun for me to finally put faces to names. There were over 50 people in attendance and we swam, boated, fished, and visited for three days straight.


The kids had fun on the beach, building sand castles with Papa. Ben, Andrea and family came up from Utah, too. We didn't even know they were coming so it was such a fun surprise to see them pull up at the reunion. Carter had SO much fun with Livvy and Cooper. He and Liv were pretty much inseparable.





By the last day, Hayley finally feel asleep somewhere other than her bed or carseat. There were so many strollers under the trees, filled with sleeping babies. They were all so exhausted. This is a pic of her and Rowan (her second cousin who is 3 weeks older) sleeping in the stroller.

On Saturday, we packed up and headed home around 3 pm. In Valemount, we stopped at this salmon watch area and saw some salmon spawning, It was really cool too see such huge fish in a shallow little stream. We got to Hinton around 11pm to try and find some hotel.

I realized that the days of just driving around and finding a cheap hotel are long gone (all our other hotels, we booked on the internet before we left). We found one but I'm not sure if it could actually classify as a hotel. It was seriously so rundown and gross. The bathroom had towels hanging over the windows as curtains and there were so many random things left there, we wondered if it had even been cleaned. A juice box, the office's cordless phone, etc. So weird...I was so paranoid, I didn't even sleep under the covers that night. Eww...

Anyways, we were very excited to finally get home the next day. I think the kids really enjoyed sleeping in their OWN beds for the first time in awhile. We have been gone so much this summer that even our "sink-in-the-middle" old bed felt great.

Well, that wraps up our crazy month o' travel. It's so nice to be home, but at the same time, I'm sad the summer's over. We've had such a busy summer - it went by way too fast. We had so much fun and I am so glad we were able to do so many things. It's raining here today and I realized that winter is going to be here in a month or two (Nooooo!). We live in Edmonton, remember?


Boo.

* This isn't our house, but it's a pretty good depiction of Edmonton winters. I just searched for it on Google. The funny part is this picture originates from a real estate website. Yea. Cuz that's a great selling point.