The Perfect Vacation

We've been on the road for 9 days now, and if it is possible for a vacation to be perfect, then that's what we have so far. Jan won money in Vegas, and we are still living on that. Utah was unbelievably beautiful, and I've posted pictures that kind of scratch the surface on that. It was our 3rd trip to Bryce Canyon, but our first to Zion, and we now understand what all the fuss is about. It's amazing how different they are, and beautiful in their own way. The night in Whitefish MT was great, tho we had such a long drive yesterday we wound up not going to Glacier. Also was hoping to see former students Janice and Brett, but they had parents weekend at, ironically my alma mater, Point Loma in San Diego. So I guess that means it wasn't perfect perfect.

Had one of those serendipitous moments yesterday on the way to our condo in Canada, that I thought I would share. We had been in Canada for about an hour, and were a little hungry, and the road we were taking didn't offer a lot of choices. We came down into a town called Canal Flats, which is very close to the Columbia River, and saw a restauarant called Fire Valley, so we stopped there. As I looked at the prices on the menu, I realized that since we were in Canada, I had no idea how much money we were spending! The waitress--there was only one to service the 8 or so tables--was in the middle of putting up Hallowe'en decorations, and seemed kind of put out to be interrupted. there were a couple of other groups, obviously locals, and they were chatting. We ordered, our meals were great, and as we were finishing up, 5 Dodge minivans pulled up, and people began piling out of all the doors, and it was obvious they were on their way in. The locals started laughing, and the waitress said, "Quick, lock the doors." The group piled in, and to add to the confusion, none of them were speaking English--or French. Turns out they were a group traveling together from Germany, and it was obvious their English was very limited. Since we were almost done, we just used the situation for entertainment!! (We did offer to help, but got a "no thanks"). For example, it took a couple of minutes for the waitress to get one guy to figure out she wanted him to choose between white and "brown" toast. There were about 25 in the party in all, and they filled every other table in the restaurant. One couple, obviously locals, walked in, surveyed the scene, and walked out. As we finally paid and left, she still hadn't gotten all their meals cooked and delivered.
Arrived at our resort, Fairmont Hot Springs at Riverside. It's a rather large timeshare development, with 3 golf courses on site. Our villa is very nice, 2 bedroom 2 bath, full kitchen, washer and dryer. Our front windows contain a breathtaking view of the Canadian Rockies, and out on our back porch is a river and one of the golf courses. We pretty much have done nothing in the day and a half we have been here, in fact I never left the villa today.
Tomorrow is driving range and maybe some golf. We will probably go to Banff and Lake Louise on Wednesday, especially after learning our water will be turned off all day. We'll also go through Canada's Glacier Park, which hopefully will make up for missing the one in Montana this time.
Still on tap a trip to Whistler to see their preps for the winter olympics (and Jeff told Jan to check out the place where Hell's Kitchen is being taped), then down the coast on a 2-week meander home.