Fantastic Day

Today was the best day I have had in a very long time. Megs and I spent the whole day together, driving, hiking, talking, eating, planning and scheming for ways to make the rest of the summer this fantastic. We drove the Highwood Pass - the highest drivable pass in Canada. You can see the summit sign here.

So, just to prove how fantastic it was (in case you don't see me before my "you missed some spots" sunburn fades), let me give you some pictures, and some commentary to go with the pictures.

This is us at the Esso station in Longview. We picked up some of the famous Longview Beef Jerky, and headed up into the pass from there.






This is Megs, by the sign for Pickle Jar creek. We're collecting funny signs this summer.








This is Ptarmigan Cirque.


















Here you have Megs sampling some of the ice cold mountain water, and a couple of the nicer scenery shots we took.

As we drove back to the city, we began scheming and came up with a list of ten or so things that we're going to do together (and with other friends if they'd like to join us) over the next three months. We're going to document each thing with pictures or journal entries, or both, and put together a scapbook of our summer. We've already started on the pages for today.

It was such a blessing and refreshment to spend this day in the the mountains with one of my closest friends. We talked about God and church last night, and life and boys, and food, and plans for the future. We schemed and planned fun for the rest of the summer, talked about bikinis, and even went shopping for bathings suits (she found one, I didn't yet...)

But we mostly just hung out, listened to each other, shared life, the things God is showing us, the things we want to learn and understand about Him, and enjoyed the freedom from distraction, the fresh air, the beauty of one of my favorite parts of the mountains, and the chance to simply be together. We got lost, at ice cream at a mountain store, ate beef jerky, ate a lot of apples and carrots, drank water from a mountain stream, listened to at least 5 different cds, saw a black bear, and a whole lot of big horned sheep, nearly swerved into oncoming traffic to avoid hitting a gopher (her not me), hiked a six kilometer loop that climbed the mountain to the beautiful meadow and cirque and then wound its way back down, shopped for supplies for our scrapbook, learned how to upload photos from her camera to my computer and how to print photos from her memory card at Walmart, got sunburned, had Subway for dinner, went bathing suit shopping and so on. And the whole time we just caught up on each others lives, talked about the things we struggle with, and the things we're loving right now, caught up on each other's families and mutual friends. We had no time restraints, nothing to be back for, no schedule, and we loved every minute of it.

Praise God for the blessing of a beautiful day spent with friends!