Fruit Rosary

To celebrate Our Lady of the Rosary today, we put together a fruit Rosary. Celebrating with food always goes over well--especially with a bunch of kids! I'm sure if I had planned better, I could have thought of lots of food variations to make a Rosary, but this is what we had around today. Mmmm...prayers never tasted so good!

53 grapes (Hail Marys)
6 strawberries (Our Fathers)
2 small celery sticks (cross)
some pretzels (corpus & Hail Holy Queen)
peanut butter (glue)

Assemble into the form of a Rosary, and say the prayers as you eat it!

[Today is also the 21st anniversary of my brother Mike's death. So, October 7th is very dear to my heart.]

Texas Parks & Wildlife Expo

Our kids always look forward to October when they get to see some wildlife at the Expo.

It's not every day they get to handle a shark...
or see a bald eagle up close...
or feel the sliminess of a spotted moray eel.
Eeek!

They even got to play with a fire hose to put out a "fire."
Round 'em up kids!

The Amazing Blazing Bows!

Yee haw, it was the kids' first violin performance--ever! Well, I guess I should call it a fiddle performance (besides a couple of classical selections). Before our long vacation last month, we were told that we'd have a performance the first Saturday we return. We didn't realize that it was at such a big event here in town--at the Austin Family Music Festival!Our kids all did well...considering they just learned all the songs last week after we returned from our vacation! While Jimmer sat out a couple of feature songs, he twisted and contorted his fingers with another little boy in the group. It was a nice shady stage, and they got some special treatment along the way. We got picked up in a golf cart to give us a ride to the stage. This is when I told the driver that the last time any of us were in a golf cart, it rolled over. He assured us we wouldn't roll, and we didn't! As a bonus, we got to hear lots of other performers at the festival. Kelly Willis and her husband, Bruce Robison were one of the bigger bands there. They are well-known country musicians in this area. They were kind enough after the performance to let us get a picture of them with our kids--after our kids' first official violin performance! The Biscuit Brothers (kids' musicians) were also a headliner there. The kids' just loved some of their silly music!

A video clip of their performance--playingJoe Turner Blues.

Happy Trails...as we head home

We were pretty sad that our trip was ending. We enjoyed Canada's fall colors that we will not see for a long time in Texas.
We'll miss waking up to this scene in our campgrounds. And the smells--the cool crisp air with the burning wood. The best!
We'll miss all the trees (pine, birch and aspens) that we don't have back home. And the sounds of the wind blowing through the tops of the pine trees will not be forgotten!
We didn't think it could happen, but we really were able to fit all of our luggage and people in the minivan after we returned the RV! There were 8 duffle bags, 7 back packs, 3 large boxes, and miscellaneous "stuff" that we packed in just about every nook and cranny.
The van was ridin' pretty low with everyone and everything in it!
Back on the plane...
...back to reality!Ah, home!

Glacier National Park (Montana)

Since our RV was too long, we rented a minivan to go up Going to the Sun Highway to Clements Mountain through Logan Pass.

We took a 3-mile hike through slush and snow to see Hidden Lake. Since we normally don't see much snow here in Texas, our kids had to spend a little time messing around. Then Joe mentioned, "Hey, kids! We haven't played in the snow since...JUNE!" That was during our trip to Colorado. For Texans, our kids have played in a lot of snow!

Then it started. Kathleen may now regret that she sent this first snowball Jimmer's way...
...because it came right back to her
again...
and again...
...until she had to do something to stop it.
Tackling him took care of it--for a few minutes anyway!
Hidden Lake
Here's a "Where's Bighorn?" picture. (Click on the photo to enlarge.)Can you find the bighorn sheep somewhere in this picture?

Meeting up with bears seemed so theoretical...until they crossed our hiking path!

While we were still in Waterton National Park, we hiked in Red Rock Canyon to Blakiston Falls.

Doesn't this look like a place where bears would be looking around for berries before they hibernate for the winter?
Oooh, sure enough! There were two black bears on our path! Don't worry--Joe wasn't holding hands with one of them (see above picture). That's just Jimmer wearing his black lumberjack hat!

We were coming back from our hike from the falls when Kathleen and I spotted a black bear about 50 feet ahead of us. We swiftly turned around to meet the rest of our family on the path. I didn’t have the presence of mind to take a picture of it as it stood there looking at us, probably just as surprised as we were! So, after we stepped back another 50 ft or so, I took this picture as it was heading off the hiking trail.As is turns out, the two black bears were a momma bear and cub. They were in no hurry (and thankfully more interested in finding berries), so we had to wait on the path and visit and make a little noise until they decided to move back into the woods. Since we were quite aware that bears can run faster than we can (180 ft. in 3 seconds = ~40 mph), we thanked our lucky stars for our good fortune that they took no interest in us. (The fastest race horses go around 45 mph, so these bears are not far behind!)

After our encounter, we met up with a park ranger and asked if he had many bear encounters.Of course he had come across plenty of bears, but even though he carried a rifle and pistol, he said the most effective protection against bears was his big canister of pepper spray. You have to be an excellent shot to stop a bear with a gun, but his pepper spray (or to be more accurate--pepper fogger) can stop a bear in his tracks. His bear pepper spray is not to be confused with the regular police concentration of pepper spray. The ranger said that regular police carry 9% concentration in a canister about the size of a travel-size hair spray, and park rangers in bear country carry 25% pepper spray in a canister the size of a small fire extinguisher! The next day when we headed into Glacier National Park (Canada side), we spotted a grizzly bear crossing our path. At least we were in our camper at the time!

As the saying goes about black bears being able to climb trees, but grizzlies can't...A black bear will chase you up a tree, and a grizzly will shake you out!

Ha, ha, ha.....ha, ha...ha!

Just a warning about Waterton--it is very windy!Mikey and Kathleen getting blown around on the beach in the morning when the wind was "calm". (I believe it takes at least a 20 mph wind to create white cap waves. These are not-so-small white caps.)

It is especially windy at night in the campground right by the lake. It was so noisy and windy, we had to sleep with the slide-out IN. In the morning, I was not surprised to see that the trees near the lake were growing at a good slant--in the direction of the wind!

St. Mary's Lake on our way out of Waterton.
Since none of us slept very well that night, we had some of this going on again in the RV the next day--on our way to Glacier National Park in Montana.

Waterton National Park

We drove through Bison Park in Waterton National Park--still in Canada--that had two bison! Here they are as the kids gauked out our RV windows!
At the Waterton visitor center we met Bruce Nelson, who had walked from Mexico and would cross the border into Canada that day (5 months, 3,100 miles, 6 pairs of shoes). He is from Rush City, MN.
We went to Waterton, stopped at the hotel (Prince of Wales Hotel), took pictures from the very windy cliff.