British Columbia

Maybe you knew, and maybe you didn't, but I was on Spring Break the last week of March. 

Because I didn't have school, I got a lot of homework done (I really didn't think I would! I'm proud of myself) and some projects accomplished around the house. 

We also had some fun. 

Carson had Friday off, so we decided to take a day trip to Canada. He picked a town that's about three hours north of where we live (we're about two hours from the Canadian border) and we decided to head up there just because. Plus, I got my new passport in the mail just a few weeks ago, so we realized that it was in our best interest to put it to use! 

We started off with breakfast in town, at Shari's. Carson had stuffed hash browns, scrambled eggs, chicken fried steak and french toast. 

I had pancakes, hash browns, a scrambled egg and bacon. I gave everything else on my plate to Carson. It was a HUGE meal and I decided that having breakfast for dinner tastes better. 

Then we pulled the atlas out. To show you where we went, I put an "A" for Spokane and a "B" for Nelson. 

Driving.

I think we were stopped at a stop sign. 

They don't let you smile in passport pictures anymore. Carson looks like a serial killer and I appear to have two black eyes.

We stopped at this dam on the way...

We couldn't both fit...

Yay Canada! 

I didn't take a picture at the border because I'm not sure how they feel about that. They asked us lots of questions about why we were there and what we were doing. Even though we had nothing to hide, I felt SO nervous. 

As soon as we drove into Canada, our car's speedometer decided to work. For some reason, it works on occasion. Our car was made in Canada and so the speedometer is in kilometers, not miles per hour... anyway, the whole time we were there, the speedometer worked. We kept talking about how happy it was to be "home" :) 

I'm sorry that it's so ugly.

Kidding, of course...Carson was in complete awe at the mountains everywhere. 

Almost there!

We drove past a really neat bridge, so we turned around and decided to walk on it. This sign was at the entrance:  

As soon as we got back to our car, it started pouring rain. I was tired anyway, so I fell asleep. When we arrived in Nelson, I was very tired from my half-nap. So I kept sleeping. I slept for about an hour while Carson explored the town. When he returned, I woke up and we walked around for just a little bit. It was rainy and windy - just the sort of weather that makes you want to curl up and sleep. So while the town itself was very cute and looked like fun, the weather made our time there really short. 

We did see this, which we found HILARIOUS. A liquor delivery truck! 

And even though it was freezing, we stopped and got ice cream. The nice thing about it was that it made me almost numb, so it didn't feel as cold. We didn't eat lunch because breakfast was so filling, so I guess that the ice cream in Nelson was our lunch. 

We walked back to the car, and I had Carson take our picture (twice... the other picture was really bad). As we walked, he guided me around a puddle and then opened the car door for me (he always does). After he'd closed the door behind me, I noticed the two men walking behind us stop and say something to him. When he got into the car, he told me that they'd commended him on being such a gentleman. (it's true)

This was the weather as we left Nelson. It's hard to see, but it's snowing. 

Behind this building were trees and a mountain... you can't tell because there was so much SNOW!

Fairly soon after, the tricky weather turned into sunshine. Carson has a thing for large rocks, so he stopped the car just to stand on this one. 

The American Border Patrol asked us lots more questions and looked in our trunk, which is basically full of items to go to Goodwill, random books, and several pairs of Carson's shoes. Through the lines of questioning (he asked us our occupations, and when I said that mine was "student", he drilled me on where and what and why), we discovered that the guy doing border patrol graduated from Moody-Spokane in 2006. Small world? 

--

Anyway, we decided to pick up Thai for dinner since our meal budget for the day was pretty open. 

Funny story... We have quite a few Thai places here, so I texted Google for the number of a specific one. There happen to be two locations, and I gave Carson the number for the North Division location. This story isn't exactly funny, because we went there and they had no evidence of our order. I checked my phone against his and realized that we'd called the order in to the location on E 29th. It wasn't that far away, but I still felt bad because we were late to pick it up and it was out of our way. I guess next time I'll pay better attention. 

Anyway, we had Crab Rangoon (Carson calls them butterflies)

And Pad Thai. Mine was "no spicy" and Carson's was "as spicy as you can get it". Those are technical terms. 

He was pretty hungry by this point and taking a superfluous picture wasn't on his priority list, but he was a good sport. 

So that was our Canadian-American adventure. The best part was the driving, because we got to talk. That's really the reason we even went - we find that if we're home at the same time, our books and such distract us, but time in the car is usually quality time.