Thankful Thursday

We are on a pretty awesome road trip so there is a lot to be thankful for (jobs with the freedom to travel in the summer, a van that can take us, enough money to go, kids healthy enough to travel, good friends that take us in etc). That said, this will be a bit different. 

Yesterday morning we were heading up to Kokanee Glacier Provincial Park on a 16 km logging road. We checked in at the Nature Centre at Kokanee River Provincial Park (it's neat--visit it!) and they said our vehicle should be able to make it. That said, our vehicle has low clearance on the best of days but with all of our road trip gear, it's pretty low. We started up at about 2 km's in I started to feel panicky. I don't love heights and was envisioning us sliding down the end side of the road. Then the road got rougher and our hitch bottomed out a few times. It wasn't serious but I started having a mild panic attack–sweating, heart pounding, nauseated, feeling like our van would break down etc. By 12 km's in it was just too rough for our van (even though we were so close!) so Gary finally said that we should turn around and I fully agreed.

It was a rough start to our day as I was feeling sick from it and it was not a great way to spend an hour. Our poor van had a rough time. That said, things really turned around once we decided to come down. This is what I am thankful for yesterday:

1. We were able to do a hike anyway, just not the one we hoped for. We did the Old Growth Recreational Trail.

2. A good time at Ainsworth Hot Springs. There's a cool cave loop to swim through and we did it over and over again. Very unique!

3. A great place to stay. I found it on Expedia and it is huge, clean, friendly, has a free par 3 golf course, breakfast etc. It's the Kootenay Lakeview Spa Resort and Event Centre.

4. The kids playing their first game of golf. It was so fun to watch the boys play and they loved it. Koen sort of played it as though it was a hockey stick. Nya took forever to get it in. They really hope to play one more time before we go–so fun to watch them try something new (especially when it's free)!

5. That our van made it okay. We don't have a lot of knowledge around vehicles so really didn't want something going wrong with it. Also, we need it for the next few weeks for the rest of our road trip! 

So, not a super exciting Thankful Thursday but still good to reflect, right?  Have you had a panic attack before? I rarely ever do but it was good to sort of hike it out and then move on to something entirely different. 

Hope you are having a good week.

Love,

Louise

PS Next year we want to do a trip across Canada! We are in talks about it now as we're trying to figure out how this will work with fostering as you can't just say "We'll only take a child for 10 months" so not sure what that means for this year for us. A lot to reflect on.