Summer Road Trip of a Lifetime (and maybe... How Social Media is Ruining my Life and... the World? ;-)

I suspect that my smart phone (I was a late adopter and only got a smart phone in 2012, 6 years ago) and social media (Facebook and now Instagram -- the new "micro-blogging" and photo sharing site) have ruined my life. Sigh... I spend too much time scrolling through its bait-y feeds and though I follow very few people on Instagram, it's still distracting because of the stupid stories. I REFUSE to look at stories on FB. I still miss blogging and reading blogs immensely and I haven't completely lost the habit of "writing blog posts in my head" -- [relatively] old habits die hard! -- but I feel like I am slowly losing my ability to concentrate on longer texts and tasks. It doesn't help that I have ADHD. I am also being influenced by the images I see and people share (more on that later).

OK, I promise that this annoying introduction will connect to my main topic, our AMAZING, Dream-Come-True trip of this summer...

We DROVE from the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. where we live all the way to the Canadian Rockies and even a bit of the Pacific Northwest and it was GLORIOUS!!

Yes, it was an insanely long drive of 4 days there and 4 days back, but we took our time and it worked well. It was also slightly stressful to sleep almost every night at a new hotel and plan, shop for, and prepare ALL OUR MEALS (except for breakfast at all but 4 mornings of the trip) on the go. We ate out exactly ONCE during the whole trip -- on the last day driving back. I took my wonderful pressure cooker (Power XL if you don't want to click) and a small hot pot and we had three ice-packs and a small cooler. ALL hotels had fridges, some of them full-sized ones.

A quick summary of the trip if you're curious, I added links to the official National Park sites:

Day 1 - 7/30 (Mon): 8h+ drive to Michigan. We slept at a friend's house and my parents at a hotel (mistakenly reserved by my son)
Day 2 - 7/31 (Tue): 8h+ Drive to Minneapolis (accidentally did a bathroom stop at Wisconsin Dells!) where we had an amazing Home2Suites across the street from a natural grocery store. We went to check out the Mall of America in the evening.
Day 3 - 8/1 (Wed): 7h+ from Minneapolis to Winnipeg, Canada. We saw the city a bit, purchased our National Park Pass, and rain ponchos at a Dollarama store before heading to the hotel. We didn't like downtown Winnipeg very much.
Day 4 - 8/2 (Thu): 10h+ drive from Winnipeg to Medicine Hat (Alberta). We hurried along because the hotel had indoor water slides and we enjoyed that (I cooked soup).
Day 5 - 8/3 (Fri): 4+ hour drive to Banff, AB, passing through the North of Calgary and seeing it in the distance. We stopped in Banff and were delighted by the turquoise water of the river and the gorgeous Cascades of Time Garden. It began to rain (hence the ponchos) and, because of the rain, which emptied the parking lots, we managed to quickly see Lake Louise (definitely "the Mona Lisa of Lakes" -- SUPER CROWDED, it's almost disappointing ;-), Moraine Lake (an AMAZING blue even in the rain), and, after some annoying traffic and the end of rain, Emerald Lake in Yoho National Park (British Columbia). We were staying in Golden, BC.
Day 6 - 8/4 (Sat): Rain was in the forecast for the Banff area, so we drove through the Canadian Glacier National Park and visited Revelstoke National Park, where we saw the beautiful Columbia river from above and enjoyed beautiful alpine wildflowers! It was partly cloudy at times, but not cold! The only thing we didn't like was the vicious mosquitoes at the parking lot at the summit where we had our lunch. (stayed in Golden, BC a second night)
Day 7 - 8/5 (Sun): Today was sunny with some clouds and we drove through Yoho & Banff National Parks all the way to Jasper National Park and beyond, about 6h driving, with many stops. Amazing day of "adventures" & incredible views: canoeing at Emerald Lake (cheapest spot, gorgeous lake), seeing Takakkaw Falls (both in Yoho NP), seeing a freight train go through both of the spiral tunnels!! Hiking up to see the incredible Peyto Lake. Marveling at the mountains and glaciers along the Icefields Parkway North and seeing a black bear next to the road! Stopping to see the Columbia Icefields and its great visitor center. And then... driving all the way to McBride, British Columbia (seeing two majestic elk eating calmly by the roadside) where we spent two nights in an apartment at the North Lodge Motel. The farthest Northwest we went on the trip!

Day 8 - 8/6 (Mon): Lots of driving because McBride is TWO HOURS from Jasper. We did the round trip and hiked the beautiful Maligne Canyon, drove to see Medicine lake (and unfortunately didn't drive down to Maligne Lake, so we didn't have a chance to see moose -- they are around Medicine and Maligne lakes). We had lunch next to the Maligne River and were going to go up on the AirTram in Jasper, but they closed due to the weather -- very disappointing! It was a beautiful and sunny day, but it was probably windy. So we went to downtown Jasper instead, where we had ice-cream, and went grocery shopping. On the drive back we stopped to see the majestic Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies. This was the last sunny and crisp day of the trip.

Day 9 - 8/7 (Tue): Long drive back South (nearly 300 miles), and it was sunny, but unfortunately very hazy. South on the Icefield Parkway we stopped at Athabasca Falls and enjoyed walking through it's canyon and going down to the river, we saw Sunwapta Falls and had lunch there, then, we stopped at the Athabasca Glacier (Columbia Icefields), walked all the way to the glacier (even though  it's forbidden, everyone does it), and walked a little bit on top of it -- but we didn't go very far like lots of other people. Then we stopped at Peyto lake (a bit hazy and it was 6:30 pm) to see it again at a different time of day and we enjoyed taking tons of photos of the gorgeous blue Bow Lake with lots of sunshine. We arrived at the most luxurious (and expensive!) accommodation of the whole trip at the Mystic Springs Chalets and Hot Pools in Canmore. We went to the pool and also had to go grocery shopping. It was very very smoky in Banff and Canmore due to the Wardle fire in Kootenay National park. :-(

Day 10 - 8/8 (Wed): Today we went back to the lakes in the Banff area, but we couldn't get an early start and the parking lots were closed, so we had to park at the overflow area and pay for a shuttle to Moraine Lake. It was SO WORTH IT!!! The bluest lake, incredible photos, can't even describe it. Then we had lunch at the parking area (all picnic tables are in the sun, so we used a large rock for table and tree trunk stumps to sit on). After lunch, we were able to find parking to visit the über-crowded Lake Louise. There were two brides taking photos there! Last, but not least, we hiked the Johnston Canyon where I was wretchedly disappointed that the "hidden cave" and huge boulder and waterfall (link to image search), the "most photographed spot in Alberta" is now off limits. See, social media ruining my life. I REALLY wanted to see and photograph that place!! The ostensive reason is protecting birds, and I do believe the birds were probably bothered by the foot traffic in that hilly wooded area, but the canyon is SO MASSIVELY VISITED that I believe unless they closed it completely, it wouldn't help the birds much. But who am I to say/judge? My husband tried to console me saying that I care for the environment, but I was devastated. 

Day 11 - 8/9 (Thu): Last visit to Banff National Park area: we visited the lovely Cave and Basin National Historical Site which is where the very first Canadian National Park originated to protect the hot springs from prospective bidders. Then we drove to Calgary where we stayed at the excellently located Homewood Suites downtown and went to have dinner with friends at Blaze Pizza (we hardly ate because we had eaten at the hotel!).
Day 12 - 8/10 (Fri): Today we drove from Calgary to Glacier National Park in the U.S. and we met up with friends again! We met them at Logan Pass and then hiked with them for about an hour in the scary Highline trail. We headed to our hotel in Kalispell where we went grocery shopping (at Costco!) and then I cooked dinner for our friends, since we were staying at Homewood Suites again. 
Day 13 - 8/11 (Sat): Today we visited Glacier National Park again with our friends before they had to leave to go back to Missoula. In the morning our youngest son took the challenge and jumped off a cliff into the frigid waters of this swimming hole! Then, after a picnic, lunch we hiked to the Hidden Lake in Logan Pass and saw many mountain goats (and snow)! Then we drove four hours to our hotel in Helena where we arrived pretty late (10 pm).
Day 14 - 8/12 (Sun): Today we drove for 8h+ from Helena, MT to Mount Rushmore and we stayed for the evening presentation and lighting, it was nice! We stayed in a Best Western in Hill City that looked very "Western" indeed! ;-)
Day 15 - 8/13 (Mon): Today we drove through Badlands National Park on our way to Omaha, NE. There was a moment we were 90 mph on I-90 and it was 99F! I really liked Badlands, I wish we'd spent more time there, but we needed to get to Nebraska.

Day 16 - 8/14 (Tue): Took a detour to visit a denominational College in Lincoln, NE and quickly visited Saint Louis, MI in the late afternoon/ evening. It was lots of fun to take the tram to the top of the Gateway Arch. We literally forgot our hunger and tiredness in the brand new museum under the arch, FANTASTIC! 
Day 17 - 8/15 (Wed): Drove back home, longest day, over 13 hours, but we had a good lunch at Olive Garden. ;-)

This was long and took me a lot of time to write, but it was fun to remember it all!

Back to the social media issue. I believe that people have more money and that's why they travel more, but I also think that the ability to see photos of your friends in beautiful places, such as the Canadian Rockies lakes and vistas, makes people want to go there too, so I think that the huge crowds we saw -- everyone trying to take the most perfect pictures, even risking limb to do so (there was this girl who fell in the water in Moraine lake trying to reach the rocks and several people were trying to balance on logs and rocks to take photos). Of course we were busy taking photos too and I spent A LOT of time selecting the perfect 10 photos of each day and writing a short descriptive text to post on Instagram. I posted way more photos to Facebook (later), but used the same texts.

Yeah... is this all very bad? Not all of it, I'm sure. I have to go now, I have to practice a song with a group of women to sing tomorrow!

Week 8: Our very first week at a beach in the U.S. in 21 Years!

In all these 21 years living here we had only been to the beach to spend a few hours or the day. Some of the beaches we'd gone to were: Block Island (RI), Brigantine Beach and Island Beach State Park in NJ (this last one is the one we went to the most, 3-4 times, to spend the day when we lived in Philly -- we even had a wedding there once!), Flagler and Matanzas beaches in FL.

So of course our very first time spending a whole week at the beach had to be in one of the most amazing stretches of coast in the whole country (close to Destin, FL)!! So now we won't want to go to any "blah" places after this. I only took my Nikon DSLR camera to the beach on the next to last afternoon and morning, and took over 4GB of photo then. We also took lots of photos on different cell phones (the best of which was my MIL's iPhone 7 plus), but I don't have those photos in my external hard drive yet.

Here is a selection of some of the beach photos of the last evening and day!

 Evening of 7/6:

 My birthday, 7/7! 

(all these were taken with a 70-300mm zoom lens)

 All 7 kids 3-13:

(15 year old missing, he arrived very late at the beach)

This is what the 15 year old did when he got to the beach:

It was wonderful!

The Super Long Snow Weekend Was Great!

It felt like a mini vacation, and the worst part was that I had only taught ONE day of classes at U#2. I hope that won't make for a more complicated semester. I didn't miss any of my classes at U#1 because they are both TuTh classes.

I think our main accomplishment was watching three more Star War films with Kelvin (Episodes 5, 6 and 1) and laundry!! lots of laundry!  And food -- some a failure (sushi with too sticky rice -- horribly, terribly BAD rice-cooker that I stupidly bought!! I will write a SCATHING review on Amazon, as soon as I'm not too mad to write something) and some yummy (Brazilian cheese rolls!).

And the best thing was the skiing, on Sunday (all of us) and Monday for K and the boys. I had to go teach ONE class at U#2 -- my now very nice "boss/colleague" called me not to come right when I was dropping off the boys at the ski place and heading off to U#2. It was OK that I went.

OK, I'll stop here and post some photos of the snow from my phone soon!

It started!!

And I had forgotten we had this:

It's a gas fireplace that works without electricity, so we're good if the power goes out! I just need to find the candles and matches now. ;-) But I hope not to lose electricity! 

The Eve our First Snow Day!

We're excited! And relaxed, and prepared... I mean, I don't think we will be OK if we lose power, but we can walk across town to our friends who have a wood stove. It would be a long, cold walk, but we could do it if necessary! ;-)

U#2 canceled first, then U#1 and now I checked the local TV Channel listing and the kids' elementary school is canceled too, so it's official!

Of course now that everything is canceled it won't start snowing until, say, 2 pm, but we'll be happily home! I'm planning to cook yummy pasta, make sushi, bake Brazilian cheese rolls and sleep a lot!

Let's just hope we don't lose power or we might have to move across town... oh well.

And we can't wait to go skiing on Sunday! Of course it will be SUPER crowded, but it should be great nevertheless.

Rainbow Tree/ Rainbow Leaves

I'm I shouldn't be posting these photos without watermaking them for fear of the rainbow one being pinned & going viral (I'm sure there must be other ones people whose done the same thing). I'll try to come & edit the post later. I haven't backed up the photos or I'd watermak on my phone (haven't figured how to copy photos to edit one of them yet, I don't think it's possible)...

Ok, when I saw this tree I knew I could make a rainbow out of its leaves:

Look how many hues they have:

So I did that: (NO filter whatsoever)

Please don't pin until I've watermaked them!

Rainbow leaf:

Yeah, I don't like the fall, but it still brings me joy sometimes.

Bonus pic:

P.S. I did the same thing with photos from my backyard tree, but photos are on the Nikon. I'll try to share them later!

Random reasons why I don't like Fall

• Waking up and getting up in the dark is hard, but having short days after the time change is even harder. It's totally a lose-lose situation.

• I hate mums which is a weird name to give to chrysanthemums (the actual name of the flower and how it's called in Brazil, where I grew up -- crisântemos in Portuguese).             Tangent: Why do Americans love to shorten so many words? (Some pet peeves of mine: convo, legit, ammo. Some are not so bad, such as: app, info, memo)

• I hate the colors purple and orange which seem to be the official colors of Halloween, oh and I don't care for yellow either. (yeah, and there are tons of yellow, orange, dark red or pink/nearly purple mums around, sigh...)

• I loathe Halloween.

• I don't live in Massachusetts or New England anymore, so fall is blah anywhere else after you've lived eight years there.

• Is the season that ushers winter.

You may not believe this, but I've been writing this post for the past three weeks. First, talking on the phone, which is how most posts start out nowadays, and then editing on the computer for several days. I'm sure there are other "random reasons" that I cannot pinpoint right now, but I want to get this post out before Fall is over! ;-P

I also considered interspersing the items with gorgeous Fall photos, but I'll leave it as is. I don't have the energy to go look for photos right now. And they'd totally defeat the purpose of the post too...

I'm even more unhappy this particular Fall because I think the foliage was more beautiful than in previous years, but we did not have any time or any way (due in part to house guests) to go for even one hike or a beautiful drive out in the countryside. So sad! 

I don't think I have full-blown seasonal affective disorder (SAD), but Fall and Winter make me feel blue. I think the shortening of the days is worse, though. Once it's winter at least the days start getting gradually longer, so there's hope!! 

The things that aren't going particularly well in my life (like the 8 am class) and that of our family don't help, right? I'm not done yet with my series of "out of sorts" posts. In fact, this is one of them. 

:-(

First Frost

From yesterday 

I wasn't prepared for frost yet!

:-(

Spring Has Sprung!

I meant to share these yesterday!

Happy Spring!

SNOW DAY! (Now with photos!)

YAY! I'll have my first snow day tomorrow, probably the last, but at least there was one, YAY!

I really really need to work on the translation (I spent time today backing up the photos, so much fun, but... oh-oh, work wasn't done), but I think I'll take the boys skiing. Sigh... after all, we paid for the ski pass, so we need to go! ;-)

and, OF COURSE -- there'll be REAL snow to ski on! (which will make it extra slippery for me, probably, yikes. Hopefully I'll survive, sigh...)

OK, I'm going to go to bed now. But I'm giddy with joy at the snow day. YAY!

:-)

Edited to add some photos. We're working in the morning & going to ski in the afternoon.

A Snow Day with hardly any snow...

What a lame snow day! :-(

It snowed less than an inch and school was going to have a delay, starting at 10 am, but then they went ahead and canceled it because of the slick roads. 

That's what our street looks like now at nearly 11 am: 

Not bad, right? Good thing I'm not working this week or else the boys would have to stay home by themselves today for a few hours. 

What I don't like about these lame scxo days is that the school year can be longer because of them if there are many other real snow days. Sigh...

Updated to show that's what it looks like out there now at 1 pm:

GRRRRR!

Snow Day!/ Cooking for Thanksgiving

We had a pretty productive snow day. I mean, my husband especially, but all of us too. K gave us all to-do lists while he worked with different things: he cleaned his bedside table, emptied his closet completely and then organized everything when putting it back, and he cleaned our bathroom.

The boys did various chores such as cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming, cleaning their room and then they all went outside to go sledding in the back of the house. Of course K also cleaned the driveway.

I cleaned my bedside table too and organized my old journals and books in the bedroom shelf. I also took many photos of the snow (and posted some to facebook!) and of my journals -- so I can share them here! ;-)

I did read and answer emails and I cooked spaghetti for our late lunch, but most importantly, I worked some on the translation I need to do. I don't think I've mentioned it here before, but this freelance job is the bane of my existence right now! ;-(

This evening, after the boys went to bed, K & I headed to the kitchen where we got started with several dishes for tomorrow, particularly the pumpkin and squash pies that needed quite a lot of peeling and chopping veggies.

We'll have a small Thanksgiving with only two friends and their kids and another friend coming, but I hope it will be great!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Perfect Autumn Leaves (and Sky!)

I'd originally written Perfect Autumn Photos for a title, but obviously these aren't perfect, I do have a good camera and great zoom lens, but I'm not a "real" photographer by any stretch of the imagination. The leaves and the gorgeous day are/were perfect!

I wish I was more savvy and could fiddle with the template of the blog to make these photos appear really big, but no, I'm not, so that's it (I did make the vertical photos bigger* because they will fit in the template). These haven't been edited in any way (I'm too lazy & I'm also not using the Mac most of the time now). I took them two weeks ago while my sons were having piano lesson make-ups on Sunday morning at a local university.

*The photo rotation in the first and next to last photos are courtesy of Blogger. How does it know what's supposed to be the right side up? ;-)

I totally wish I'd taken many more photos and made sure they were all focused right. I always have this feeling that "I'm taking too many photos already, I should stop!" But later I realize that I did not in fact take enough photos. Sigh...

The Summer of... Nothing Done?

I can't believe it's Fall already.

Blah... you may recall I don't like the cold and though Fall is beautiful, it's also sad to me. 

This Fall I'm particularly... I don't know... disgruntled? maybe? Because the summer wasn't satisfying in a "things accomplished" kind of way. 

Some things got done, some for the very first time (like the piano):

• the boys had piano lessons and kept their progress up, and I went all "tiger-mom" on them and had them learn a really hard duet to play in churc when family was visiting. That was satisfying, but the results are not very palpable, right?

• The boys were in swim practice whenever we weren't traveling, but they didn't participate of any meets, so, again, no "results" except for better fitness. 

• Both K and I presented papers at conferences and had a good time meeting colleagues and traveling with the family -- too bad they were back to back, so we got tired of traveling!

I guess that's about it. We did travel some -- a short trip to Florida, which had to be short because of this wedding we needed to attend -- and another short trip to Canada to visit family (which was short because they all came to visit us!).

The visit from family was short and intense (hosting 8 people is a lot of work!), and it helped us clean the house some (there's nothing like pressure to get things done!) but they left precisely on the kids' first day of school and the timing was far from ideal... 

What depresses me is the seemingly endless list of things that did NOT get done:

• First, and foremost, the translation project that I started in July and which has been completely PAUSED since we traveled to Canada and classes started. :-( I won't be paid a penny until that whole things is done, so, yeah... our loss! And the worst part is that I have no idea how in the world and when I am going to finish this!!

• I never worked in the yard and removed the countless SCARY poison ivy vines that have spread EVERYWHERE in the our backyard flower beds and next to the trees in the border of the property. 

• We never cleaned/organized the garage.

• I didn't organize our books which is something I've been wanting to do forever, but maybe never will?

• I really wanted to paint the hallway and living room and downstairs, but K doesn't want to hear of those projects so, guess what, I think they'll never get done! ;-( (summer is a busy time for him and he knows painting is time consuming, but I want to do it myself, but with my "problem" who know if I'll ever really succeed in doing it. I think I could if I wanted to!)

• I also wanted (I always want to) make more photo books and stuff, but that only works out when I have a deadline (such as a free book offer). 

We did re-stain the deck -- I finished last Friday and last Sunday! -- and I got to help K significantly with it, which made me incredibly happy! "Useful manual labor" is something I truly enjoy! (except gardening in the heat and with tons of mosquitoes, I suppose). 

Yeah, it wasn't that bad. That's why I wanted to write this post, to put things into perspective! I need to be more positive, but it's hard!

Well, like it or not, Fall is here. Happy Fall, everyone!

Reveling in the Warmth, Dreading the Freezing Cold

ETA: written on my cell phone, walking from the car to the building where I teach :-)
I'm not just "enjoying" the hot weather, I'm drinking it like the thirstiest person would. I'm trying to soak it, absorb it, try to feel it so much on my skin so I can keep the delightful sensation in my memory for as long as I can because I know it won't last long.

I almost feel a quiet despair thinking that it will soon be all over. That's why I don't enjoy he Fall season anymore, unlike many of my blog friends. I know the cicadas will stop singing and the crickets too. The world will have almost no green. 

And (silly superficial me!) I have too many dresses -- ha! You call them "sundresses" in this country. Too many summer clothes that I feel I barely get to use. :-(

Yeah, I'm not looking forward to Fall & Winter!

Saudade (& Gorgeous Maragogi!)

When distress and almost despair overtook me last week K & I felt like we always do in such situations -- a rare feeling, to be frank! -- we felt like we might want to go back to Brazil if things didn't/don't get better.

Home. I don't even talk like that about my home country now that home is really here. And not because we own our fourth house in this country. And even in spite of the fact that we always feel like "accidental immigrants."

I can hardly believe that I was there this year. January feels so so distant from the sad "shores" of early September! Sigh...

Talking of shores, I never shared images more than one image of where we were in Maragogi, right? -- only borrowed from other people [scroll down] before I'd even set foot on that sand and that water. No filters, first two photos taken by my sister-in-law D in her Canon, remaining taken by me with my Nikon (D5100).

Last week, on the morning I had my conversation with NH s/he asked if I'd gone to Brazil in the summer and when I said with sadness in my voice that I probably would only be back there in 2016 s/he asked "Why?" "Because I cannot afford it!" I answered, to which s/he retorted, "Oh, that's right, you have kids!" (and then I added that we're going to the Middle East + Europe(hopefully!) next summer with my in-laws and that's also why I can't afford to go to Brazil as well).

Anyway... I thought it was pretty bad timing to be talking about the fact that I can hardly ever go to Brazil while they didn't even wanted to offer me a full-time job. Sigh...

Yeah, we know that going back is not a "cure-all" solution and never would be, but sometimes it feels like it would help.

The lovely beaches (thousands of miles away from where we'd live, haha!) would be nice too. ;-)