Three week tour through Sunny California

Well here we are again, one year later, headed down the West Coast for a 3-week tour with Jon. He just got home from touring across Canada with the Newsboys on Monday morning and we left on Saturday night so it was a quick turn around but we are happy to be together as a family and back in our second home. Saturday night we left after Jon finished up a great children's ministry conference at WECA church in Edmonton. We camped out on our best friend's driveway in Cochrane and enjoyed a minnie mouse pancake breakfast to celebrate Cadence's 4th birthday (who also happens to be Emerson's best friend) with our friends!

Today our first and ongoing prayer was to have an uneventful border crossing. Jon is travelling on a new P2 visa and it starts on October 6th so we had no idea if they were going to send us away for 4 more days - sometimes they can be very sticky it seems dependent up on mood of the custom officer. It was a beautiful drive down Cowboy Trail through Bragg Creek and then on to Blairmore - the leaves were all coloured shades of yellow and oranges and I think the kids even got tired of playing the 'look at the cows and horses' game as the herds seemed to be endless.

We stopped in at my favourite stop - the haul truck in Sparwood. I had to get a picture to compare Avalynn to the size of the rim as I did last year at exactly the same time to see how much she had grown. Emerson was much more interested this year and we walked underneath the dump truck to learn about the different parts.

Its a good thing Jon was actually paying attention to the road signs (something he does not do too often anymore in the world of GPS and when I travel along) because our border crossing was actually Roosville when I thought it was Kingsgate. Thank God it was smooth sailing across the border. They brought Jon inside for a few minutes (which meant the kids woke up from their very short nap and were done for the day) and checked him out on google and then asked if he could bring his guitar back in for a performance! Funny how things work out...

Our border crossing mix up added about an hour to our drivetime which I guess is a small percentange in the grand scheme of things when you are looking at a 25+ hour drive to Sacramento. It ended up being a beautiful drive along Lake Koocanusa on a very twisty road. We stopped at one of the endless scenic route stops and the kids had fun throwing rocks into the river and soaking up the warm sun.

Instead of setting up camp for dinner we decided to stop in at a pizza place in Bonner's Ferry and continue on a couple of hours more after dark to make up for lost time from our little scenic detour earlier in the day. We ended up camping in Coeur D'alene for the night along the Spokane river. A long day and it seems we've hardly covered any ground but praise God we are in the US now and have only warmer days to look forward to!