Hopefully I finish this before I fall asleep. :)

I wanted to post a couple of things today. Why today more than the last . . . um. . .60? I really don't know. It was a good day today and I wasn't even on that many drugs. lol ;) Therefore since I wasn't on very many drugs I remember a lot more of today than yesterday or the past . . . well. . . week or two.



I'll try a quick update, but as you know I am long winded and nothing I type is really short. I was in Salt Lake this last weekend to see my docs. Sorry to all the people I wasn't able to see, but I hope you understand when I get done. If not, please forgive me for my shortcomings and seeming thoughtlessness, but do know that I do want to spend time with everyone and that means EVERYONE and that is A LOT of people. I don't have the energy nor the stamina anymore and I am afraid to overdo because when I do I pay. I still do things though, just not as many things so I try to spend time . . . I guess with those that I think will need the memories the most.



Anyway (see. . . no shortness here. lol), I was able to find some CHEAP tickets to SLC and so I booked three flights. One in December, January, and February. Since the last time I was down I decided to see my doc more often and plan things out. Makes me fee more. . . secure? . . . comfortable? . . . whatever. So the plan was to fly in on Thursday, hang out with family, cousins, and friends, then go see my doc on Monday and fly out Tuesday. Well, things didn't go according to plan, as everyone knows things never do!



I had gone to Boise State's last football game and had a TON of "once in a life time" experiences. I got to go, for one. I've been going to Boise State since 2003 and never been to a game so I really wanted to go. What I did not expect was that once I spoke it quite a few people wanted to grant it! The last one I went with some family friends that have quite a few connections within the team, their son having worked for the team and a daughter who is . . . well, very likable and would do well in just about anything. Anyway, I went to the game and LOVED it! The atmosphere was incredible! Almost better than a Jazz game now days. lol I got to go out onto the "Smurf Turf" and get pictures taken with one of the players! I was so much fun! I'm thankful to Grints for arranging that. It is definitely something I won't forget anytime soon. :)



After the game, however, I started to hurt, like a knew I would. Happens every time. I go do something fun. . . I get slammed down with pain usually for a day or two. I was fine while I was in the moment, but as soon as the adrenaline, or whatever, left my system I was hurtin' and nothing I had would sooth the pain for very long. Three hours at the max. It was ridiculous and, I'm sure, really hard for my Mommy and my Daddy to deal with. One night I woke up just sobbing. I had worn myself out so much that I didn't wake up when my body started to tell me I was hurting. BIG MISTAKE!!! When I start hurting like that it is almost impossible to recover without a reset to my system. That is, a big hit of narcotics to my body that resets my pain level. It starts out small, maybe a harmless little 2, on the pain scale. I can handle a 2. after all it is just a 2! I've had WORSE. I ignore the pain. Nothin' big. Just a two. Well, what was a 2 can exponentially turn in to a 8, 9, or 10 in a matter a days, hour, or minutes. The exponential growth varies sometimes do to activity and sometimes just escalates because it can!



Anyway, I called my doc up on Tuesday (or wrote an email, I don't remember because I was under so much medication for the pain) and told him how much I was hurting and how much pain meds I was taking. He said to come in as soon as I landed!



I called up Aunt Cheryl, feeling completely apologetic, but knowing that she was one of the few people I didn't feel completely horrible about corrupting their schedule and invading her home (which I still felt, just less of) and asked a) if I could stay at her house, b)if she could pick me up at the airport in a couple days, and, c) since I am now under the influence of narcotics 24/7, if she could take me to the hospital right after she picked me up and then two other times during the weekend. Without a second thought, she told me she could do it right then and there. I broke down into tears at the end of the phone call just in gratitude for Uncle Fred and Aunt Cheryl. They would stop the world for just about anybody if they could and still bend over backwards trying to do so knowing that they can't. It touches my heart so much I think because I wanted to be able to be doing that by now and not be at the RECEIVING end of it! Uncle Fred and Aunt Cheryl have been there so many times for me and my family it blows my mind and pushes me to the verge of tears. Only to the verge sadly, because it hurts my ribs so much to cry I am unintentionally training my body to become less emotional.

Well, my plane landed, Aunt Cheryl picked me up and up to Primary Children's we went. When I got there, the nurses took one look at me and said, as if i had just said it, "You are not feeling good today. Are you." Tears started coming and I knew I was in the right place for being taken care of (or to hook me up with "the good stuff" if you look at it from my facetious druggie point-of-view lol). Dr. Barnette came in and talked to be a bit, gave me some pills (because I had just, ironically, took my last ones that morning), and sent me to get a CT of my lower back and hips to check for bone integrity. Basically to see if any of my bones were in more danger than usual of breaking. He said the bones looked good, besides the tumors of course, and put me on a fentanyl patch. :)

Just for the . . . uh, non-junkies or medical field people. fentanyl is an awesome drug! It doesn't stay in the system for very long, but it is one of my favs. lol For me it is like a heal all drug. It get rid of whatever pain I'm in, makes everything seem Okie dokie, and puts me to sleep, a very enjoyable and elusive luxury to me. I don't feel many of those good effects while on the patch, but I get plenty of the bad ones, mainly nausea, drowsiness (tired when I don't want to be), and forgetfulness (which occasionally leads to feeling stupid or sad and frustrated). How the patch works is incredible. It is sticky like a sticker and I just stick it to my skin and the fentanyl absorbs through my skin and into my blood stream. For those that remember, I revolted from these same fentanyl patches around 6 months ago. Things are different now. My pain has increased so I am more willing to take more powerful drugs. Pain is one thing that I hate with a passion and one of the few things I fear. I fear pain that has run amok and nothing is working on it. My worst nightmares right there. One of them anyway.

So Dr. Barnette puts me on this patch and so my body has to get used to the new drug. lol. I head to the mall Thursday or Friday night with Uncle Fred and Aunt Cheryl in Uncle Fred's Suburban. We go to get onto the freeway, just past Farmington, and I am getting more nauseated the longer we drive. ;/ We had just past the Chevron, which is the last place I could see for probably five or ten miles with a public bathroom, and I finally spoke up. "Uncle Fred? Could you do me a favor?"

"Yeah, Jen. Waddya nee-"

I was in too much of a hurry to be as polite as I normally am and interrupted, "Can you turn around to that Chevron . . . so I can throw up?"

He turned a fast "U"-ie and got me back to the Chevron ASAP where I ran to the bathroom and threw up part of the lovely dinner Aunt Cheryl made. :( lol But wait! There's more.

They bought me a sprite, hoping it would calm my stomach down, and we continued, at my assurance that I was fine, on the road to Layton. We got to the place where Uncle Fred needed to get refills for his planner. While he was in shopping, I start to get nauseated! Again! I go outside to see if the fresh air calms my tummy. No chance. I rushed to the clerk and asked, as fast as politeness goes, "Do you have a public restroom?" Lucky for me they did. I had to rush it though. I barely made it though. I even had to do a little clean up job after I was done.

This all seems rather ridiculous now. More so because there is more!

We got to the mall. Shopped for a few hours and then headed back home. On the way home, I started to get nauseated. . . again! This time we were in the middle of nowhere so I just asked Uncle Fred if he could pull over, which he promptly did and after which I promptly got out and puked my guts out more. Three times in three hours!! Totally ridiculous!

Thankfully, I can laugh about the whole fiasco now due to the few times I heard Aunt Cheryl and Uncle Fred tell it with heart-felt humor and sympathy.

Sadly I don't mind throwing up anymore. It has just become part of life these last almost four years. Time has gone by incredibly fast at a very slow pace. If that makes any sense at all.

Well, I am falling asleep and have fought the melatonin I took long enough. :) Good diarrhea of the keyboard though. lol And I didn't even get to some of the thoughts I wanted to post. Well. More material for coming days. Hopefully soon. :)

Love Always.

Jenna Lee

Crap! It is SOOOOO LATE!!! DON'T MAKE ME PAY FOR THIS, BODY. Please. I have much to look forward to this week and I would really like to feel good so I can keep up with the family. :/

An Insight

First I would like to say sorry for hiding. I promised I would be honest, but honesty, I feel, is sometimes hard to voice. This is an email I sent to a friend of mine after my last visit to PCMC, October 29. It is really how I feel. I have decided to give everyone another insight. It has been long overdue. So here you go. . .

"I am bummed that we didn't get to talk, but considering your schedule and my bad timing I wasn't sure you were going to be free. So I will give you an update so you at least are in the loop. I didn't learn anything that I already didn't know really. The tumors that we knew about are bigger which I knew because my pain has increased. I have a couple of new tumors in my lungs which I didn't know about but that is just how things go for me now days so it was expected.

"I have been having a hard time making the choice on whether to quit treatment or not. I came down here totally convinced that I was done. Overcooked, black, and all crispy. :) When I got to the clinic on Monday though I wasn't so sure. After being around people that I could talk openly and freely about how I feel and not worry about any backlash, a part of me considered to keep going with treatments. And the big kicker was that I knew what I wanted to do, but was too ashamed to voice my opinion. I felt like saying "I'm done with treatments" would crush other people's point of view. . . or hope. . . or whatever of/for me. I have. . . The Cancer has caused way to much pain and I don't want to inflict more, but I know that there is no way around that. I mean. . . sorry to be so blunt, but I am going to die and that is going to cause people in my family to be sad. But whether I chose to do chemo or not will not effect that outcome so preventing pain is not anything I have control over.

"I finally realized that I knew what I wanted to do. I had a choice between: 1- hanging on to the edge of a cliff . . . which is what I have been doing and for which I don't have the strength to do anymore and 2- just jumping off the dang cliff (because that is how it is going to end anyway) and enjoy a small flight on the way down. :) I am tired. I am worn down. I am sick of being sick. I am sick of the shameful burden of thinking "Well, maybe". . . not maybe. . . "I hope this is what finally does me in." I am so sick of it and I don't want to put up with it anymore.

"Every time I have been hurting excruciatingly I have just asked Heavenly Father, "When? How much longer must I endure this?" My answer was, "Not for much longer." I have taken comfort in that. :) I know that could be weird for me to tell you that, but I felt impressed to. Take it for what it is. Whatever it is. :) lol

"I knew if I left today without making a decision, my decision would be to not decide and therefore not take the brunt of chaos and flack that may, or may not come my way. It was a hard decision to make, but I decided to stop treatment. For now anyway. Dr. Barnette made it perfectly clear that does not have to be it. I could change my mind if I want to. Right now though, I can't believe the peace, happiness, and gratitude that filled me once I made the decision that I have wanted to make for almost three weeks now. I just never wanted to voice it.

So we came up with a plan for keeping in touch. I am going to be in at least once a month. I know as I get feeling worse I am going to want to be around more just for the moral support. . ."

Anyway. now you know what I know. :)

Jenna Lee

P.S. Am I all grown up now? lol"

Truely, after making this decision I have felt a peace and happiness I haven't felt in a while. Two weeks later I feel the same. Although on Sunday I started sobbing and I didn't even know why. I mean besides the obvious. I hadn't been thinking about things. Don't really know what I was thinking about now that I think about it. I had gotten done talking to my Stake President about how "what was up" and just left the group to go get a drink. I was alone and just started to sob. It wasn't very long because I knew I had to "suck it up". It wasn't the time or the place to break down. . . as if there is any time or place for that. . .


Anyway now everyone knows what I know, finally. See you next post. I'm not promising anything though. :) 'Til next time.

Jenna Lee

Check this out!

I was on facebook and one of my friends posted this clip from youtube. Lol. It gave me some long overdue laughs and smiles. :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAp6KkMZUD8#movie_player

Oh, and there was kind of a mix up. I started working on the pictures from Butchart Gardens before I posted the one about the greatest picture overload. So if you have just been flipping to my blog and not scrolling down, then you have missed Butchart. It is pretty! Check it out as well.

Hope you enjoy it all. I'm waiting to post more pics because Erika is sending me hers and she has some good photos at the Vancouver Aquarium. As soon as I get them, I'll try to post quickly. :)

Have a good day!

Get Ready for the Best Picture Overload Ever!

As a family, we took over two thousand pictures! Crazy! That takes a ton of sifting through for the best, and there are a TON of "the best" pictures. That is why it has been taking so long to post. Plus add not feeling that great to the pile and it really has taken a while. I'll add the picture post I've been working for our day in Victoria hopefully tomorrow. :) Until then!

P.S. Erika has all the family photos from the trip. She's working on getting them for me. Until then I'm working with what I got. So lucky Jon and Britt get this time in the spotlight.

Vancouver Day Three!

A bit behind, but oh, well. Better late than never right? :)

Getting to Victoria!

The only way to get to Victoria from Vancouver is to take a ferry! That was a first for me and was pretty fun. We went through a bunch of islands and it was so pretty.


It was so cool to see the wake of this huge ship! Kinda fun to see where you have been.

Getting ready to dock! It took forever!

The Butchart Gardens!

Finally! We left the house around 8 o'clock in the morning to be sure to catch the ferry at 9:30. We finally got to the gardens around 11 o'clock. It was a lot of traveling time for just a day trip!

Pictures of People

Family picture at Butchart Gardens.

I really liked these flowers. They were pretty. I wish I had gotten a closer picture of them. Oh well.

I love this shot I took of Jon and Brit! They take some really romantic photos. :)

Roses with my Daddy. Roses for my Daddy! :)

Pictures of Flowers

I love taking pictures of flowers just after it rains! I love to see the drops on the flowers. For some reason there is peace for me in the beauty of it all.

The flowers in Butchart Gardens were huge, as you can see. These pink flowers were so beautiful and being as big as they were just added to it. Around every turn in the gardens there was something else that was breathtaking. It was wonderful!

I loved this flower just because of how odd and different it looks. I think Mom said it was a pinwheel flower which would be an adequate name for it. :) Isn't it beautiful?!

Even the simple and everyday flowers looked gorgeous!

This was in the Rose Garden. They all looked the same to me. :) This one caught my eye because of the water within its petals. Right after I took this picture I looked up to see Jerrod taking a similar picture. I got a kick out of that. :)

There was an area within the gardens with a bunch of baskets hanging from a twenty by twenty foot skeleton of a shed (or something similar). It was beautiful! I even had to duck down in some places to not hit my head! These were in one of those hanging baskets.

I didn't see these flowers, but Nikki or Joie did. It is a pretty flower and picture. It qualifies as a favorite because I love the spiral flare of its petals.

These are pretty too. I like how different the petals are arranged. It isn't the typical arrangement of a flower. I do wish Joie had got something to compare the size to because I don't remember how big they were.

This flower I remember! It was as big as my head! Everyone was stopping to take pictures of it though so I didn't stop. Lol. I borrowed this picture from Joie. Thanks Jo!

Views from Within the Gardens

This is a pond within the Sunken Gardens. The Sunken Gardens is a garden that Mrs. Butchart transformed from an old stone quarry! It is unbelievable to see the the before and after pictures of this place. It is amazing and inspiring! Things are really what they are made out to be by their creators.

This is the house built and lived in by the Butcharts. It is right on the grounds. The Butcharts, after cultivating and making the gardens what they are, they opened the grounds up to the public to share the beauty of the land and their gift of gardening with the rest of the world. I am so thankful that they did. It was peaceful, beautiful, wonderful, and amazing experience to walk through the acres and acres of flowers.

This is a view of the Sunken Gardens that had that pond in it. You can't see it in this picture, but there is a smokestack in the background on the right hand side. The smokestack was used when the Sunken Gardens was a quarry.

Dad kept asking me why I was taking pictures of under the bushes. :) Lol. I kept telling him that beauty is all realitive. I love this picture because of the peace that is in it. The branches and leaves of the bushes have protected the ground beneath from the rain, wind, and elements of the world around us. I have wished for that feeling of peace, protection, and wonderful comfort for these past four years. Sometimes it is there and sometimes it isn't. I am thankful when it is . . . and yearning for it when it's not.

From the outside looking in. From a dark corner looking forward into lighter, brighter, happier paths.

This is in the Japanese Garden portion of Butchart. This part of the garden was one of my favorites. It had water falls, peaceful ponds, and a unique beauty. It was a great place to go and contemplate, ponder, and relax. I could have stayed there for a while. That is until I drove myself nuts with my own thoughts. Lol.

I got a picture of this spot, but Joie got a better one. Mine was from the other side. From here the bridge sticks out more and you can see more of the Japanese Garden. So beautiful. :) Thanks Jo for letting me use the picture. :)

This garden is within a small greenhouse. It was so pretty I couldn't NOT take a picture. Lol. :)

The "Sign In" book. :) This time there is more family on it. :) I wish I had caught out comments so that we could remember what we wrote. Oh well. :)

After Butchart, we found a place to go to the beach. I really wanted to go because I thought it would be a sin to be so close to the ocean and not go to a beach. :) Lol. It wasn't very big and there weren't any good seashells so I'll have to plan another trip. DANG! Lol. I would like to go to the Oregon coast sometime. I hear it is pretty there too. Sigh. Maybe next year. :)

After the beach, we wandered around downtown. This is the capital building of British Columbia. We were taking pictures of it and the lights came on! It was gorgeous and way unexpected. There was a guy there taking pictures and he must have been a professional. He had a good camera and his pictures were coming out really beautiful! I was impressed. I watched him and gave him praise for quite a while. I'm sure he thought I was totally weird. ;) lol.

This is a picture from the pier just in front of the capital building. It was amazing to see the calm waters and the lights reflecting off of the water. Really pretty. :) This was on the way to the car. We had to go because the last ferry was leaving in a couple hours (at 9:00pm) and Jerrod and Dad were afraid we were going to miss it. That would have been bad. Lol. All of our clothes and everything were back at the house in Lions Bay! Northwest of Vancouver. :0 Lol.

We were so tired and worn out on the way back home. We left Victoria around 7:30 to be sure to make the ferry at 9:00. The ferry ride was an hour and a half long and then we had to drive for another hour and a half to get to the house. Everyone was dead tired. Joie and Jordan even fell asleep on the floor! We got back to the house around midnight. I was so tired that I even went to bed without blogging. That is why this is so late! But it was a great, wonderful, busy, beautiful day!

Slight Blogging Break

Sorry everyone. I'm going to have to finish up blogging my fabulous trip once I get home. I haven't had enough time to even look through all 2000 (joint effort) pictures since my biking accident. See my Facebook page for more details on that. I must warn ya though it is pretty gross. I'll add it here when I have a chance. Right now I have to get to bed. We leave tomorrow morning for Seattle at NINE AM! I am in trouble. :( Well, see ya when I get back!

Jenna Lee

Vancouver Day Two!

The Telus World of Science!!

This place was like candy for me. I am such a junky and a nerd. :) It was amazing. There are exhibits all over. There are signs by each exhibit that tell you what to do, but then it is up to you to figure out what it does and how or why it does what it does. I could have spent a few days in there. On the first floor had tables that were full of different puzzles to sit down and do. It took so much time to do just 3 that I figured that if I did the puzzles then i wouldn't be able to see the rest of the place and I really, really wanted to.

The first thing we did though, for a half an hour was look at Optical Illusions. We had so much fun just trying to figure out why our eyes were seeing things the way they were. For example in the picture to the right, squares A and B are the same shade! We didn't believe it at first, but then Jerrod covered up the squares surrounding B and sure enough, the squares are the same shade. There was an illusion of Einstein that when you looked at it you couldn't tell if it was a depression in the wall or if it was poking out. Then if you moved his head turned to follow you! It was way creepy.





In this illusion to the left, the picture looks like a spiral, but if you look closely it isn't a spiral at all, but a bunch of circles nested inside each other!



Another fun illusion was of a wheel that spun on the wall. You looked at it for twenty seconds. It was a spirally kind, but the spiral changed directions a few times as it swirled toward the center. Anyways, after you look at it after twenty seconds you look away at the back of your hand or at someones face and your eyes perceive that the skin on your had is bulging in some parts and sucking back in others. Jerrod compared it to the effects of the fruit the guys ate in the movie The Rundown. It was hilarious to see everyone's reaction.



In the illusion to the right, the rings around the center looks like squares with rounded corners, but if you look closely and trace one with a finger, you will find that it is actually a circle! Crazy huh?!


After going through some of the optical illusions, we went and saw the omnimax movie that was showing:
It was all about how the body handles
risk and followed base jumpers and skydivers around. It was fun to see on the humongous screen. It was dome shape and the movie was projected on it and it literally surrounded you. It could make you dizzy if you weren't careful! It was thrilling to just see people jumping out of airplanes and off of cliffs and then see it from their point of view. I have decided that I need to figure out something that will give me an adrenaline rush so that I can have the blissful peace after it. :) That sounded wonderful to me. :)

After the movie we played around with the different activities. Joie and Brit had a blast on the shadow wall! Unfortunately hardly any of the pictures worked out, this was the only one. Anyway, how this works is you go and make a pose in front of the screen. There is a bright, flash of light and then you walk away from the screen and see your shadow produced on the screen! They had so much fun. I swore a giggle fest erupted in that room. ;) I am just glad other people enjoyed Science World as much as I did. It also felt good to let my inner child out and just let it run. :)

Science World in located in downtown Vancouver. This was the first I was able to see it during the day. It is amazing to see all the houses up on the hillsides. The hills are steep and instead of digging out some earth for a better foundation, these guys just use the earth around them and place beams under the house to make it even. I hope an earthquake never hits the Vancouver area because a TON of houses will be destroyed. As we were headed back to the house, we saw this view. I snapped the picture for: a- a reminder, and b- because I swear that the houses spell something. The neighborhoods are cut out of the trees so straight that it looks like there could be some letters. Lol. I think I spent too much time using my brain. Now it is trying to make something from scenarios that are absolutely just that way, not done for a reason for a trick or whatever. I think that would have been cool, but whatever.


While trying to find our way back to the house we drove by this restaurant Dae-Ji. It is a Korean resaurant that specializes in pork. In fact, "dae ji" means pork, I am told. I didn't care much about what I have written. Lol. I had Joie snap the pic because of the cute little pig. He is so cute and it reminded me of Aunt Cheryl, the pig-o-maniac, well the collector of pigs anyway. Lol.


When we got home, I snapped this pic. It is the view from the road before you decend down the mountain twenty feet to get into the house. Lol. It looked gorgeous, especially since it rained most of last night and this morning. It stoped while we were in Science World and ended up being a beautiful rest of the day. I wished that Jordan and Jon would have come with us. It would have been a wonderful opportunity to go and bike the seawall in Stanely Park. I just hope we get the chance to do that. I would love to get out and see the lighthouses, the beach, the ocean waves crashing on the beach. With weather the way it has been, which is mostly rainy, I'm praying that we will get another bright, sunny day.

This is the view off the balcony of the house. It was gorgeous tonight. All week we have had gray clouds at sunset and it was nice to see an actual sunset. Not the prettiest I have seen, but I love the picture. I love the ocean and hope that I have a chance to get in it a little.

When we got home, we fixed dinner and then played games. I had to stay busy today because cancer thoughts followed closely behind me. If I ever left my brain on idle, to soak in the sun's rays through a window for example, it was a spiralling downward hole which is hard to get out of. It is just hard sometimes to forget the reason for this trip. It is a family vacation. We are to spend time as a family, strengthening bonds, and making memories so that when the worst comes people can have something happy to remember. After a few people didn't go with us today, I have been nervous about the rest of the schedule. There are going to be even more things people won't think they are interested in and therefore skip to save money. It makes me sad the some people priorities are not how they should be. I just have to remember that it was their choice not to come and their choice had nothing to do with me. I need to let it go and not blame myself for their actions. Stop telling myself thing like, "If I had planned better things they would have come" or "if I had taken the time to tell them more about it they would have come," and not be bummed or sad about upcoming adventures. I used to be really excited to go to Victoria, which is what we are doing tomorrow, but now I don't even know why we came to Vancouver. People just wanna stay home and watch tv or play games anyway. We could have just had a pow wow in Huricane. It would have been much cheaper, I wouldn't have like it as much, but everyone else would have.

It is no fun when you have planned all these activities that you think people will really enjoy and that you are totally excited about and then with people's actions and comments all of that excitement is squashed, deflated and nervousness, frustration, and sadness all comes crashing down, which all of the frustration and sadness have spontaneously surfaced with no spawning thought from me lately. They are right under the surface of the umbrella which is over all of the feelings, thoughts, and sorrow that I have been trying to suppress for so long. I can't suppress things for very long anymore, I don't have the energy or whatever to keep that up for very much longer. Pretty soon I am going to crash. Just cry hard for no other reason than I cannot handle it that day and let it all out so that hopefully I will be able to shove it all back under that umbrella or attach it to an anchor and throw it overboard and pray someone hastn't attached a bouy. :(

Anyway, I am on vacation. I DO NOT need this right now. A vacation implies that you are going away, leaving problems behind, taking a respit. Not so in my case, but I am going to try my hardest to make it that way.

Vancouver Day One!

Capilano Suspension Bridge

This place was amazing! There were tall trees that blocked us from the rain, beautiful ponds on the Eco-Walk trail, shockingly high cliffs, and tons of fun! The best way to do this post is just to post the best pics and then comment on them. After all a picture is worth a thousand words, right?

The Visitor's Log

Capilano Canyon was called so because of the Capilano Indian tribe that lived in the area. They were not known for their totem pole making, but for their trapping and hunting skills. When "White Man" came and started foresting the trees in the canyon, the Capilano's helped them out. I am not sure how exactly, but anyway, they ended up doing totem poles. They are huge, beautiful creations.

Crossing the Bridge!!!

Crossing the bridge was exciting and played with your sense of balance! It was so much fun. All you had to do was match your steps with the person in front of you and the bridge would begin to sway. Needless to say, it takes a while to find your . . . uh . . . "Bridge Legs" and then once you get off the bridge on to solid ground it takes a while to stop feeling like you are still swaying up on the bridge. Also, the closer you got to the ends the harder you had to work because someone walking across would be stealing your "bounce" like on a tramp, so all of the energy put forth to make it up the slope is lost and more energy is needed. Erika and I had fun with this concept on the Eco-Walk trail, which I will talk about a little later. Lol.

The river was so far down! Good thing I'm not afraid of heights! :) Well, as long as there is something there to keep me from falling I guess I'm not afraid of heights. Lol. Without the "railings" I'm sure I would have had a problem!

So far down! In the shadows on the left we could see young Salmon swimming near the bank. It was pretty and acrobatical! One would be swimming and then all of a sudden it would flip upside down and we could get a glimpse of it's beautiful silver looking belly. It was amazing to be so high up and still be able to see that.

The Eco-Walk!!

On the other side of the bridge there was a plank trail made for tourists to explore the forest. It was awesome! It went down and under the bridge, then further up the mountain to where a few ponds lay, and then it goes up into the trees! Like the Ewoks in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. There were suspended bridges going back and forth between huge, thick trees. There was a sign that said that the suspension bridges gave the trees exercise. I am not for sure how, but Erika got a picture of the sign. I'll post it in this post later. Anyway, up in the Ewok part of the Eco-Walk is where Erika and I had fun. If you ran across the bridge and someone chased you, you ran out of steam trying to get to the other side and sometimes the bounces from their steps gave you more bounce while you were in the middle of the bridge, launching you forward! Yes I was able to run a bit. More of a jog really. :o It was like I was a kid again. Nothing mattered. I even played in the water and with the fish in one of the ponds! It was hilariously funny, I'm sure, to see a 24 year old girl having fun like a three year old! :) I didn't care. Like I said last night, I'm going to have fun, even if it kills me. Well, I guess I'm willing to put that to the test. :)

Looking up into the protecting treetops!

Trout Lake

It was full of fish. While Erika was taking a picture of me I got distracted by some of the fish jumping out trying to catch water skeeters. :) That was something I hadn't seen for years. The last time was at my Grandpa's Ranch. It gave me a thrill to see it again. I took this picture lying on my tummy on the boardwalk. I stayed like that for a while and swirled my fingers around in the cool water. It was great fun. :D

Part of the Eco-Walk Trail

I loved being in the trees! It was beautiful with greens, browns, yellows, ponds, streams, and a protective covering of the treetops from the rain that started to fall. It was peaceful. I could have stayed there for a long time, just relaxing, taking in all the sounds of birds, squirrels, and bugs. I can not describe how much I loved it. I am so thankful that I chose to come to Canada. It is so breathtakingly beautiful that has resonating shouts that there is a God and that he created all that I see. Everything lives in harmony. The old fallen trees becoming nurseries for new fronds and trees. Feeling the pull of the bridges on the trees and the trees pulling back causing you to sway with the trees. Feeling the soft textures of the bark of all the old trees and the old planks of wood that made the boardwalk, worn down by thousands of shoes. Feeling the hard bark of the new saplings. Seeing the moss growing on new trees and old alike. Listening to the little streams putter their way past you to eventually plummet over the edge of the coming precipice. It was marvelous and I felt rejuvenated, uplifted, and blessed to be a part of it.

Everything seems to grow big in British Columbia. Even their spiders! Nikki almost walked right into this spider's web. I'm sure that would not have gone over well. :) Lol. I was very impressed by it's size, although, I am sure they are bigger somewhere out there. :)

As we neared the end of the Eco-Walk it started to sprinkle. After we got back across the bridge and done purchasing some Capilano souvenirs, it wasn't sprinkling anymore. As I was walking out I caught this out of the corner of my eye and I am so pleased so see that the picture turned out like I saw it. It was a beautiful, blessed day.