Yea, another day of sitting on the bus for a long time. Boring bus ride + me not wanting to do reading = lots of sleeping. Well, I did have a bit of lack of sleep because I…tried…to watch the England-Brazil game. I passed out at half time. Brazil won, and I woke up in time to see US lose to Germany.

The more we drove, the closer the snow-covered mountains got. So powerful and yet so serene and beautiful.

At the British Columbia-Alberta border, there are a bunch of national parks. The first one we entered was Glacier Park, where we stopped for lunch. I really don’t know what happened in the four hours before lunch. The tour guide, Stephen, was giving us a lesson in North American territorial history, and I…without knowing, just dozed off. Long story short, I wake up and we got off the bus. This happens a lot.

Well, next was Yoho Park. The highlight here was a natural bridge on the Kicking Horse River. Actually, the bridge is just a rock with a crack in it. Stephen said that the water has been cutting through for 6000 years.

The third stop of the day was Banff National Park. First we went to the Lake Louise Gondolas. IT was like a 5-10 minute ski lift all the way up to the top. The funny thing is that I think this place is actually a ski resort in the winter months…but I couldn’t seem to figure out where the slopes would have been…

Well, we saw the snow from far away this whole time, but when we got to the top, the snow was right there! The snow wasn’t soft, but like an icy snow. The weird thing thought is that it’s the first day of summer, it’s like 80 degrees Fahrenheit out, and there’s patches of snow; not a lot of it, but it’s still there.

Okay, so back in DC there really wasn’t any snow this year, so Eric and I decided to have a little snowball fight. Eric got me on the butt and near the crotch…bother when I wasn’t paying attention, and I returned the favor by slapping one on his back and dropping another down his shirt =).

From the top of the mountain we were able to see a beautiful landscape of mountains with Lake Louise nestled in the center…we’ll go there tomorrow.

The next stop in Banff was Moraine Lake, which involved a nice hike up a hill.

From there we continued eastward onto Calgary. Along the way the adults continued to sing random songs. Turns out Stephen has this entire book of song lyrics >_<. My mom wants me to sing, but I’m resisting. Eventually I probably will give in, but for now…I haven’t embarrassed myself.

Oh yeah…at some point along the bus ride, I wake up to Eric’s hair brushing against my neck…a weird feeling, trust me. So then he basically drops his head onto my shoulder, and I can only sit and look puzzled.

Now I’m in a Sandman Hotel (I think I’m seeing a pattern here) in downtown Calgary, and I’m about to watch the Spain-Korea game. After a pretty bad dinner, the parents decided to take the C-train down 5 blocks and then walk like another 5 to Chinatown. I just followed. They knew that all the shops would be closed, and yet they still went. Once we got there, we just turned around and went back to the hotel. Aiye.