Memorial Day weekend

Memorial Day weekend went by with such success this time. I always kind of dread the trip up there because it's so long (6 hours)  but this time add in that nasty traffic, it added 2 more hours to our trip. 

Saturday we went to Summerland and took the steam train ride. We've never done that before, as a matter of fact I had no idea there was a train going by there. That was the highlight of the trip for us. There was a guy playing the accordion on the train and people were singing along with him. The conductor was pretty cool too. 

Thank you Grandma and Grandpa for such a fun trip. Here they are having fun with us. 

Here's my sweet aunt from Romania who spent 6 months here with us helping us out with the kids while my dad went back to school. We love her.

The view of this valley is gorgeous. I love visiting this place and seeing all the vineyards and orchards that are taken care of so well. Also the area has lots of lakes and is a pretty popular touristic area. 

Here we all are with the nicest man who was nice enough to pose with us.

Sunday morning on our way out to the center the kids got to ride horses. I still haven't had my wish come true to ride a horse myself since I've never done that but the horses were a little jumpy so they held them tight and let the kids go around a little bit. Lavinia would have none of it but Dacian had a blast and was quite excited for the rest of the day with just this experience. Thanks Grandma for this fun experience. 

After going horse riding we visiting the In'kmeep Desert Cultural Center. This place is amazing and my own mother in law is the manager of this place. She was involved with this center ever since this new place was rebuilt and is so great at what she does.
Isn't this statue so cool? In the distance you can see the new condos and hotels that were recently built. When my father in law was alive we got to spend a night in them and they are super awesome. Am I making this place enough advertisement? I do wish people could experience this place. It's neat.

Aside from the inside of the cultural center which is so fun (they have a native movie and other fun stuff) the outside tour is my favorite. It's a native village that's pretty big and they have these cool statues depicting life in the olden days. 

Lavinia played with rocks a lot. It was hard to get her to go anywhere because that's all she wanted to do. 

I especially liked seeing the salmon.

And this statue. The wall that you can see a little is made of all sorts of soil types in the area. I have to get a picture my aunt took so I can show it better. Again, pretty cool.

Here's my mother in law giving us a fun tour with the golf cart. I guess it's nice to have relations in high places. :) Usually you just walk which is fun as well.

Here's Dacian inside of a cool log hut.

Lavinia being the cute girl that she is.

View from the village. Awesome! And not long after we took this pictured Shane almost stepped on a rattle snake. That's right, they have those creatures over there. There are signs all over cautioning people to make sure they look around and not step on them. I guess the rattle snakes are a protected species. I was paranoid for the rest of the tour.

On our way back home we stopped at a nearby park and Dacian played in the water. He actually swam around in the cold water. I can't believe I let him but is was so hot outside and this lake's water warms up fast. It's great during the summer.

Water, his best friend.

OK, more fun on the same day. We stopped by Spotted Lake. This lake is amazing. It's got 365 circles each with a different mineral inside. in the summer there is almost no water left just these circles in multiple colors. It's rained a lot this spring so they have a lot of water. There is a plan to build a cool trail down to the lake and make a nice parking lot for people to stop by. We didn't hike down to it for lack of time but it was fun to show my aunt this place as well. I think she had a pretty fun weekend.

And last but not least that day right before we got to grandma and grandpa's house grandma took us to this rock that has these ancient pictographs on it right on the reservation. I loved seeing this.

I also loved spring on the rez and this pretty desert flower.

On the way back home we went the longer route just to avoid the passes which we knew would be terrible and we stopped by Harrison Hot Springs. We didn't have time to stop and actually go swimming but it was a good stopping point. Maybe we'll go there in the fall.