This is the our stay at the Smith’s before we continued to Alaska.
We stayed a total of 4 nights at Uncle Tim and Aunt Roz’s, and we had the *best* time. I was able to catch up on a lot of needed work and also got to do some fun things with the family.
On Tuesday, Em went and saw a movie with the family and apparently Uncle Tim thought they were all going to die before they even made it to the movie theater because Aunt Roz was driving like a speed demon. And the movie must have been pretty funny because they all came back in high spirits laughing about their favorite parts.
The sunset coming out of the movie theater.
Wednesday, Uncle Tim took us all out on their river boat on the Peace River. I had never been on a river boat before, and it was so so much fun. Apparently, it wasn’t the best season for river boating because the river was running so high, but we still had a ton of fun.
We explored the river some and then floated on the boat for a bit while we enjoyed the plethora of snacks that Naomi (their daughter) brought. Seriously, she had like an entire Yeti cooler full of vegan goodies.
I took that time to ask a million and half questions on being vegan and what that means to them and every other related question you could think of. Uncle Tim and Aunt Roz were more than generous with their time, and we learned so much.
After the boat, Uncle Tim took us all out to Chinese food. Apparently, they have a long standing joke/thing with some of the ladies who work at the restaurant. They like to see how much spicy hot sauce they can get Uncle Tim to eat before he starts sweating. I’m not sure quite sure how it started, but they sound like my kind of people.
The next day Em and I headed to the local Starbucks to get some work done. We also needed to get some shopping done, so we headed to the Safeway next door and bought some more ramens and got a sandwich and chips from the deli for us to enjoy.
We went back to Starbucks and left our chips in the top case. An hour or two later Em and I were hankering for the chips again, but both of us didn’t want to go out and get them. I was just being lazy, and Em was embarrassed to bring the entire chip bag into Starbucks. So we both wanted to have chips, yet neither of us wanted to get the bag…., what better way to solve this pickle other than some good ol’ fashioned Rock Paper Scissors.
I’m not quite sure what was wrong with us, maybe we hadn’t gotten enough sleep, or the sandwich made us a bit loopy, but I swear to you, these were some high stakes RPS. We were laughing so hard, and so nervous to even do one round. You would’ve thought we were betting on who was going to offer their life or something.
After 5 minutes of us behaving like adolescents, Emmy finally lost and had to go get the chips. https://giphy.com/gifs/win-nXxOjZrbnbRxS
We stayed at Starbucks till the place closed and headed back to the house. We all then headed out in the truck to go visit Uncle Tim’s father’s (Emmy’s Great Grandpa Smith) grave.
On our way home from visiting the cemetery, Aunt Roz made a joke, and I honestly can’t remember what she said because it was hardly noteworthy, but my goodness, we thought she was going to have a heart attack from how hard she was laughing at her own joke. We all were cracking up but more because Aunt Roz was about to pass out from laughing so hard.
When we got home, Tim and Roz told us about some places to check out on our journey, and then told us some stories about bear encounters which were certainly enough to make me quiver in my boots. But thankfully, Tim was kind enough to lend us some bear mace before we headed out.
We said our goodbyes to Tim and Roz that night because we wouldn’t see them in the morning.
Next morning, I finished some morning work, and then we said our final goodbye to Naomi before heading to Alaska!
We had a really amazing time at Tim and Roz’s, and they were so generous to us. We had great conversations with all three of them and really felt like we built another set of awesome relationships with even more awesome people :). Thank you for the bed to sleep in, the food, the great conversations, and your hospitality Tim, Roz and Naomi.
-RJ