WOW! breathtakingly beautiful photos mtnme 
thanks for sharing these too! 
ok...so what happened after you dropped off joyce and debbie at their hotel? What happened you ask? bwaahahahaha! Well, here's the next part of the installment.
The four of us wandered around town after our jaunt to the falls. We shopped a bit, picked up some Olympic pins and such,
and had a wonderful lunch in town.
My favorite Whistler T-shirts:
'If it's too steep, you're too old.'
or
Frame 1 on t shirt with the words: 'This is your brain',
(and there is a illustration of a brain)
Frame two, a picture of a mountain biker flying off a cliff with these words:
"this is you not using it".
later, we went back to Joyce and Debbie's super great condo with a view of the lake, and watched the nice video Tiffy had made and given
to us. A smorgasboard of wine, fruit, cheese and crackers was the fare
Joyce and Debbie stayed another night in Whistler (due to Michelle not getting the resi's right)
and that will teach me, based on what Lori had in store for us. I'm sure Deb and Joyce were glad they stayed behind.
Lori and I hit the road back to Vancouver, as our resi's were for the Sandman for that night.
We woke up to beautifully clear day, and the drive to Vancouver was spectacular.
But that's where the fun ended, as Lori had talked me into doing the 'Grouse Grind'.
Yup, you heard right, the place where the US team 'got a workout' when they were training in Vancouver.
(pics of Michelle as proof I actually did this will have to come from Lori)Well, not knowing what I was getting myself into, I found my heartrate going quickly from 'normal' to 'explode' within 3 minutes,
and my body was definitely yelling
"what the hell?
!!!!!!" 
In all fairness (stupidity) the body had every right to wail in protest, as we certainly hadn't warmed up properly for what we were doing.
At the beginning of this whole endeavor, my goals were simple:
Make it to the top,
and not end up on a stretcher or in a body bag.
20 minutes into it, I was questioning my sanity - and whether I was going to avoid either of the above! LOL
I finally had to stop and get my heart rate back under control, and to allow my body a chance to wake up and get with the program.
We hadn't even made it to the 1/4 way mark, and I was seriously doubting our success on reaching the top.
Fortunately, the body finally did wake up and smell the double espresso. It and my breathing finally got into a rythym, and the second and third quarter were actually easier, even though the climb was steeper.
Now here's your chance to play the GA edition of 'Where's Waldo'. Lori is in this pic.
This one too, and lest you think she was bringing up the rear, I assure you, we switched places several times as we huffed and puffed our way up.
Living at Tahoe, I do a fair amount of hiking, but I do it for fun -
...and I don't think this qualifies. LOL
And those hikes are not on an endless broken down stairway to ...well, it certainly wasn't to heaven, unless you count the vision of a cold beer and a cheeseburger at the end of it...IF I lived to tell the tale.
I found it was the stairs that were actually doing me in (you don't tend to find those in nature too often as a rule) and I fared better if there was a path along them, even if it was steeper. I also availed myself of a walking stick, as it helps those of us who are 'vertically challenged' negotiate stairsteps as high as our knees without completely destroying them.
The steps were somewhat washed out in a few areas, and the terrain steep, so someone had mercifully supplied some rope to grab and help pull yourself up the trail with. (Hey, the arms needed a workout too, why should the legs have 'all the fun'.)
By the last 1/4, the legs were definitely fatigued, and just picking up your feet enough to clear the steps was becoming a chore, but we finally made it.
And this is how Lori celebrated:
(...and she wouldn't let me tell you she was tossing her cookies...which she wasn't, but it would have made for a much more amusing story! LOL)We were greeted at the top with incredible wood carvings, which I am sorry to say, I didn't have much energy left to pull the camera out and take more pictures of them.
Nor did we go too far in finding the orphaned grizzlies they had on the premises who were rescued when their mom was killed. (I was still captivated by the mirage of that ice cold beer....and I'm not much of a beer drinker.... But boy did it sound good!)
So we headed back to the building, only to realize that the only way to get to that ice cold beer, was.... *groan*.....more stairs.
But we sucked it up, and made that final effort, and were rewarded with some spectacular views of Vancouver far below.
All I can say, is "Man, did that beer go down easy"! We also had that well deserved burger.
It was dusk when we finally finished dinner and made our way down the tram and drove ourselves to the hotel. Just as we were checking in, what should appear, but our favorite soul patched speedskater walking into the lobby. He glanced briefly in our direction, but since we both by that point looked like something the cat dragged in - (and several days ago, at that) - he continued quickly on his way to the elevators. We eventually made our way to our rooms, and just layed there for awhile, to exhausted to move a muscle. The fact that they had given away our room that night and had to share a bed, barely registered on our radar, we didn't have the energy to protest, nor did we care. But they made up for it the next few nights by moving us to a corner room that was all windows on the tenth floor with a spectacular view of the city. It's just as well, it would have been completely wasted on us that first night anyway. I don't think we had the energy to lift our gaze up to the window, and we slept like the dead.
Next up...cruising around Vancouver after we awoke from our coma.....
)
