Jono and I planned a while back to go to Portland to have (a white) Christmas and New years with my old uni pal, Jane, her husband Paul and their two kids - Attikus and Aislinn. We were planning to drive, but our car broke down at the start of December, so we bought ourselves bus and train tickets. We decided it would be nice to break the journey in Seattle, spending an afternoon and a night checking out the City a little more and then catching the train onwards the next day to Portland. It turned out to be fortuitous [View Full Entry]

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Mid December was marked by death, birth, feasting and warm rum and cider. A lot for one weekend, huh? We went to see the bald headed eagles feasting on salmon at Brackendale with Tim and Barb, which was pretty amazing. The bald headed eagle is apparently the only eagle unique to North America. They arrive on mass at the river running through Brackendale (just near Squamish) at this time of year (December/January) to feast on the dying, rotting salmon. The eagles were magnificent and demanding of your respect. They look like judges, in their white caps, perched up above society, casting [View Full Entry]

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The night before my 30th birthday, Jono organised a surprise dinner for me at the pub with a handful of friends that we have over here, including Barb, Brian and Cass who I have mentioned before in this blog. That was pretty nice, and helped make 30 not seem so scary and alien. As much as I was playing the air-violin for myself leading up to the big 3-0 turning, I have survived to tell the tale, and it was a pretty magic birthday, only lacking my family and friends from home. On the morning of my birthday we woke up [View Full Entry]

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Before we left Australia Jono and I realised at the last minute that we needed to get US visas as we were stopping off in Hawaii on the way to Canada. Long story that I do not feel like going in to here, suffice to say we both ended up with a multiple entry five-year visa to the US. So, when our friend Cass suggested we go see Band of Horses play in Seattle, we both leapt at the idea. We wanted, after all, to make use of those damn visas. We had also heard that Seattle was a very cool [View Full Entry]

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Monday November 12 was a public holiday in Canada (remembrance day), so we went for a drive to Harrison Hot springs for something to do. It is a town based around a natural hot spring, about an hour and a half inland from Vancouver. The hot springs were revered as a "healing place" by the indigenous Salish and were apparently "discovered" by a trio of gold miners returning from the Gold Rush of 1858. At some point in their history they were ‘exploited’ by a resort that now owns access to the natural resource and offers it back to the public [View Full Entry]

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We hooked up with Daragh and Cass (friends from MEC), loaded the car up and hit the road for Skaha, a climbing area inland BC near Penticton. Daragh and Cass supplied ample tunes for the trip, which, along with good conversation made the five-hour trip go pretty quickly. The tunes were a welcome relief from the handful of CDs I had bought from the thrift store (that’s what they call op shops over here). We set up home at a campground right on Lake Skaha on Friday night, and woke Saturday morning to a new scene. I love arriving at places [View Full Entry]

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Jono’s parents have left us, and the rain, for Hawaii. Oh, Hawaii - such a distant memory already. Sun, warmth, ocean, wildness, volcanoes, beauty, tackiness, Americana tourism, spam and fake fingernails… We managed to squeeze in a Canadian-style Thanksgiving dinner (with Bar, Brian and Heather) before they left us. Marilyn even made her own cranberry sauce with fresh cranberries!. As always, I was sad when Marilyn and Richard left. I don’t like people leaving. Our friend Damo who was here for a couple of months left the day after Jono’s parents as well to compo [View Full Entry]

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We woke up on our last day in the rockies to a snow covered world, which was pretty exciting. I tried to pretend to be a 'cool local' unimpressed by snow fall, as I see it all the time. But the facade didn't last for long before I was running around like the tourist snapping photos and throwing snow balls. Once we hit the road, we noticed several cars had slid off at various intervals. When we drove past the first car pulled haphazardly off the side of the highway, I thought it was a strange place to stop, then we [View Full Entry]

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We had a pretty unstructured day today, recovering from the big roadtrip the day before and preparing for the big drive home the next day. Jono and I were considering climbing again, but the weather took a substantial dive for the worse. We decided to all go for a bit of a drive and do a few little walks close to where we were staying. I am really foggy on detail here, to the point that I can not even remember the name of the road we traveled on, but we went through Banff and Kootenay parks. (Maybe Richard or Marilyn [View Full Entry]

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Today we drove along the Icefield parkway to a world heritage Glacier... the Athabasca, right next to the highway! The Columbia Icefield (of which Athabasca is part) is a surviving remnant of the thick ice mass that once mantled most of Western Canada's mountains. Lying on a wide, elevated plateau, it is the largest icefield in the Canadian Rockies. Because of a warming climate, the Athabasca Glacier has been receding or melting for the last 125 years. Losing half its volume and retreating more than 1.5 kms, the shrinking glacier has left a moonscape of rocky moraines in its wake. But [View Full Entry]

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