Although everyone thinks it rains all the time in Portland we have a relatively dry day here, and it’s not until late afternoon when we need to don our rain jackets. We hear it isn’t actually as wet as they make it out to be and it’s become a bit of a myth the Portland folk like to peddle so to keep away all those southern sun seekers. We have come here via the Columbia River gorge where we found another boondocking site to pull up deep (well 5 miles) into the state forest. It’s certainly not the best time to tour Washington, many of the attractions are not yet open for the season and the main appeal of the area are the outdoor activities which the current weather rules out. We pull up for petrol ... read more

I didn’t want to like Banff but having been here for 10 days and had 7 days of excellent skiing, it’s hard not to want to come back, but it is cold. I expected it to be expensive and up-market and it is, but overall it’s not exclusive and late in the season our hotel is quite reasonably priced. There are also plenty of good, and not too expensive, places to eat and drink. Our hotel is a little way from the centre of town so it is a chilly walk back in the evening, but that isn’t as bad as it sounds as there is a free (for us) bus into town if we time it right and our stop is one of the first pickups and stops for the ski bus we catch to ... read more

Revelstoke is our next stop after Sun Peaks. When we planned this trip it was probably my top pick of ski resorts in Canada. We have 6 days skiing here. We're not particularly lucky with the weather as there hasn't been much recent snow despite it normally dumping snow here (it gets about 11m every year), but that's just a part of any ski trip. It also has a reputation for steep runs and has some of the best vertical of anywhere in NA. One of the runs here is called "Glades of Glory" which gives me the title for this blog entry. Even without ideal conditions it is still very good skiing here. We get a small top-up of snow each night and on Thursday overnight about 15cm fresh snow on the higher runs, so ... read more

Supposedly Whistler isn't named after some whistling founder but after the whistling noises the local marmots make whilst mating. As it's still Winter here at the moment we have very little chance of seeing - or hearing - any marmots whilst we're here so won't be able to vouch for the accuracy of this. Originally I hadn't expected to ski Whistler but once J found a reasonably priced Air BnB place in Creekside for 4 nights mid week so we thought we would give it a go. Whistler is considered to be one of the top ski resorts in the world, so I have been keen to come here for a long time, but I have also heard some mixed opinions so I am keen to experience it for myself. We have 4 days skiing here ... read more

The start of another long overseas trip and this one will take us right round the world. This trip sounds adventurous but should be relatively straightforward as most of our planned destinations are 1st-world destinations. We're starting off with about 6 weeks in Canada, primarily for skiing. We aim to visit 4 or 5 separate resorts in this time which should be enough to experience Canadian skiing; After that we will head south chasing the better weather and self-drive down the west coast of the US. I have always wanted to visit San Francisco. From there we will go overland through Mexico and Central America and should have time to be able to do it justice before the northern summer and the hurricane season begins. After that we plan to fly to Europe via Iceland - ... read more