Skagit Valley = lots of rain

Our most recent trip! Here you have our little home away from home. We took this picture on Friday evening shortly after setting up camp. Those tarps soon became our best friends, as it started to rain Saturday morning and stopped at some time after dinner that evening. Good BC weather. It was only mildly concerning because that river in the background had recently flooded, so there was a risk we'd go for an unplanned swim if things went badly.

(Sarah is in green). Thanks again for the tent, Julien!! It gets so toasty in there with the three of us it's like you're not even camping. Having the river right beside us was très cool.

We went for a walk on Saturday. These, by the way, are the latest spring fashions coming out of Chilliwack. Elegant and functional.

My raincoat leaked - a lot. A good lesson learned for Cape Scott - I need a new raincoat. As we are hiking in for 6 days, I can't afford to get my only sweatshirt soaked on day 2.

Where there's rain, there's slugs. People back east might think they know what a slug is, but they don't. This guy was about as long as my hand, and still smallish, by our standards.

The slugs are gross!! You may remember the ones with the black on them from Nanaimo (you can look through our archives if interested), they don't seem to live on the mainland where we have been so far. Also, Kat, if you're reading this, you would have probably spent about 65 hours looking at the fallen tree we found this guy on. There must have been at least 6 different species of fungus and mosses, bugs, etc. You would love it out here (need we keep reminding you?).

The weather was also very good for 'shrooms. There was a log covered in theses guys.

I love these little mushrooms. We've been trying to get a decent picture of different mushrooms all season. There are so many different things out here than in Ontario (so visit, you bums!).

Maggie knows where the comfort is. But the last thing we were going to do was let a wet dog into our tent.

She stared at the tent for probably about 15 minutes straight. What a suck! I would have let her in if I thought she'd stay on Remi's side ;)

I have no idea what these things are. Most likely a mushroom or a lichen or something, either way they were cool, so I took a picture. On that note, when things are damp and gross, if you don't stick your nose to the ground you won't see anything cool.

I love this picture. We really need to get a book on the various plant/moss/fungus/bug/bird/etc/etc life in BC (*hint*hint* good gift idea!).

On the way out. It stopped raining long enough for us to pack our gear and get most of the way out. Things could have been many times worse, so we're pretty pleased with how it turned out.

If we hadn't had the tarps that my fabulously resourceful and infinitely handsome (can you tell he's looking over my shoulder?) boyfriend rigged up, we would have left first thing Saturday morning!

I'm on a taking-macro-shots-of-flowers kick, so here's a sampling. If you don't know me and print this and sell it, I'll sue you into the ground. On the plus side, I've figured how to resize the pictures, which makes it easier to upload and harder to steal. Take that freeloaders!
Notes on the taxonomy of the above pictures would be welcome. But be specific. Sarah and I are big nerds, so over simplified guesses like "it's a mold" won't do.

Remi & Sarah

Les photos

Après l'arrivé des parent dimanche matin, nous sommes partis directement direction Pemberton, au nord-ouest de Whistler, dans les Rocheuses. Nous sommes resté dans une auberge avec une vue incroyable des montagnes.

Sur le chemin de retour nous nous sommes promener dans une petite foret au bord de la route.

La vue de l'autoroute en rentrant à Vancouver

Une anemone au bord de mer. L'océan autour de Vancouver n'est pas très marrant, il faut vraiment chercher pour trouver quelque chose d'interessant.

Maman, Papa et Maggie admirent la vue

Maggie dans un torrent un peu au nord de Vancouver






La vallée de l'Okanagan. C'est un peu désertique, mais on y trouve de bons vins.










Un lac avec des sels naturels juste à l'ouest d'Osooyoos.

Masson visit

So Remi's parents were here for 12-ish days (?) - something like that anyway, and we dragged them ALL OVER BC :) Except the good part, which is, of course, Vancouver Island. But we made due here on the mainland. We went to Whistler, which was kind of boring for touristing although I'm sure really fantastic for skiing, which we did not do. We also stayed at a B&B in Pemberton. It was gorgeous. That was the first weekend. Then we went to the Okanagan last weekend for some wine touring. We stayed at another B&B in Peachland. Check out the website - http://www.bbcanada.com/1894.html?showpage=2 . The people were really nice and the view was amazing, but the decor was... Well... Look for yourselves. Remi and I spent the night in the lacy bedroom ;) It was great fun though. We spent Saturday wine touring in the area and learned that we LOVE fruit wines (even Alain!). Remi and I didn't actually buy any wine made with grapes! We bought some pear, apple and peach wines. YUM.

Anyway, it was a fantastic visit and Remi should post something more detailed about it later, but here are a few pictures for now ;) OK, I hate blogger and it isn't working, so pictures to come soon!

Thanks for visiting us Ann and Alain!! :)

Stawamus Chief

We've just returned from our first camping trip of the year. We drove up the Sea to Sky Highway away from Vancouver towards Squamish. We didn't bother hiking in to a remote site this time, and just camped near the comfort of our car. The campsite was nothing to write home about, but we still managed to be comfortable despite the inexplicable fire ban.
On Saturday we left camp and headed up "the Chief", a 700m granite hill (not quite a mountain) to the third summit. We took the relatively easy back route that was equiped with stairs and easy trails up gullies and along the base of cliffs. The difficult route along the face of the Chief is a major rock-climbing destination as it is a massive near vertical cliff right to the top.

This is a view of Howe Sound from part way up the hill.

Continuing up the trail there were many nice trees at the base of the cliffs, barely seen here.

Of course nothing we do is easy, as you can tell from the stairs in this picture.

Maggie always led the way, of course. She wasn't a complete nuissance.

We love the log bridges.
Pushing for the summit.

Our lunch time picnic spot. We stayed for a few hours resting and relaxing

A small tarn, just enough for Maggie to cool down in.

Resting on the way down.
Our stop at Shannon Falls on the way home, during the brief interlude between the seething busloads of tourists.

And that was our little trip away from the smoggy stinky awfulness of Vancouver.

Remi

Raquettes!

Sarah a finallement recommencer ses études (informelles) de français, donc j'essaye un peu aussi de mon côté.
Je reviens tout juste du sommet du Mont Seymour, qui surplombe Vancouver. Dans la photo à droite, Maggie surveille la vallée derrière la montagne, et on discerne un peu la ville à droite.

En arrivant au sommet, j'ai remarqué quelques aigles. Malgré la proximité, c'est la seule photo plus ou moins réussie. Malheuresement, ils n'avaient pas encore leur plumage adulte...


Je suis probablement le seul qui utilise encore les raquettes en bois. Le style moderne en plastique et en aluminium est plus léger et efficase, mais où est le charme?


La semaine dernière je me suis promené autour de la base du Mont Seymour... Moins interessant, mais quand même une bonne promenade. Et c'est tout. J'espère que mon français n'est pas trop nul...



Rémi

BOOURNS!!

So I should be studying, but I thought I would take a moment to share my misery with all of you... FINALS!!! How I dislike them!! I feel so incredibly bogged down right now with attempting to jam an entire semester's worth of drugs in my head (my next final is pharmacology), not to mention the impending doom of thermodynamics on Friday, then ANATOMY next week!! Why me??

Other than that, all is well ;) Starting my new job (hopefully) on the 30th and we'll have a new car by Thursday!

Hope everyone is well at home and elsewhere :)

New Car!

Well, strictly speaking, it's not ours yet. But we have a deposit on it, so it's just a matter of time now. We have a meeting this coming Thursday to seal the deal. It's pretty much our old car, but in red. With four doors. Way less mileage. And it's two years younger. We figure it's a good deal.
Hopefully we don't get hosed.

Remi

P.S. Now that we'll have a car, we'll be able to resume our adventures and we'll get plenty of interesting pictures.

T-Shirt weather!

Other than ICBC accepting that they were completely unreasonable, we don't have a great deal of news. The weather is slowly getting better, so I'm able to bike to work most days, which not only saves me some big bucks, but is also dragging me out of my winter torpor.

We had Sarah's childhood friend Melanie visit us last Sunday, so we bummed around downtown Vancouver showing her the sights and sounds (including our world-famous crackheads... er, pardon, homeless ladies and gentlemen). Sadly I forgot the camera so we don't have any pictures of the stuff we did. A shame, because there is a very nice and relatively quiet Chinese garden downtown complete with koi and turtles and bonzai that is well worth visiting.

Because we don't have a car right now (see previous posts), we are completely incapable of doing anything cool (e.g. hikes on the north shore), so I'll attach a couple of pictures from around here.

These are from today in Falaise Park. Not much really, but at least if you look beyond the Big Smoke you can get the idea that there is some hope left for the mainland. Still, we can't wait to get back to the island.

I've been raving about the macro capabilities of our new camera to just about anyone who will listen, and here is another fine example. Just a boring dandelion, but up close it looks great. go ahead, click on it. Admire the detail.

And that's about it for now. I promise that once we have a new car our posts will become more frequent and more entertaining.

Remi

Update

Remi is a bit of a deadbeat, seeing as it's actually his turn to post, but that's ok. We have a new camera so he's been taking a lot of pictures that he really needs to post on here. It's a great camera, but I'll let him tell you about it.

I'm here to tell you about ICBC and our car. Good news came out of it in the end. We just have to pay what we owe, instead of their ridiculous penalty fee, so we end up getting just over $7000 for the car. It's time to start car shopping! We are now accepting advice on how to pick out a used car. Leave us messages!

This is just a short post. It's a friend of mine's birthday so I'm sticking around on campus to celebrate with him and a bunch of friends. Should be a good time. The semester is almost over which means I'm almost done first year!! Also a good thing to celebrate.

Anyway, I hope you're all well :)

Sarah

Pharmacy skits night!

Hey all! So the last few weeks have been very busy for me between school/midterms, work, and memorizing my lines for our first year pharmacy skit! I actually played one of the lead roles in the skit. Wasn't my idea, but I got volunteered and so I agreed (reluctantly). Anyway, it was a blast!! We only had one glitch in our skit (unfortunately it was my fault), but I was able to right the wrong (after swearing into my microphone ;) and we made it through. It was something of a hit and one of our actors won the best actor award!! Very exciting!
Anyway, here are a few pictures. Sorry about the poor quality, it was dark in there. Oh! They also took a video of it, which they will eventually be posting online, so I'll let you know when you can see it ;)
Sarah
This is Bobby and I with our counterparts, Drs. Price and Riggs




Getting Josh ready... Oh my ;) HILARIOUS!

The cast!
Yes, I'm the blond.




Keith playing Dr. Reid (our grumpiest prof)
Our theme.

Vancouver Aquarium