Panoramic!

An aerial photo of Cathedral Grove. It took me a while to work out the bugs from the panorama programme, but I got it going. Yeehaw.



This is one of the views of Cathedral grove, a big storm came and knocked this tree down some time ago. It's pretty cool. Sarah wouldn't let me go play on it.


This is in the rainforest in the Pacific Rim National Park. I only took it because I wanted to play with the panoramic thing.

My Dad's here!

My Dad is out here in beautiful BC visiting for just over a week, so Remi and I are dragging him all over the island. Right now he's up at the school with Remi checking out what Remi does at work and apparently pulling a lot of dead prawns out of the tanks (so Remi said, anyway). Yesterday we drove across the island to Tofino/Ucluelet, stopping in Cathedral Grove on the way and Coombs (which has a market with goats literally living on the roof) on the way back. Tres cool.

Here are a few photos!


Remi's playing with the panoramic again here ;) The trees are so big I think panoramic is the only way to take a decent picture of them!!

Look up... Look waaaaay up!























OK, I can't figure out how to format this shiznit!! Trying to get this website to work drives me CRAZY!! So I'll leave it up to you to guess what every picture is ;) Any questions, post a comment!!

sarah

Not much new...

Hey! Good to see people are keeping up with our blog, we were feeling all alone out here. Not much news, I went out and bought a TV today... 27" Sony from the pawn shop. Can't get a better deal, so it's less money now or more then... So we got it. Jurassic Park tonight to break it in.

This first picture is of the rocks at Jack Point. These are more or less typical of that area, the waves carve them into these really neat shapes.
This is Sarah (on the left) and Matt and L.B. (Elizabeth, if you will*) on the right, and Mount Benson in the back. Yeah, I climbed that mountain, the pictures are in the blog somewhere.
More nerd pictures! This is a zoea (good scrabble word) of a red rock crab. I later killed it and all of its siblings. I felt bad for a while.

I gotta go...

Remi

To post a comment...

Hey guys. I just wanted to let you all know that it is possible to post a comment on here without actually being a "Blogger" member. All you have to do is go down and hit the comment link at the bottom of the post you want to comment on. Then type in the comment box and use the "Anonymous" selection to post. Make sure you sign your name within your post though, so we know who you are!! If you have any questions, email either Remi or I. We really want to hear from everyone :)

sarah

Forbidden Plateau

The first night we hiked in a couple of kilometers into Helen Mackenzie Lake, and set up camp here. It rained. We were wet. It sucked.

It sucked more than any of you can imagine... We hiked 2.5 km with this tarp over us like one of those Chinese dragon thingies. I couldn't see a damn thing!! BRUTAL. Then we fought (this is Sarah in purple).


Then we woke up to this and I convinced Sarah it was worth continuing for another day. We'd gamble on the weather, and hope for the best.

He's damn lucky it didn't rain. I woke up (after not really sleeping) to a cold, rainy feeling day with CLOUDS. It was pretty though.


Breakfast.


The campsite was very well built up. It took some of the charm away from wild camping, but I suppose in the rain it's not so bad. At least it kept us out of the mud.

I'm so glad they had these boardwalks and built-up sites! It would have been like Alberta if they hadn't been there (Mom, Dad, REMEMBER??).


We took off through alpine meadows. They were incredible. They looked like giant playgrounds, except that if you touched them, they died. Needless to say, Maggie had something of a large footprint. It was very cool. There are little clear ponds and lakes spread out over the land, the trees are all stunted, and the ground cover looked like tundra.

The sun came out shortly after we left and I'm VERY glad we stayed. It was GORGEOUS. Maggie did destroy her fair share of the wildlife though.


BC is too big for simple pictures, so I started playing with the panoramic setting on the camera. It worked pretty well. This is a hill about halfway on Saturday. We stopped here for a snack before continuing.


This is our humble campground. Nice and clean with a view on the mountains and the lake.

Don't let the t-shirt fool you; it was cold. Not that cold at this point, but when the sun dipped behind the clouds, brrrr!


After setting up camp, we dropped our packs and set off towards a Cruikshank Canyon. This is Mariwood lake, on the way.

Speaking of chilly, we saw SNOW on the way to this lake. SNOW! In JULY!! Maggie ate some. She was actually quite excited to see snow. We weren't.


I forced Sarah to take this picture.

He really did!


Again, BC is too big. This is a panoramic view of the alpine meadows. Those snowy peaks are outside Strathcona and are across the canyon.


Here was our first view of Cruikshank Canyon. Precipitous cliffs all around. We tied Maggie up to make sure she didn't sail off the edge. For my part, just looking at this picture make my knees weak. Heights are scary. Anyways, it was very big and totally worth the side trip out there.

Remi was quivering like a little sissy! It was HUGE though. HUGE. Took our breaths away. I can't say that I've ever seen anything quite so beautiful.


Of course, I also had to play with the panoramic setting on the camera. Luckily, Sarah didn't fall off.

Remi was LOVING the panoramic :) I look like a goof, but I do love this picture.

Remi and Sarah too!

Photos, con't

I had to force myself into this position. The cliff was straight down god knows how far. That small lake to my right, that's not even the bottom. Freaky.


This is another panoramic from the campground. As you can tell from the clouds, it later rained.

But the rain wasn't all bad. It forced us into the tent away from the KILLER BLACKFLIES! I've NEVER seen bugs like that in all my life! We're soooooooooo itchy!


Luckily, I used my outdoorsman skills to build this superb lean-to. We were nice and dry. Although the blackflies were so thick we both ate at least a few dozen.

This was a pretty stupendous lean-to.


The next morning we woke up to some light mist on the lake. So we took 3489274234 pictures. This is one of the best.


The mountains in the interior were just peaking through the clouds as the haze burned off in the morning. Again, this is a view from our campsite. We saw this at breakfast, what did you see?



Sarah crawls out of bed.


The view gets better still.


Breakfast on Sunday.

Beautiful. I don't think we could have taken enough pictures to do it justice (we took like 2500 of this same thing).


They built lots of boardwalks to protect the plants and wildlife. As a result, we were able to walk somewhat faster than 2km/h. Not bad.

The boardwalks were great. We actually made really good time on this trek. We kept talking about how much pain we would be in if we were doing the same distances on the Juan de Fuca ;)


Winding mountain paths.


More meadows...


This is just past Mt. Washington, the local ski hill. Note the clearcut just beyond the edge of the park. The logging companies like to keep all the forests nice and short. Nothing is sacred to those heartless bastards.

It was a blast anyway ;) You all need to come out for a visit! There is nowhere in the world quite like this, I don't think. We drove just over an hour to get there and look what we saw! Incredible! I can't wait to move back to the island.

Remi and Sarah

Ammonite Falls

The rocks behind Ammonite Falls are full of fossils. We didn't find anything really good on this particular walk, but we'll try again. Maggie, of course, was an adorable pain in the ass the whole time, so all in all it was a worthwhile visit.

La pierre noire derrière les chutes est pleine de fossiles. Nous n'en avons pas trouvé cette fois, mais peut-être si on essaye encore. J'essaye de mettre un video de Maggie. Eventuellement....

Rémi

We won't be living in a box afterall!

Good news on this Sunday the 16th of July - Remi and I found an apartment in Vancouver that is:

(a) reasonably priced
(b) has a beautiful mountain view
(c) is rented by a nice family
(d) is dog-friendly!! (or at the very least, dog tolerant)

For any of you who wish to help us move, we're now accepting offers ;)

I got in!

For those of you who haven't heard, I got into pharmacy at UBC :) I started in September sometime, although I'm not sure when. Remi and I went apartment-hunting in Vancouver today. It's going to be quite hard to find a pet-friendly place, although we looked at a fantastic one today. The landlords there are concerned about the size. Remi and I think it's perfect and they think it's too small for two people, so hopefully their opinion doesn't cloud their judgement. They said they'll be calling references this week and we're to call them Tuesday. Hopefully it works out! It's in a fantastic neighbourhood with a community centre and park nearby. PERFECT.

Anyway, I think Remi wants to post, so I'm off :)

Wish me luck!

For those of you who don't already know, I have an interview at UBC this week (Thursday) for entry into the pharmacy program! I'm working on my preparations all week, but if you could all send your luck my way, I'd really appreciate it :)

In other news, my boyfriend (and co-author) is a fantastic photographer (must run in the family), and I wanted to share a couple of his photos with you:















He took these under the microscope and then put them through a couple different filters. Très cool ;)

Thanks for those of you who have started reading/posting :) We look forward to hearing from all of you!

Sarah

Juan de Fuca: A Pictorial Essay

Our first night, at China Beach

This whole thing is a single tree!

Humping one big ass load into camp...

Still...

The cliffs by our site...

Our camp is coming together

Driftwood loveseat...

Foggy morning

Maggie posing (exhausted).

Our little tent stands proudly at the base of a cliff.

Logging waste is never far away in B.C.

Starting our trip out.

Tired feet on a suspension bridge.

Rémi